Authors: Truman Capote
It was natural that Riley should have gone to him to get the news. Of course he repeated it straightforwardly; but I could imagine Amos, hear his hummingbird whirr: “There you are, honey, that’s how it turns out when you leave money lying around. And of all people, Verena Talbo: here we thought she trotted to the bank with every dime came her way. Twelve thousand seven hundred dollars. But don’t think it stops there. Seems Verena and this Dr. Ritz were going into business together, that’s why she bought the old canning factory. Well get this: she gave Ritz over ten thousand to buy machinery, mercy knows what, and now it turns out he never bought one blessed penny’s worth. Pocketed the whole thing. As for him, they’ve located not hide nor hair; South America, that’s where they’ll find him when and if. I never was somebody to insinuate any monkeyshines went on between him and her; I said Verena Talbo’s too particular: honey, that Jew had the worst case of dandruff I’ve ever seen on a human head. But a smart woman like her, maybe she
was
stuck on him. Then all this to-do with her sister, the uproar over that. I don’t wonder Doc Carter’s giving her shots. But Charlie Cool’s the one kills me: what do you make of him out there catching his death?”
We cleared town on two wheels; pop, pulp, insects spit against the windshield. The dry starched blue day whistled round us, there was not a cloud. And yet I swear storms foretell themselves in my bones. This is a nuisance common to old people, but fairly rare with anyone young. It’s as though a damp rumble of thunder had sounded in your joints. The way I hurt, I felt nothing less than a hurricane could be headed our way, and said so to Riley, who said go on, you’re crazy, look at the sky. We were making a bet about it when, rounding that bad curve so
convenient to the cemetery, Riley winced and froze his brakes; we skidded long enough for a detailed review of our lives.
It was not Riley’s fault: square in the road and struggling along like a lame cow was the Little Homer Honey wagon. With a clatter of collapsing machinery it came to a dead halt. In a moment the driver climbed out, a woman.
She was not young, but there was a merriness in the seesaw of her hips, and her breasts rubbed and nudged against her peach-colored blouse in such a coaxing way. She wore a fringed chamois skirt and knee-high cowboy boots, which was a mistake, for you felt that her legs, if fully exposed, would have been the best part. She leaned on the car door. Her eyelids drooped as though the lashes weighed intolerably; with the tip of her tongue she wettened her very red lips. “Good morning, fellows,” she said, and it was a dragging slow-fuse voice. “I’d appreciate a few directions.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” said Riley, asserting himself. “You nearly made us turn over.”
“I’m surprised you mention it,” said the woman, amiably tossing her large head; her hair, an invented apricot color, was meticulously curled, and the curls, shaken out, were like bells with no music in them. “You were speeding, dear,” she reproved him complacently. “I imagine there’s a law against it; there are laws against everything, especially here.”
Riley said, “There should be a law against that truck. A broken-down pile like that, it oughtn’t to be allowed.”
“I know, dear,” the woman laughed. “Trade with you. Though I’m afraid we couldn’t all fit into this car; we’re even a bit squeezed in the wagon. Could you help me with a cigarette? That’s a doll, thanks.” As she lighted the cigarette I noticed how gaunt her hands were, rough; the nails were unpainted and one of them was black as though she’d crushed it in a door. “I
was told that out this way we’d find a Miss Talbo. Dolly Talbo. She seems to be living in a tree. I wish you’d kindly show us where …”
Back of her there appeared to be an entire orphanage emptying out of the truck. Babies barely able to toddle on their rickety bowlegs, towheads dribbling ropes of snot, girls old enough to wear brassieres, and a ladder of boys, man-sized some of them. I counted up to ten, this including a set of crosseyed twins and a diapered baby being lugged by a child not more than five. Still, like a magician’s rabbits, they kept coming, multiplied until the road was thickly populated.
“These all yours?” I said, really anxious; in another count I’d made a total of fifteen. One boy, he was about twelve and had tiny steel-rimmed glasses, flopped around in a ten-gallon hat like a walking mushroom. Most of them wore a few cowboy items, boots, at least a rodeo scarf. But they were a discouraged-looking lot, and sickly too, as though they’d lived years off boiled potatoes and onions. They pressed around the car, ghostly quiet except for the youngest who thumped the headlights and bounced on the fenders.
“Sure enough, dear: all mine,” she answered, swatting at a mite of a girl playing maypole on her leg. “Sometimes I figure we’ve picked up one or two that don’t belong,” she added with a shrug, and several of the children smiled. They seemed to adore her. “Some of their daddies are dead; I guess the rest are living—one way and another: either case it’s no concern of ours. I take it you weren’t at our meeting last night. I’m Sister Ida, Little Homer Honey’s mother.” I wanted to know which one was Little Homer. She blinked around and singled out the spectacled boy who, wobbling up under his hat, saluted us: “Praise Jesus. Want a whistle?” and, swelling his cheeks, blasted a tin whistle.
“With one of those,” explained his mother, tucking up her back hairs, “you can give the devil a scare. They have a number of practical uses as well.”
“Two bits,” the child bargained. He had a worried little face white as cold cream. The hat came down to his eyebrows.
I would have bought one if I’d had the money. You could see they were hungry. Riley felt the same, at any rate he produced fifty cents and took two of the whistles. “Bless you,” said Little Homer, slipping the coin between his teeth and biting hard. “There’s so much counterfeit going around these days,” his mother confided apologetically. “In our branch of endeavor you wouldn’t expect that kind of trouble,” she said, sighing. “But if you kindly would show us—we can’t go on much more, just haven’t got the gas.”
Riley told her she was wasting her time. “Nobody there any more,” he said, racing the motor. Another driver, blockaded behind us, was honking his horn.
“Not in the tree?” Her voice was plaintive above the motor’s impatient roar. “But where will we find her then?” Her hands were trying to hold back the car. “We’ve important business, we …”
Riley jumped the car forward. Looking back, I saw them watching after us in the raised and drifting road dust. I said to Riley, and was sullen about it, that we ought to have found out what they wanted.
And he said: “Maybe I know.”
HE DID KNOW A GREAT
deal, Amos Legrand having informed him thoroughly on the subject of Sister Ida. Although she’d not previously been to our town, Amos, who does a little traveling now and then, claimed to have seen her once at a
fair in Bottle, which is a county town not far from here. Nor, apparently, was she a stranger to the Reverend Buster who, the instant she arrived, had hunted out the Sheriff and demanded an injunction to prevent the Little Homer Honey troupe from holding any meetings. Racketeers, he called them; and argued that the so-called Sister Ida was known throughout six states as an infamous trollop: think of it, fifteen children and no sign of a husband! Amos, too, was pretty sure she’d never been married; but in his opinion a woman so industrious was entitled to respect. The Sheriff said didn’t he have enough problems? and said: Maybe those fools have the right idea, sit in a tree and mind your own business—for five cents he’d go out there and join them. Old Buster told him in that case he wasn’t fit to be Sheriff and ought to hand in his badge. Meanwhile, Sister Ida had, without legal interference, called an evening of prayers and shenanigans under the oak trees in the square. Revivalists are popular in this town; it’s the music, the chance to sing and congregate in the open air. Sister Ida and her family made a particular hit; even Amos, usually so critical, told Riley he’d missed something: those kids really could shout, and that Little Homer Honey, he was cute as a button dancing and twirling a rope. Everybody had a grand time except the Reverend and Mrs. Buster, who had come to start a fuss. What got their goat was when the children started hauling in God’s Washline, a rope with clothespins to which you could attach a contribution. People who never dropped a dime in Buster’s collection plate were hanging up dollar bills. It was more than he could stand. So he’d skipped off to the house on Talbo Lane and had a small shrewd talk with Verena, whose support, he realized, was necessary if he were going to get action. According to Amos, he’d incited Verena by telling her some hussy of a revivalist was describing Dolly as an infidel, an enemy of Jesus, and that Verena owed it to the Talbo
name to see this woman was run out of town. It was unlikely that at the time Sister Ida had ever heard the name Talbo. But sick as she was, Verena went right to work; she rang up the Sheriff and said now look here Junius, I want these tramps run clear across the county line. Those were orders; and old Buster made it his duty to see they were carried out. He accompanied the Sheriff to the square where Sister Ida and her brood were cleaning up after the meeting. It had ended in a real scuffle, mainly because Buster, charging illegal gain, had insisted on confiscating the money gathered off God’s Washline. He got it, too—along with a few scratches. It made no difference that many bystanders had taken Sister Ida’s side: the Sheriff told them they’d better be out of town by noon the next day. Now after I’d heard all this I said to Riley why, when these people had been wrongly treated, hadn’t he wanted to be more helpful? You’d never guess the answer he gave me. In dead earnest he said a loose woman like that was no one to associate with Dolly.
A TWIG FIRE FIZZED UNDER
the tree; Riley collected leaves for it, while the Judge, his eyes smarting with smoke, set about the business of our midday meal. We were the indolent ones, Dolly and I. “I’m afraid,” she said, dealing a game of Rook, “really afraid Verena’s seen the last of that money. And you know, Collin, I doubt if it’s losing the money that hurts her most. For whatever reason, she trusted him: Dr. Ritz, I mean. I keep remembering Maudie Laura Murphy. The girl who worked in the post office. She and Verena were very close. Lord, it was a great blow when Maudie Laura took up with that whiskey salesman, married him. I couldn’t criticize her; ’twas only fitting if she loved the man. Just the same, Maudie Laura and Dr. Ritz, maybe those are the only two Verena ever trusted, and
both of them—well, it could take the heart out of anyone.” She thumbed the Rook cards with wandering attention. “You said something before—about Catherine.”
“About her goldfish. I saw them in the window.”
“But not Catherine?”
“No, the goldfish, that’s all. Mrs. County was awfully nice: she said she was going to send some dinner around to the jail.”
She broke one of Mrs. County’s cinnamon rolls and picked out the raisins. “Collin, suppose we let them have their way, gave up, that is: they’d have to let Catherine go, wouldn’t they?” Her eyes tilted toward the heights of the tree, searching, it seemed, a passage through the braided leaves. “Should I—let myself lose?”
“Mrs. County thinks so: that we should go home.”
“Did she say why?”
“Because—she did run on. Because you always have. Always made your peace, she said.”
Dolly smiled, smoothed her long skirt; sifting rays placed rings of sun upon her fingers. “Was there ever a choice? It’s what I want, a choice. To know I could’ve had another life, all made of my own decisions. That would be making my peace, and truly.” She rested her eyes on the scene below, Riley cracking twigs, the Judge hunched over a steaming pot. “And the Judge, Charlie, if we gave up it would let him down so badly. Yes,” she tangled her fingers with mine, “he is very dear to me,” and an immeasurable pause lengthened the moment, my heart reeled, the tree closed inward like a folding umbrella.
“This morning, while you were away, he asked me to marry him.”
As if he’d heard her, the Judge straightened up, a schoolboy grin reviving the youthfulness of his countrified face. He waved: and it was difficult to disregard the charm of Dolly’s expression as she waved back. It was as though a familiar portrait had been cleaned and, turning to it, one discovered a fleshy luster, clearer,
till then unknown colors: whatever else, she could never again be a shadow in the corner.
“And now—don’t be unhappy, Collin,” she said, scolding me, I thought, for what she must have recognized as my resentment.
“But are you …?”
“I’ve never earned the privilege of making up my own mind; when I do, God willing, I’ll know what is right. Who else,” she said, putting me off further, “did you see in town?”
I would have invented someone, a story to retrieve her, for she seemed to be moving forward into the future, while I, unable to follow, was left with my sameness. But as I described Sister Ida, the wagon, the children, told the wherefores of their run-in with the Sheriff and how we’d met them on the road inquiring after the lady in the tree, we flowed together again like a stream that for an instant an island had separated. Though it would have been too bad if Riley had heard me betraying him, I went so far as to repeat what he’d said about a woman of Sister Ida’s sort not being fit company for Dolly. She had a proper laugh over this; then, with sudden soberness: “But it’s wicked—taking the bread out of children’s mouths and using my name to do it. Shame on them!” She straightened her hat determinedly. “Collin, lift yourself; you and I are going for a little walk. I’ll bet those people are right where you left them. Leastways, we’ll see.”
The Judge tried to prevent us, or at any rate maintained that if Dolly wanted a stroll he would have to accompany us. It went a long way toward mollifying my jealous rancor when Dolly told him he’d best tend to his chores: with Collin along she’d be safe enough—it was just to stretch our legs a bit.
As usual, Dolly could not be hurried. It was her habit, even when it rained, to loiter along an ordinary path as though she were dallying in a garden, her eyes primed for the sight of precious medicine flavorings, a sprig of penny-royal, sweet-mary and mint, useful herbs whose odor scented her clothes. She saw
everything first, and it was her one real vanity to prefer that she, rather than you, point out certain discoveries: a birdtrack bracelet, an eave of icicles—she was always calling come see the cat-shaped cloud, the ship in the stars, the face of frost. In this slow manner we crossed the grass, Dolly amassing a pocketful of withered dandelions, a pheasant’s quill: I thought it would be sundown before we reached the road.