Joel imagined a queerness in the driver's tone. He studied Radclif's blunt profile, wondering if perhaps the theft had been noticed. If so, Radclif gave no sign. "Well, it's… you know, different."
"Course I don't see any difference. Lived hereabouts all my life, and it looks like everywhere else to me, ha ha!"
The truck hit suddenly a stretch of wide, hard road, unbordered by tree-shade, though a black skirt of distant pines darkened the rim of a great field that lay to the left. A far-off figure, whether man or woman you could not tell, rested from hoeing to wave, and Joel waved back. Farther on, two little white-haired boys astride a scrawny mule shouted their delight when the truck passed, burying them in a screen of dust. Radclif honked and honked the horn at a tribe of hogs that took their time in getting off the road. He could swear like nobody Joel had ever heard, except maybe the Negro dock-hand.
A while later, scowling thoughtfully, Joel said: "I'd like to ask you something, o. k.?" He waited till Radclif nodded consent. "Well, what I wanted to ask was, do you know my… Mister Sansom?"
"Yeah, I know who he is, sure," said Radclif, and swabbed his forehead with a filthy handkerchief. "You threw me off the track with those two names, Sansom and Knox. Oh sure, he's the guy that married Amy Skully." There was an instant's pause before he added: "But the real fact is, I never laid eyes on him."
Joel chewed his lip, and was silent a moment. He was crazy with questions he wanted answered, but the idea of asking them embarrassed him, for to be so ignorant of one's own blood-kin seemed shameful. Therefore he said what he had to in a very bold voice: "What about this Skully's Landing? I mean, who all lives there?"
Radclif squinted his eyes while he considered. "Well," he said at last, "they've got a coupla niggers out there, and I know them. Then your daddy's wife, know her: my old lady does dressmaking for her now and again; used to, anyway." He sucked in cigarette smoke, and flipped the butt out the window. "And the cousin… yes, by God, the cousin!"
"Oh?" said Joel casually, though never once in all the letters had such a person been mentioned, and his eyes begged the driver to amplify. But Radclif merely smiled a curious smile, as if amused by a private joke too secret for sharing.
And that was as far as the matter went.
"Look sharp now," said Radclif presently, "we're coming into town."
A house. A grey clump of Negro cabins. An unpainted clapboard church with a rain-rod steeple, and three Holy panes of ruby glass. A sign: The Lord Jesus Is Coming! Are You Ready? A little black child wearing a big straw hat and clutching tight a pail of blackberries. Over all the sun's stinging glaze. Soon there was a short, unpaved and nameless street, lined with similar one-floored houses, some nicer-looking than others; each had a front porch and a yard, and in some yards grew scraggly rose bushes and crepe myrtle and China trees, from a branch of which very likely dangled a child's play swing made of rope and an old rubber tire. There were Japonica trees with waxy blackgreen polished leaves. And he saw a fat pink girl skipping rope, and an elderly lady ensconced on a sagging porch cooling herself with a palmetto fan. Then a red-barn livery stable: horses, wagons, buggies, mules, men. An abrupt bend in the road: Noon City.
Radclif braked the truck to a halt. He reached across and opened the door next to Joel. "Too bad I can't ride you out to the Landing, son," he said hurriedly. "The company'd raise hell. But you'll make it fine; it's Saturday, lotsa folks living out thataway come into town on Saturday."
Joel was standing alone now, and his blue shirt, damp with sweat, was pasted to his back. Toting the sticker-covered suitcase, he cautiously commenced his first walk in the town.
Noon City is not much to look at. There is only one street, and on it are located a General Merchandise store, a repair shop, a small building which contains two offices, one lodging a lawyer, the other a doctor; a combination barbershop-beautyparlor that is run by a one-armed man and his wife; and a curious, indefinable establishment known as R. V. Lacey's Princely Place where a Texaco gasoline pump stands under the portico. These buildings are grouped so closely together they seem to form a ramshackle palace haphazardly thrown together overnight by a half-wit carpenter. Now across the road in isolation stand two other structures: a jail, and a tall queer tottering ginger-colored house. The jail had not housed a white criminal in over four years, and there is seldom a prisoner of any kind, the Sheriff being a lazy no-good, prone to take his ease with a bottle of liquor, and let trouble-makers and thieves, even the most dangerous type of cutthroats, run free and wild. As to the freakish old house, no one has lived there for God knows how long, and it is said that once three exquisite sisters were raped and murdered here in a gruesome manner by a fiendish Yankee bandit who rode a silver-grey horse and wore a velvet cloak stained scarlet with the blood of Southern womanhood; when told by antiquated ladies claiming onetime acquaintance with the beautiful victims, it is a tale of Gothic splendor. The windows of the house are cracked and shattered, hollow as eyeless sockets; a rotted balcony leans perilously forward, and yellow sunflower birds hide their nests in its secret places; the scaling outer walls are ragged with torn, weather-faded posters that flutter when there is a wind. Among the town kids it is a sign of great valor to enter these black rooms after dark and signal with a match-flame from a window on the topmost floor. However, the porch of this house is in pretty fair condition, and on Saturdays the visiting farm-families make it their headquarters.
New people rarely settle in Noon City or its outlying parts; after all, jobs are scarce here. On the other hand, seldom do you hear of a person leaving, unless it's to wend his lonesome way up onto the dark ledge above the Baptist church where forsaken tombstones gleam like stone flowers among the weeds.
Saturday is of course the big day. Shortly after daylight a procession of mule-drawn wagons, broken-down flivvers, and buggies begins wheeling in from the countryside, and towards midmorning a considerable congregation is gathered. The men sport their finest shirts and store-bought breeches, the women scent themselves with vanilla flavoring or dime-store perfume, of which the most popular brand is called Love Divine; the girls wear dodads in their cropped hair, inflame their cheeks with a lot of rouge, and carry five-cent paper fans that have pretty pictures painted on them. Though barefoot and probably half-naked, each little child is washed clean and given a few pennies to spend on something like a prize-inside box of molasses popcorn. Finished poking around in the various stores, the womenfolk assemble on the porch of the old house, while their men mosey on over to the livery stable. Swift and eager, saying the same things over and over, their voices hum and weave through the long day. Sickness and weddings and courting and funerals and God are the favorite topics on the porch. Over at the stable the men joke and drink whiskey, talk crops and play jackknife: once in a while there are terrible fights, for many of these men are hot-tempered, and if they hold a grudge against somebody they like to wrestle it out.
When twilight shadows the sky it is as if a soft bell were tolling dismissal, for a gloomy hush stills all, and the busy voices fall silent like birds at sunset. The families in their vehicles roll out of town like a sad, funeral caravan, and the only trace they leave is the fierce quiet that follows. The proprietors of the different Noon City establishments remain open an hour longer before bolting their doors and going home to bed; but after eight o'clock not a decent soul is to be seen wandering in this town except, maybe, a pitiful drunk or a young swain promenading with his ladylove.
"Hey, there! You with the suitcase!"
Joel whirled round to find a bandy-legged, little one-armed man glowering at him from the doorway of a barbershop; he seemed too sickly to be the owner of such a hard, deep voice. "Come here, kid," he commanded, jerking a thumb at his aproned chest.