The Tin Can Tree

‘I’m sorry?' she said.

'I'm going to pick tobacco,' he repeated.

'Oh. All right.'

But he still seemed to be waiting for something. He folded his big boney hands on the table and leaned toward her, watching, but Joan couldn't think what was expected of her. She picked the coffeepot off the stove and carried it over to the sink, in order to dump the grounds.

'We need the money,' her uncle said.

Joan shook the grounds into the garbage pail, holding the coffee-basket by the tips of her fingers so as not to get burned.

'Well, sometime I got to start work,' he said.

'Of course you do, Uncle Roy.'

'Things are getting worse and worse in this house. I thought they'd get better.'

'Pretty soon they will.'

'I wonder, now.

He watched as Joan set his cup of coffee before him. She handed him the sugar bowl but he just stared at it, as if he'd never seen one before.

'Sugar?' Joan prodded him.

He shook his head, and she set the bowl down at his elbow.

'It's no good sitting in a room all my life,' he said.

'Drink your coffee,' Joan told him. She poured a cup for herself and then sat down opposite him hitching up the knees of her blue jeans. Her eyes were still foggy from sleep and things came through to her blurred, in shining patterns – the blocks of sunlight across the worn linoleum, the graduated circles of Mrs Pike's saucepan set hanging on the wall, the dark slouched waiting figure of her uncle. When she stirred her coffee with a kitchen knife that was handy, the reflection of the sunshine on the blade flashed across the wall like a fish in a pool and her uncle shifted his eyes to that. He watched like a person hypnotized. She set the knife down and the reflection darted to a point high on the wall near the ceiling, and he stared upward at it.

'You going to want sandwiches?' she asked.

He didn't answer. She took a sip of her coffee, but it was tasteless and heavy and she set the cup down again. 'Putting my foot down,' her uncle mumbled. Joan drew lines on the tablecloth with her thumbnail. Outside a bird began singing, bringing back all the spots and patches of restless dreams she had had last night, in between long periods of lying awake and turning her pillow over and over to find a cool place. Ever since the rain stopped those birds had been singing. She rubbed her fingers across her eyelids and saw streaks of red and purple behind them.

'In regard to sandwiches,' her uncle said suddenly, 'I don't want them. I'll come home for lunch.'

'All right.'

'Least I can do.'

'All right.'

'What's the matter with you?' he asked, and reached finally for the sugar bowl. 'You mad I'm picking tobacco?'

'No. I think it's the best thing you could do. Don't forget to tell James he won't need to work today.'

'I thought you'd do that,' said Mr Pike.

'You can.'

'You're not working today; you can spare a minute.'

'No, I'd rather you do it.'

'Oh now,' Mr Pike said suddenly. 'You two have a fight?'

Joan took another sip of coffee. It still had no taste. A hummingbird swooped down to the window and just hung there, suspended like a child's bird-on-a-string, its small eyes staring curiously in and its little heart beating so close and fast they could see the pulsing underneath the feathers. Mr Pike gazed at it absently.

'I never did hold with long engagements,' he said.

'What?'

'Longer the engagement, the more time for fights. Shouldn't allow it, Joan.'

'I'm not engaged,' Joan said shortly. 'And anyway, it's none of my doing.' Her uncle looked away from the hummingbird and frowned at her.

'I don't know about that,' he said. 'And I'll tell you. Some men need a little shove.'

'I don't believe in shoving.'

'Only way, sometimes. I ever tell you how I came to marry your aunt?'

'I'm not in the mood for that,' said Joan.

'I was only going to mention.'

'No, I don't want to hear,' she said, and pictured suddenly her aunt, no longer young, lying so still upstairs. 'You go tell James,' she said.

'Aw, Joan.'

'Someone has to.'

'Aw, Joan, you know how it is. I'll go over and there will be Ansel, all talkative and cheerful. Cheerful in the morning – can you feature that?'

'Maybe he's still asleep,' Joan said.

'Ansel? No. I heard him come in long after midnight just singing away, and I reckon he sang all night and is singing still. Where's Simon?'

'In bed.'

'Been days since I seen that boy. Send him over.'

'He won't go either.'

'Look,' said Mr Pike. He stood up, jarring the table, and the hummingbird flew away without even preparing to go. 'I can't see Ansel today,' he said. 'I don't know why but he gets under my skin nowadays. Will you please go?'

'Oh, all right,' Joan said.

'All right, that's settled. Thank you very much.'

He sat down again, and Joan went back to looking at the patterns in the kitchen. Everything she saw made her homesick, but not for any home she'd ever had. The sunlight on the linoleum reminded her of something long ago and lost; yet she had never lived in a house with a linoleum kitchen, never in all her memory. She kept staring at the design of it, the speckled white floor with bars of red and blocks of blue splashed across it, and the sun lighting up the dents and scrapes made by kitchen chairs. Finally she looked away and into her uncle's frowning, leather-brown face, but her uncle only said, 'We need the money,' so she looked away again. Her coffee had cooled, and the surface of it was greasy-looking. She drank it anyway.

When her uncle was through with his coffee he pushed the cup toward the centre of the table and rose, clamping the mesh cap on the back of his head. 'You can take care of things here, I guess,' he said.

'Yes.'

'I'll be running along, then.'

He clomped off toward the front of the house, swinging his boots in that heavy way that Simon always tried to copy. His steps made the whole floor shake. She heard the screen door swing open with a twang of its spring and then slam shut again, rattling on its hinges. Then the clomping continued across the porch, and she waited for the extra-heavy sound of his boots descending the wooden steps to the yard but it didn't come. 'Joan?' he called.

'What.'

'Joan!'

She rose and went out front, wondering why men always had to shout from where they were instead of coming closer. Her uncle was standing on the edge of the porch with his back to the house and his cap off, scratching the back of his head. 'What is it?' she asked him, and he turned toward her.

'Well, I already informed your aunt,' he said, 'but I'm not certain she heard.'

'Informed her about what?'

'About my working. But I'm not certain she heard. Will you tell her again?'

'All right,' said Joan.

'Say we need the money, tell her. Say I'm sorry.'

'All right, Uncle Roy.'

'I can't sit looking at trees all my life.'

'No, I know,' said Joan, and reached out to give his shoulder one gentle push so that he would turn and leave. He did, still frowning. Then halfway across the yard he slapped his cap back on his head and thrust his hands in his pockets and began walking more briskly, getting ready to go out into the world again. Joan watched after him till he was out of the yard, and then she went down toward the Greens' end of the porch.

Ansel was in his window, chewing sunflower seeds. He looked very happy. He spit the hulls out on the porch floor and then leaned over, his hands on the windowsill and his elbows jutting behind him like bird wings, and tried to blow the hulls all the way across the porch and into the yard. Joan wished he would fall out. She stood over him with her hands on her hips and waited until he had straightened up again, and then she said, 'Ansel.'