The Tin Can Tree

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' said James. He opened the paper again.

'When I am dead, I wonder what people will miss me. You? Simon? Mrs Pike will wish she'd brought more hot soup. Joan won't notice I'm gone. Will you miss me?'

James read on. He learned all about a boy named Ralph Combs, who was planning to be Raleigh's contribution to the major leagues. He read Blondie and Dick Tracy and Part 22 of the serialized adventure story, and then he noticed the silence again and he lowered his paper to look at Ansel. Ansel was asleep, with one arm flung over his head and his fingers curling in around the sofa arm. His eyelids were translucent and faintly shining, and over his forehead his hair hung rumpled, making him look the way he had when he was twelve. Seeing him that way made James feel sad. He rose and came over to the couch, standing at Ansel's head and looking down at his long pale face tipped back against the cushions. If he hadn't known better, he would have tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Now I'll listen.' But then Ansel would wake up and be twenty-six years old again, nervously testing himself for new symptoms, beginning some long monologue that he had begun before, changed forever from that scared small brother who could sit a whole evening without saying a word or raising his eyes from the floor. That twelve-year-old would vanish without a trace, leaving not even an echo of himself in the way Ansel smiled or said a certain word. James moved away from the couch and went over to the window.

Because of the way he felt, the view from the window took on a sad, deserted look. Everything was bowed low under the breeze, straightening up for a second only to bow again. Simon's bicycle lay on its side with a drooping buttercup tangled in its spokes. At the edge of the yard the Potters' insurance man was just climbing out of his Volkswagen (He came every week, because the Potters had to be constantly reassured that their policy really was all right.) He looked tired and sad. While he was crossing the yard he mopped his face and straightened the plastic carnation in his buttonhole, and then on the first porch step he snapped his head erect and put a bright look on his face. After that James lost sight of him. But he could hear the knocking, and the sound of the Potters' door cautiously opening and the bolts being slid back after the insurance man was taken inside. They slid easily in their little oiled tracks. The quickness of them made James smile, and he could picture Miss Lucy's eager fingers fumbling rapidly at the locks, shutting little Mr Harding in and the loneliness out for as long as she and Miss Faye could manage. He stopped smiling and moved away from the window.

Back in the kitchen it was even worse. There was one daisy on the counter, a stray one from the field in back, and it was dead and collapsed against Ansel's untouched lunch tray. ('I'm not eating today,' Ansel had said. 'Do you care?' 'Suit yourself,' said James.) Out the back window was the half-mowed field, looking bald and straggly. Simon Pike was leaning against an incinerator staring at it all, and while James watched, Simon straightened slowly and began wandering in small thoughtful circles around the incinerator. With the toes of his leather boots he kicked at things occasionally, and he had his shoulders hunched up again so that he looked small and worried. James stuck his head out the window.

'Hey, Simon,' he said, 'why don't you come in?'

Simon raised his head and looked at him. 'What for?' he asked.

'Well, you look kind of lonely out there.'

'Aw, no.'

'Well, anyway,' said James, 'I want to take a picture of you.’

That made Simon think twice. He stood still for a moment to consider it, with his chin stuck out and his eyes gazing away from James and across the field. Then he said, 'What kind of picture?'

'The kind you like. A portrait.'

'Well, then, I reckon I might. I'll come in and think about it.'

‘That's the way,' said James.

He let Simon come in his own good time, stopping to kick at a bootscraper and wasting several minutes examining some blistered paint on the door. When Simon was troubled about something, this was the way he acted. He circled all around the kitchen without once looking at James or speaking to him, and he picked up several things from counters and turned them over and over in his hands before setting them down again. Then he jammed his hands into his back pockets and went to the window. 'Mama's hemming a dress,' he said.

"That's good.'

'She talks a little, too, but not about any concern of mine.'

'Well, you got to give her time,' said James. 'First thing people talk about is weather and things.'

'I know,' Simon said. 'Daddy is at the fields, and Joan too. It's her tobacco day. Everybody's busy.'

'So're you,' said James. 'You're having your picture taken.'

'Yeah, well.'

But when James headed toward the darkroom Simon followed him. 'Where are we going to take it?' he asked.

'Outdoors, if you like.'

'I'd rather the living room.'

'All right,' James said. He opened the door of the darkroom and led the way to where his cameras stood. 'You got to be quiet, though, because that's where Ansel's sleeping.'

‘Now?'

'It's one of his dizzy days.'

'Oh, cripes,' said Simon, and he started walking in circles again. He put the heel of one boot exactly in front of the toe of the other, and keeping his balance that way made him fling both arms out and tilt sideways slightly. 'It's a bad day for everyone.’ he said. 'I declare.' He seemed to be walking on an imaginary hoop, suspended high above the ground.

James had seen the kind of portraits that Simon and Janie Rose liked best – the ones taken against a dead white screen, with the faces retouched afterwards. He favoured a homier picture, himself. He left the screen behind and brought only a couple of lamps, not the glaring ones, and his favourite old box camera. 'We'll put you in the easy chair,' he told Simon. He had given the camera to Simon to carry, and Simon was squinting through the view-finder as he walked. 'Do you want to be doing anything special?'

'Yes,' Simon said. 'I want to be smoking a cigar.'

'Be serious, now.'

'I am serious. You asked me what I wanted to be doing. Well, all my life I've been waiting to get my picture took with a cigar. I been counting on it.'

'Oh, what the hell,' said James. He set his lamps down and went over to the living-room mantelpiece. From the old wooden cigar box that had belonged to his grandfather he took a cigar, the fat black kind that he smoked on special evenings when no one was around to complain. 'Here you go,' he said. 'But don't you light it, now. Just get your picture took with it.'

'Well, thank you,' said Simon. He crossed to the easy chair, giving Ansel a sideways glance as he passed, but Ansel only stirred and didn't wake up. 'He don't know what he's missing,' Simon whispered. 'Me with a cigar, boy.'

'It'll all be recorded for posterity,' said James.

While James was setting up the lights, Simon practised with the cigar. He opened it and slid the paper ring off, and then he sat with his elbow resting on the chair arm and his face in a furious frown every time he took a suck from the unlit cigar. 'I'm getting the hang of it,' he said, and looked around for an ashtray to practise tapping ashes into. 'When do you reckon they'll let me smoke these for real?'

'Never, probably,' said James. 'Always someone around that objects to the smell.'

'Ah, I wouldn't care. I'm going to start as soon as I'm out on my own, boy. Soon as I turn sixteen or so.'

James smiled and tilted a lamp closer to Simon. He had been listening to Simon for some years how, and he had a mental list of what he was planning to do at age sixteen. Smoke cigars, take tap-dance lessons, buy his own Wool-worth's, and grow sideburns. Janie Rose hadn't even been going to wait that long. She asked her mother weekly, 'Do you think it's time I should be thinking of getting married?' And then she would smile hopefully, showing two front teeth so new that they still had scalloped edges, and everyone would laugh at her. James could see their point, though – Janie's and Simon's. He couldn't remember that being a child was so much fun. So he nodded at Simon and said, 'When you turn sixteen, I'll buy you a box,' and Simon smiled and settled back in the chair.