The Tin Can Tree

'Might not wait till then even,' he said. 'You never can tell.'

'Well, I would,' said James. 'Tobacco stunts your growth.'

'No, I mean to go out on my own. I might go earlier.' He stuck out his tongue and flicked an imaginary piece of tobacco off the tip of it. 'I been thinking where I could go.'

'It's kind of early for that,' James said.

'I don't know. You know Caraway, N.C.?'

James stopped fiddling with his camera and looked up. 'What about it?' he asked.

'I just thought you could tell me about it. If that's where you are from.'

'Nothing to tell,' said James.

'Well, there's hats with feathers on them, and them gold earrings the boys all wear. Do you think I might like that town?'

In the view-finder his face was small and pointed, with a worried line between his eyes. He was leaning toward James with the cigar poised forgotten between his thumb and forefinger, and in the second of stillness that followed his question James snapped the picture. 'That'll be a good one,' he said.

'Will I like Caraway?'

'I don't see how. Do you ever see me going to Caraway?'

'Well, the boys wear gold earrings,' Simon said again, and he sighed and rubbed the top of his head and James snapped that picture too.

'Sure, the boys,' he told Simon. They're the worst in the state, Caraway boys. Got tight little Church of God parents. All they want to do when they grow up is come somewhere like Larksville. What you want to do in Caraway?'

'I could board with your family,' Simon said.

James looked up from his camera with his mouth open and then threw back his head and laughed. 'Hoo!' he said, and Ansel stirred in his sleep at the noise. ‘I’d like to see that,' he went on more quietly. 'Would you turn sideways in your chair now, please?'

Simon turned, but he kept his eyes on James. 'Ansel says-' he began.

'Ansel don't know.'

'Ain't he from there?'

'He don't know.'

'Well, anyway,' said Simon. 'I could go and look it over.'

'Your mother would love that. Now, quit watching out of the corner of your eye, Simon. Look at the fireplace.'

'Do you think she'd miss me?' Simon asked.

James clicked the picture and stood up, squinting at him sideways to see which way to turn him next.

'I think my mother'd say, "Who you say's gone? Oh, Simon!" she'd say. "Him. My goodness. Did you remember to bring the eggs?" ' He sat forward again then and frowned at James, twining the cigar over and under the fingers of his left hand. 'You see how it'd be,' he said.

'You know that ain't so,' said James.

He stepped a little to one side and got Simon focussed in the camera again, all the while waiting for the argument to continue. But it didn't. In the square of the viewfinder Simon suddenly sighed and slumped down like a little old man, staring abstractedly at the wet end of his cigar. 'Ah, hell,' he said. 'It don't matter.'

That made James look up, but he didn't say anything. Instead he snapped the picture and frowned over at the lamps, measuring how much light there was. 'Outdoors would've been better,' he said finally.

'I also hear,' said Simon, 'that they sing all night in the dark. And them plumed hats, why, even the mules wear them. With holes cut for ears.'

'Look over toward your left,' James said.

"There's six buses going there a day, Ansel told me.'

James folded his arms across the top of the camera and watched Simon a minute, thinking. Simon stared straight back at him. In the light from the lamps his eyes seemed black, and it was hard to see beyond the flat surface of them. His chin was tilted outward a little, and his lashes with their sunbleached tips gleaming were like curtains over his expression. Who knew what was in his mind? James uncrossed his arms then and said, ‘Put your cigar, away, now. This last one's for your mother.'

'Aw, my mother won't even -'

'She wants a picture she can show to the relatives. What would they think, you with a big fat cigar in your hand?'

'She won't -' Simon began again.

But James said, 'You're growing so much, this summer. She wants to get you in a picture before you're too big to fit in one.'

'She tell you that?' asked Simon.

'Why, sure.'

'She ask you out and out for a picture of me?'

'Sure she did,' James said. 'She said, "James, if you got time, I wish you'd snap a picture of Simon. We don't have a picture that looks like him no more." I said I'd try.'

'Well, then,' said Simon after a minute. He rose and crossed over to the mantelpiece, where he laid down the cigar. When he returned to his chair he settled himself very carefully, tugging his jeans down tight into his boots, running both hands hard through his hair to smooth it back. He looked more posed now; the relaxed expression that he had worn in the other pictures was gone. With both hands placed symmetrically on the arms of the chair, his back very straight and his face drawn tight in the beginnings of a smile, he stared unblinkingly into the lens of the camera. James waited a minute, and then he pressed the button and straightened up. 'Thank you,' he said formally.

'Oh, that's all right.'

'I'll have them for you this afternoon, maybe. Or tomorrow, early. Perle Simpson is coming by for a passport photo and I want to take that before I start developing.'

'Okay,' said Simon. He stood up, frowningly tucking in his shirt, and then suddenly he looked over at James and gave him a wide, slow smile, so big that the two dents he was always trying to hide showed up in the centre of his cheeks. 'Well, I'll be seeing you,' he said, and sauntered on out, slamming the screen door behind him. When James went to the window to look after him he saw him in the front yard, picking up the bicycle he hadn't ridden for days and twirling the pedal into a position where he could step on it. The buttercup still hung in the spokes, its little yellow head dangling drunkenly from the front wheel and its withered leaves fluttering out like banners when Simon rode slowly off. He rode in the direction of the Terry's farm; he would be going to see the tobacco pickers, the way he used to do.

When Simon was out of sight, and when James had turned and seen that Ansel was sleeping still, he himself went out the screen door and down the long front porch. The Pikes' window shades were up now. He peered in through the dark screen door and saw Mrs Pike at her sewing machine, not running it at the minute but sewing by hand on something that was in her lap. 'Mrs Pike,' he called gently. She lowered the sewing and looked up at him, her mouth screwed up and lopsided because of the pins in one corner of it. 'Mrs Pike, can I come in a minute?'

'Joan's handing tobacco,' she said. Speaking around the pins made her seem like a different woman, like the waitress at the Royal Crown who always had a cigarette in her mouth when she talked. 'Did you want to see Joan?'

'Well, no, I just wanted to tell you -' said James. He pulled open the screen door and stepped just inside it, even though he hadn't been asked. 'I took a picture of Simon,' he said.

'Oh.'

'Sitting in an easy chair.'

'Well, that's real nice,' said Mrs Pike, and bowed her head to nip a thread off the dress she was sewing.

'Well, I took it for you, Mrs Pike.'

'That's real nice of you,' she said again. She held the dress up at arm's length and frowned at it. James shifted his weight to his other foot.