The Tin Can Tree by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online Page B

marathons. He said—”
    “I got an idea,” Simon said.
    “What?”
    “Listen.” He stood up from his place at the table and came around to face her, with his hands hitched through his belt loops. “How about us going to a movie,” he said. “That Tarzan movie.”
    “We’re not supposed to.”
    “Well, I got to get out,” he said.
    She looked down at him, considering. His face had a thin, stretched look; patches of flour still clung to it like some sort of sad clown makeup and his hair stuck up in wiry tangles. “Well, I do have to get Aunt Lou’s prescription,” she said. “Would you comb your hair first?”
    “Sure.”
    “All right, we’ll go.”
    “Right now?”
    “If you want to.”
    He nodded, but with his face still wearing that strained look, and turned to go upstairs and then turned back again. “I’ll wash downstairs,” he said.
    “There’s no soap here.”
    “I don’t care.”
    He turned on the water in the kitchen sink and splashed his face, and then he reached spluttering for the dishtowel. “My allowance money’s all the way upstairs,” he said. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow, if you’ll lend me the money.”
    “All right.”
    She went into the living room, with Simon following, and handed him a comb from her pocketbook. While he was combing his hair she went upstairs for her shoes. Mrs. Pike’s door was open now. She was lying on her bed, with her head propped up on two pillows and the sisters beside her talking steadily, and when Joan walked past, her aunt followed her with her soft blue eyes but only vaguely, as if she weren’t seeing her, so Joan didn’t stop in to say anything. She put on her shoes and picked up a scarf and went downstairs, where Simon was waiting with his hand on the newel post and his face strained upward.
    “What’re they doing?” he asked her.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Are they crying?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Well. I
would’ve
gone upstairs,” he said. “You know.”
    “I know.”
    “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
    “No.” She sighed suddenly, looking back toward the stairs. “
I
don’t know how to comfort people,” she said.
    “Well.”
    They went out the front door, across the porch, and down the wooden steps. It was beginning to get cool outside. Joan could hear tree frogs piping far away, and the wind had died down enough so that the sound ofcars on the east highway reached her ears. She clasped her hands behind her back and followed Simon, cutting across the road and through the field toward town.
    “Remember I’ve got heels on,” she called.
    “I remember.”
    “Remember that makes it hard walking.”
    He slowed down and waited for her, walking backwards. Behind him and all around him the field stretched wide and golden, with bits of tall yellow flowers stirring and glimmering like spangles in the sunlight. And when Joan came up even with him, so that he turned and walked forward again by her side, she could look down and see how his hair, bleached lighter on top, took on a varnished look out here and the little line of fuzz down the back of his neck had turned shiny and golden like the field he was walking in. “Right about here …,” he said, but the wind started up just then and blew his words away.
    “What?” she asked.
    “Right about here is where I lost that ball. Will you keep a lookout for it?”
    “I will.”
    “Do you reckon I’ll ever find it?”
    “No.”
    “I don’t either,” Simon said.
    But they walked slowly anyway, keeping their eyes on the ground, kicking at clumps of wild wheat to see what might turn up.

3
    “
H
old
still,” James said.
    He bent over and peered through the camera. No one was holding still. Line upon line of Hammonds, from every corner of the state, littered the Larksville Hammonds’ front lawn, sitting, kneeling, and standing, letting arms and legs and bits of dresses trail outside the frame of his camera. Whole babies were being omitted; they had crawled to