Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote Page B

house like this would most likely be riddled with hidden passages, and picture-eyes that were not eyes at all, but peepholes. And his father thought: that runt is an impostor; my son would be taller and stronger and handsomer and smarter-looking. Suppose he’d told Miss Amy: give the little faker something to eat and send him on his way. And dear sweet Lord, where would he go? Off to foreign lands where he’d set himself up as an organ grinder with a little doll-clothed monkey, or a blind-boy street singer, or a beggar selling pencils.
    “Confound it, Missouri, why can’t you learn to light in one place longer than five seconds?”
    “I gotta chop the wood. Ain’t I gotta chop the wood?”
    “Don’t sass me.”
    “I ain’t sassin nobody, Miss Amy.”
    “If that isn’t sass, what is it?”
    “Whew!”
    Up the steps they came, and through the back screen door, Miss Amy, vexation souring her white face, and a graceful Negro girl toting a load of kindling which she dropped in a crib next to the stove. The Major’s suitcase, Joel saw, was jammed behind this crib.
    Smoothing the fingers of her silk glove, Miss Amy said: “Missouri belongs to Jesus Fever; she’s his grandchild.”
    “Delighted to make your acquaintance,” said Joel, in his very best dancing-class style.
    “Me, too,” rejoined the colored girl, going about her business. “Welcome to,” she dropped a frying pan, “the Landin.”
    “If we aren’t more careful,” stage-whispered Miss Amy, “we’re liable to find ourselves in serious difficulty. All this racket: Randolph will have a conniption.”
    “Sometime I get so tired,” mumbled Missouri.
    “She’s a good cook . . . when she feels like it,” said Miss Amy. “You’ll be taken care of. But don’t stuff, we have early supper on Sundays.”
    Missouri said: “You comin to Service, Ma’am?”
    “Not today,” Miss Amy replied distractedly. “He’s worse, much worse.”
    Missouri placed the pan on a rack and nodded knowingly. Then, looking square at Joel: “We countin on you, young fella.”
    It was like the exasperating code-dialogue which, for the benefit and bewilderment of outsiders, had often passed between members of the St. Deval Street Secret Nine.
    “Missouri and Jesus hold their own prayer meeting Sunday afternoons,” explained Miss Amy.
    “I plays the accordion and us sings,” said Missouri. “It’s a whole lota fun.”
    But Joel, seeing Miss Amy was preparing to depart, ignored the colored girl, for there were certain urgent matters he wanted settled. “About my father . . .”
    “Yes?” Miss Amy paused in the doorway.
    Joel felt tongue-tied. “Well, I’d like to . . . to see him,” he finished lamely.
    She fiddled with the doorknob. “He isn’t well, you know,” she said. “I don’t think it advisable he see you just yet; it’s so hard for him to talk.” She made a helpless gesture. “But if you want, I’ll ask.”
    With a cut of cornbread, Joel mopped bone-dry the steaming plate of fried eggs and grits, sopping rich with sausage gravy, that Missouri had set before him.
    “It sure do gimme pleasure to see a boy relish his vittels,” she said. “Only don’t spec no refills cause I gotta pain lickin my back like to kill me: didn’t sleep a blessed wink last night; been sufferin with this pain off and on since I’m a wee child, and done took enough medicine to float the whole entire United States Navy: ain’t nona it done me a bita good nohow. There was a witch woman lived a piece down the road (Miz Gus Hulie) usta make a fine magic brew, and that helped some. Poor white lady. Miz Gus Hulie. Met a terrible accident: fell into an ol Injun grave and was too feeble for to climb out.” Tall, powerful, barefoot, graceful, soundless, Missouri Fever was like a supple black cat as she paraded serenely about the kitchen, the casual flow of her walk beautifully sensuous and haughty. She was slant-eyed, and darker than the charred stove; her crooked hair