Chapter Eight
The next morning we had breakfast but I pretended to be sicker than I felt and lay back down on the yellow couch after we ate.
It was nice that she took me in but it was strange too. I felt in danger whenever she looked at me.
At noon I was saved by a knock on the door.
‘Domaque Harker,’ Miss Dixon said through the closed screen.
‘How you do, Miss Dixon?’
‘Very fine, and how are you?’
‘I’m fine too, ma’am.’
‘And your mother?’
‘I ain’t seen her in two, three days, ma’am, but I’m sure she’s fine and would wanna know that your health is fine too.’
Dom was speaking slower than he had when I was with him. I figured that Miss Dixon was teaching him how to talk as well as read.
‘And what story are you working on now, Domaque?’
‘I’m workin’ on Noah’s tale, ma’am.’
All of this talk was still through the dosed screen.
‘And how does that go?’
‘How Noah saw the storm comin’ an’ how he gathered all the married children an’ all the pairs of animals. How he rode the storm of God’s righteous anger in love of his wife and his chirren an’ their chirren...’
‘That’s the way you have to do it. Make it your own.’
She opened the door with that and Domaque shambled in. That skinny woman and barrel-shaped hunchback looked so strange standing there amongst the umbrella stands and mirrors. To look at them you would say that they had nothing in common. But there they were understanding each other so well that they could have been good friends, or even blood. They would never even sit down at the same table to break bread. But they’d get together and tell each other stories and laugh and be happy. I remember feeling loneliness watching them.
Miss Dixon asked us to stay to dinner but Dom said that we had to be going, being polite I guess. She gave us some sandwiches and fruit in a paper bag to eat on the way.
I was hoping that she’d let me keep her uncle’s suit but she didn’t. My clothes smelled all the worse for the few hours of cleanliness that I’d been given.
She waved goodbye from the front porch like a mother sending her kids off to school. I felt bad about leaving in some ways. I had never stayed in such a fine house and I liked it; but I was glad to be clear of that strange white lady.
‘She funny, huh?’ Domaque asked.
‘Yeah, I guess. She comes right out and says what she thinks and don’t care how it sounds.’
Dom smiled to himself and then closed his lips over his giant mouth. When he did that his lips came together in a point as if he were trying to kiss something very small.
He said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I like her, I guess.’
‘I don’t know if it’s too good always sayin’ anything you feel.’
‘Yeah, but that way you don’t get beholdin’ t’some’un. She teach me how t’read but not so’s that I owe her nuthin’. I know she do it fo’her pleasure, not mine.’
Afternoon was overcast and cooler than it had been. I was feeling better but after we’d walked a few miles I was ready to rest. Dom said that Pariah was only a short ways and I had a bed wailing for me there.
‘A bed where?’ I asked him.
‘Out at Miss Alexander’s.’
‘She any kin to Mouse?’
‘She Raymond’s momma’s sister.’
‘An’ what’s she like?’ I didn’t want to tell Dom about me and his mother, that wouldn’t have been proper. But I didn’t want a repeat of my one night in the woods either.
‘Mouse said you might be worried ‘bout stayin’ there. He tole me t’tell you that you be safe wit’ his auntie.’
When Dom walked he put his right foot forward and reached into the air with his right hand as if he were carrying a staff; his left hip would fall back and then he’d bring the left leg up with a dragging movement, straightening his shoulders as he went. He was able to walk very fast in that odd way. When I asked him what else it was that Mouse said, that walk became even more peculiar.
‘He said...’ Dom couldn’t go on for laughing and drooling.
‘What?’ I was worried that Mouse had told him about Jo and me; that this grinning came just before Dom pulled out his butchering knife.
‘He said...,’ Dom ducked his head.’...that maybe he knows a girl be my friend.’
Pariah looked wilder than the woods. It was a crooked town, not more than two blocks of unpaved red day street and all there was to it was the one street. The north side of town was at least eight feet higher ground than
