“Oh, Scarecrow, Scarecrow, what in the world are we going to do?”
Daniel says, in that plaintive murmur people sink into when they are opening their heart to an animal.The old shepherd raises her snout, looks up and her tongue unfurls from her mouth, lands on Daniel’s chin, and then sweeps up over his lips.“What are we going to do, Scarecrow? What’s going to happen to us? It’s pretty messed up, isn’t it, Scarecrow? How did everything get to be so broken?”
Daniel slumps back in the chair, continues to pet the dog.He closes his eyes and is about to sink into sleep when he is startled and revived by the sound offootsteps directly overhead.Hampton is awake, awake and moving.His first impulse is to hide;he stands up and his legs tremble for want offlight, his good eye looks for the quickest way out ofthe room.
He tries to calm himself by thinking that perhaps it is someone other than Hampton upstairs, or even ifit is Hampton, then he may not be coming down—he is going to get a drink ofwater, or take a leak, or maybe he has heard the children in the backyard and he is going to a win-dow to gaze out at them.But no:this is merely a story Daniel is telling himself, a little explanatory fable that will allow him to believe that the worst is not about to happen.
Now the footsteps are on the stairs, coming down, and Daniel has not run, he has not hidden.He sits down.He will seem less threatening, less intrusive, seated.He crosses his legs, left to right, then right to left, and then leaves them uncrossed, the knees slightly parted, his clammy hands folded between them.He ransacks his mind for something to say, an ex-planation for why he is here, an apology, a bit ofsmall talk, and then he remembers what should have been impossible to forget—Hampton cannot understand a word, not spoken or written, and all Hampton him-selfcan say is that single stunned syllable:da.Da Da Da.
How strange, then, to finally see him, this strong, beautiful man whose throat was pierced by a rocket, this ruined prince who has lost everything.He is dressed in copper-colored pajamas, with white piping around the pockets and down the leg.The top buttons ofhis shirt are open, the scar just below theAdam’s apple looks like a wad ofchewed-up gum, and someone has spread talcum powder on his throat all the way down to the chest.He is freshly shaved but his eyeglasses have been snapped in two and then repaired with tape a la Ferguson Richmond.It seems unthinkable that Hampton would be wearing broken glasses, it is, for the moment, the saddest thing in the world.Sadder than his slack mouth, the corner ofwhich is yanked down and to the side, sadder than his dull, unblinking eyes, sadder than the cologne Mrs.Davis has splashed on him, and sadder, even, than the fact that he is wearing his wristwatch, with its lizard-skin band and nineteen jewels, its expensive Swiss ner-voussystem, its mini-clocks at the bottom giving the time in London and Tokyo.
“Hello, Hampton,”Daniel says.He knows he cannot be understood, yet he can’t simply stand there and say nothing.And even ifthe words are gibberish to Hampton, even ifto his bombed-out brain the sounds Daniel makes are no more decipherable than the chattering ofa monkey, perhaps the context will do, the logic ofthe moment, the gesturing hand, the smiling mouth, the deferential little bow.
“Da,”Hampton whispers.He shuffles forward a step.He hasn’t noticed that Scarecrow is underfoot now and on his second step he catches the dog’s paw beneath his foot.She lets out a high, piercing yelp.Hamp-ton is startled.His eyes widen, his mouth opens—his expressions are guileless and large.His personality, no longer projected through the scrim oflanguage, has now an intolerable purity.He looks down at the dog and smiles.At first it seems to Daniel that there is some cruelty here, but then Hampton pats the dog’s head with a wooden herky- jerky move-ment, and Daniel realizes that the smile was one ofrecognition:Scare-crow’s cry has made more sense to Hampton than Daniel’s hello.
When he has comforted Scarecrow, made his amends, Hampton straightens up again, looks at Daniel, taking him in in a long, silent gaze.
Daniel feels he must somehow communicate, but the only sign language he can think ofis gestures ofsupplication.He folds his hands, low-ers his head, and sorrowfully shakes his head.Yet even this does not seem enough—what could be? He wants Hampton to be restored.Short of that, he wants to be forgiven, he wants Hampton to give that to him, to lift him offthe hook and set him free, to place an exonerating hand on Daniel’s shoulder and admit to the idea—submit to it, ifthat’s what it takes—that what happened in those woods was a fluke and had nothing to do with Daniel and Iris.Daniel will not allow himself to beg for mercy, he will not try to urge Hampton to see that the two ofthem are simply men who have been caught in the Rube Goldberg machinery oflife.
Then, for no particular reason, he has a fleeting thought:Ruby.How long have those two been out there?A halfhour? More?
But the thought evaporates because Hampton is crying.He is drumming his long fingers against his head— shaved by Mrs.Davis, nicked here and there, the cuts left to dry in the air—and he is shaking his head, more vociferously than a simple no, he is shaking it to clear it, to dispel some merciless, obliterating beast that lives within, eating his words.
Tears as thick as glycerine streak down his cheeks, and his mouth is twisted into a scowl ofgrief.Daniel’s heart, in a convulsion ofempathy, leaps, as ifto its own annihilation.
Inside Nelson’s tent, the sunlight, filtered through the nylon, is pale green.The unmoving air smells ofdirt, candy, and child.Nelson and Ruby sit on two beige bath towels that serve as the floor in Nelson’s hide- away.Between them is a Styrofoam cooler that Nelson uses as a recepta-cle for his playhouse provisions.The lid is offand he is showing Ruby his treasures one by one, some ofthem his, some ofthem appropriated.A bottle ofElmer’s glue, a manicure set in a leather case, a half-eaten PowerBar, an eyecup, a flashlight, several batteries, loose kitchen matches, a hand puppet ofsome kind ofAmerican Indian princess, a block ofbaking chocolate, and a gun, given to Hampton by his own father for the safety ofthe house, stored and then halfforgotten in the drawer ofhis night table, on hand in case a robber should enter the house, or some vicious white kids looking for a little racial adventure, a gun sneaked out ofthe house by Nelson several days ago, which has gone unmissed, a pistol that has seen its better days, the front sight chipped, the blacking on the trigger guard and the barrel peeling off, but with an aroma Nelson finds entrancing, narcotic, a mixture ofold steel and oil.
He picks it up, careful to keep the barrel pointed toward the ground, and bends his head ceremonially over it, breathes in the blunt, manly bou-quet, and then he lays the pistol in both his hands and holds it out there for Ruby to take her turn.
Hampton walks across the room and sits on the sofa Daniel has occupied.He covers his face with his hands, his feet move up and down as ifhe were walking.There is room on the sofa, but Daniel cannot sit there.Instead, he kneels in front ofHampton.Hampton uncovers his face, and tentatively, as ifhe and Daniel were creatures, different species, he offers his hand.And Daniel, upon taking it, and feeling the cool weight ofit, the simple skin and bone ofit, realizes in a grievous instant what he has at once known and prevented himself from knowing all along, the knowledge he has carried in his belly and denied:they are all ofthem ruined, Iris, Hampton, and himself, ruined.
“Oh, Hampton,”Daniel says.
Hampton looks away, a sheen ofdullness shrink-wrapped onto his eyes.“Da, da,”he says, barely audibly.
“I’m sorry,”Daniel says, knowing it cannot be understood.But maybe God is listening.“I’m so sorry.”
“Da.”
“Do you want anything? Something to drink or eat?Anything.Is there anything I can do?”
“Da.”Hampton turns further on the sofa, twisting his body, almost looking behind himself now.The fabric stretches between the buttons of his copper pajamas.His feet continue to pump up and down, his legs waggle, he is squirming like a child desperate to relieve himself.
The children have a gun.The gun is loaded.The safety is disengaged.
And when the gun fires the sound is so far removed from Daniel’s ex-pectations and so divorced from his experience oflife that at first he barely reacts to it.A truck’s backfire, a sonic boom.But Hampton re-sponds immediately.He leaps offthe sofa, runs across the living room to-ward the kitchen and the back door, and Daniel, awakened to reality by Hampton’s response, follows, and now he knows that what he has heard is a gunshot.
Hampton and then Scarecrow and then Daniel race across the backyard.Daniel is shouting now;he can’t really understand what has hap-pened.In the few seconds it takes to get from the back porch to the tent, Daniel has two thoughts.Only one shot was fired, is the first thought, and let it be Ruby who is unhurt, is the second.
Hampton, in his rush, has lost his slippers.Daniel, who must wait for Hampton to crawl in before he himself can enter the tent, shouts out Ruby’s name, but there is no answer, and then he calls for Nelson and is likewise met with silence.
Finally, Hampton is in the tent and Daniel follows, and the children are there, Ruby a frieze offear, Nelson cool,
