Jane nodded. “It’s all right if they want it. But no one asked me what I wanted. Pa, everyone else, just expected me to do a certain thing because that’s what they thought life was. I don’t need some obligation to hold me down. What I need is a choice that isn’t already made for me. What I need is to go out and see if the world is flat, round, or some kind of triangle. I need to feel I’ve seen something and done something that isn’t the same thing everyone else has seen or done.”
We sat and listened to crickets for a while. I turned over in my head what she had been saying. It was more than I could get hold of.
I looked up, smiled at her. “Say, where is that toilet paper, anyway?”
“I left it in the pig truck,” she said. “I figured he ought to have something for his troubles.”
“It isn’t much,” I said, “but it was nice of you.”
“Actually, I just forgot it.”
We sat for a little while without talking. Finally I said, “Do you really want to try and find Strangler?”
“We need a mission,” Jane said. “A goal. Like Sir Galahad. He went searching for the Holy Grail. Strangler will be our grail. The quest will teach us who we are.”
“You have to teach someone that?” I asked.
“I think you do,” Jane said. “And through the process of the quest, we learn what we’re looking for. The quest is everything.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I reckon we’ll know it when we find it.”
“What’s a quest, by the way?”
“Same as a mission. Same as a goal.”
“Then why not say goal or mission?”
“Because it gives it weight to call it a quest,” she said. “It gives it true purpose and meaning. It just sounds better.”
“What about Tony? Maybe he don’t want a mission. Maybe he wants to be like everyone else.”
“I don’t know about Tony. He’s just a kid. I practically raised him. What with Mama running off with that Bible salesman—which, by the way, put me off church forever—and our pa not really caring if we was loved, just doing what he thought was responsible because it’s what was responsible, I’ve been pretty much all the mother and father Tony’s had.”
“Being responsible isn’t all bad,” I said.
“Not all bad. But it sure means a lot more when you do it because you love somebody, and not because you think you’re supposed to and the church wants you to, or your neighbors, or whoever. I just wanted to be loved like any daughter. And Tony ought to have been loved like any son. Not just loved by his big sister. You got some of that kind of feeling, Jack. I can tell. Your pa may have lost his place when your mama died, but he loved you. Mine didn’t. Me and Tony was the same as property. We might as well have been middlebusters and cultivators for all the love Pa gave us.”
“I don’t know I had it so good,” I said. “Daddy wrote me a suicide note.”
“What did it say?”
I told her.
“There you go. At least there was an apology involved.”
She leaned over close to me and said, “Look here.”
I turned and she leaned forward and kissed me. I liked it.
We did it again.
When I pulled back that time, I hardly had any breath.
I leaned forward for one more. Jane said, “No. That’s enough. Don’t make more of it than what it was. A kiss between friends.”
“It was mighty friendly,” I said. I moved toward her again, but she put a hand on my chest and gently pushed me back.
“Wouldn’t do us any good if Mrs. Carson saw me kissing my brother, now, would it?”
“I ain’t your brother,” I said.
“Yeah, but Mrs. Carson don’t know that. That story I told earlier, I figure they’ve already got us pegged as a pretty odd family, so we don’t want to put fuel on the fire, now, do we?”
23
Mrs. Carson’s house was big. She had a room for me and Tony to share, and she gave Jane her own. After we went to bed, Jane slipped into our room. We still had the electric light on, which, come to think of it, was the only kind of lights Mrs. Carson had. At home we had some electricity, but with the sandstorms blowing down wires, we mostly used kerosene and candles.
The bed was nice and there was no dust anywhere. The house had the best-sealed windows I had ever seen.
All I knew was it kept out the dust.
I thought that this wouldn’t be such a bad place to stay, and we really were orphans, and maybe those church people Mrs. Carson talked about could help us out.
Anyway, Jane came in and said, “Mrs. Carson wants to see us all.”
We went into the kitchen, where Mrs. Carson sat looking clean and nice under the electric light over the kitchen table. She had a trim face, and the bones stood up high in her cheeks and her eyes were bright, like she was always surprised about something. I guess she was older than Mama by some years, but she didn’t look worn out the way Mama had. Mrs. Carson was soft and smooth-looking, and when she moved, you couldn’t take your eyes off her. She had a manner about her that was like some kind of strange but beautiful bird. She fit perfectly in her beautiful house.
The light over the table didn’t have a pull cord, like I was used to. None of the lights in the house had that. They all had switches. The light over the table was a big chandelier with lots of bulbs, and it made quite a glow. It was almost like being out in the yard at high noon. The walls were bright with paint and the floors were shiny with polish, and there wasn’t any sand in the corners or up in the curtains. Right then, at that moment, it was the perfect place to be.
Mrs. Carson smiled at us as we came in and asked us to sit at the table. When we were all seated, she said, “That story you told me earlier. I just want you to know I didn’t believe a word of it. Not literally, anyway. But I do believe you kids are in trouble, and anyone that would make up a whopper like that is either a con person or someone who needs help. I decided you were the latter, though, girl, you have a bit of the former in you.”
“Why, thank you,” Jane said, as if it was a compliment.
“I wasn’t always well off,” Mrs. Carson said. “My husband and I had some good fortune. Now he’s gone. I try to help others when I can.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Jane said.
“That’s all right,” Mrs. Carson said, “but you must never do it again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said.
“The part about the dog was especially precious, dear,” Mrs. Carson said. “But you must not butter up your stories so. It makes them too slippery to handle. And Jack here, I doubt that happened to him … what you said happened.”
“No, ma’am, and he isn’t my brother either.”
“I didn’t think so. You don’t look anything alike. But Tony here, he’s your brother, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said.
“What I want to tell you is this. If you want to stay, you can stay. I’ll do what I can. I’m all alone, and I don’t have any family. I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“I don’t think we can,” I said. “Jane and I have someone we want to help.”
“Help?” Mrs. Carson said.
“It’s a long story,” I said, not wanting to tell her the truth, because it sounded almost as crazy as the story Jane had made up. “There isn’t much to it. We just want to do right by someone.”
“I hope that’s the truth,” Mrs. Carson said.
