Other Voices, Other Rooms Read Online Free

before: a frightened, guilty expression. In answering the letter she’d asked assurance that, should Joel find himself discontented, he would be at once allowed to return; a guarantee his education would be cared for; a promise he could spend Christmas holidays with her. But Joel could sense how relieved she was when, following a long correspondence, Major Knox’s old honeymoon suitcase was dragged down from the attic.
    He was glad to go. He could not think why, nor did he bother wondering, but his father’s more or less incredible appearance on a scene strangely deserted twelve years before didn’t strike him as in the least extraordinary, inasmuch as he’d counted on some such happening all along. The miracle he’d planned, however, was in the nature of a kind old rich lady who, having glimpsed him on a street-corner, immediately dispatched an envelope stuffed with thousand-dollar bills; or a similar God-like action on the part of some goodhearted stranger. And this stranger, as it turned out, was his father, which to his mind was simply a wonderful piece of luck.
    But afterwards, as he lay in a scaling iron bed above the Morning Star Café, dizzy with heat and loss and despair, a different picture of his father and of his situation asserted itself: he did not know what to expect, and he was afraid, for already there were so many disappointments. A panama hat, newly bought in New Orleans and worn with dashing pride, had been stolen in the train depot in Biloxi; then the Paradise Chapel bus had run three hot, sweaty hours behind schedule; and finally, topping everything, there had been no word from Skully’s Landing waiting at the café. All Thursday night he’d left the electric light burning in the strange room, and read a movie magazine till he knew the latest doings of the Hollywood stars by heart, for if he let his attention turn inward even a second he would begin to tremble, and the mean tears would not stay back. Toward dawn he’d taken the magazine and torn it to shreds and burned the pieces in an ashtray one by one till it was time to go downstairs.
    “Reach behind and hand me a match, will you, boy?” said Radclif. “Back there on the shelf, see?”
    Joel opened his eyes and looked about him dazedly. A perfect tear of sweat was balanced on the tip of his nose. “You certainly have a lot of junk,” he said, probing around the shelf, which was littered with a collection of yellowed newspapers, a slashed inner tube, greasy tools, an air pump, a flashlight and . . . a pistol. Alongside the pistol was an open carton of ammunition; bullets the bright copper of fresh pennies. He was tempted to take a whole handful, but ended by artfully dropping just one into his breast pocket. “Here they are.”
    Radclif popped a cigarette between his lips, and Joel, without being asked, struck a match for him.
    “Thanks,” said Radclif, a huge drag of smoke creeping out his nostrils. “Say, ever been in this part of the country before?”
    “Not exactly, but my mother took me to Gulfport once, and that was nice because of the sea. We passed through there yesterday on the train.”
    “Like it round here?”
    Joel imagined a queerness in the driver’s tone. He studied Radclif ’s blunt profile, wondering if perhaps the theft had been noticed. If so, Radclif gave no sign. “Well, it’s . . . you know, different.”
    “Course I don’t see any difference. Lived hereabouts all my life, and it looks like everywhere else to me, ha ha!”
    The truck hit suddenly a stretch of wide, hard road, un-bordered by tree-shade, though a black skirt of distant pines darkened the rim of a great field that lay to the left. A far-off figure, whether man or woman you could not tell, rested from hoeing to wave, and Joel waved back. Farther on, two little white-haired boys astride a scrawny mule shouted their delight when the truck passed, burying them in a screen of dust. Radclif honked and honked the horn at a tribe of hogs that took