In front of him some children were playing statues. An out-of-town boy was flinging the others by one arm and then crying, “Hold!” so that they had to freeze there, and when he came to Janice Hammond, who was the littlest, he swung her around so hard that she spun halfway across the lawn and landed against Mrs. Hammond, who was heading over toward James. “Hold!” the boy said. Mrs. Hammond looked down at Janice, who was clutching her around the middle. She said, “Oh, Janice,” tiredly, and was about to pull away, but the other children stopped her. “No, Janice has got to stay that way,” said the out-of-town boy, and Mrs. Hammond seemed too tired to argue. She stood still, rising above Janice’s circled arms like the figure of someone passively drowning, and called out, “James, we’re ready with Aunt Hattie.”
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Over there. Standing up. We wanted her to sit but she says no, she’ll do it standing. Die with her boots on. She doesn’t like cameras.” She came to life suddenly and disentangled herself from Janice, ignoring the other children’s protests. “She’s fading,” she said. James looked over at Janice, surprised, and Mrs. Hammond caught his look and shook her head. “Aunt Hattie, I mean,” she said. “Just fading away.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said James. He gathered up his equipment and came after her. “She looked all right to me.”
“Well, she fades out and then in again.”
They circled a little group of women, all standing in identical positions with folded arms while they watched the children playing statues. “I don’t like doing this if she don’t want me to,” James called. “Some people just have an allergy to cameras.”
But Mrs. Hammond smiled brightly at him over her shoulder and kept walking. Out here on the grass the sun was still hot, and the back of Mrs. Hammond’s powdered neck glistened faintly. She had the same brittle little bones as her niece Maisie, only covered now with a solid layer of flesh. James looked away from her and shifted his equipment to the other shoulder. “Right here would be a good place,” he said. He hadn’t really looked around; he just wanted to stop and not do anything any more. The heaviness inside was weighing him down. He set the camera on its tripod and then leaned on it, with his chin propped on his hand, and Mrs. Hammond said, “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” James said.
“You look kind of tired.”
He straightened up and tucked his shirt in. There was Great-Aunt Hattie, only a few yards away now, being led gingerly by Mrs. Hammond. Aunt Hattie looked neither to the right nor to the left; she seemed to be pretending Mrs. Hammond wasn’t there. The closer they got to the camera, the farther away her eyes grew.
“Right here would be a good place,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Don’t you think so, James? In front of the roses?”
“Fine,” James said. He had started adjusting his camera and wasn’t really looking now. But when he raised his eyes again he saw that the old woman had been placed directly in front of a circular flower bed; she seemed to be rising from the middle of it, like an intricately sculptured garden decoration. James smiled. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I don’t think she should have those flowers behind her.”
“They’re so pretty, though,” Mrs. Hammond said sadly.
“Well. But I think she should have just grass behind her. You mind moving over, Miss Hattie?”
“I have just one thing to say,” Miss Hattie said suddenly.
“Ma’am?”
“Don’t push me. You can tell me where to go, but don’t push me around.”
“Oh, I won’t,” said James.
“The last time I had my picture taken—”
“I think he wants you to move over,” Mrs. Hammond said. “Could you step this way, dear?”
The aunt stepped stiffly, jerking her chin up. “I was saying, Connie,” she said, “the last man that took my picture was in need of an anatomy lesson. I told him so. He came right up to me and pushed my face sideways but my shoulders full-front, and my knees sideways but my feet full-front, so I swear, I felt like something on an Egyptian wall. You should have seen the photograph. Well, I don’t have to tell you how it looked. I said—”
“If I were you I’d let my beads show,” said Mrs. Hammond. “They’re such nice ones.”
“Well, just for that I won’t,” snapped Aunt Hattie. She raised her hands, heavy with old rings, and fumbled at the neck of her crepe dress until she had closed it high around her throat, hiding the beads from sight. “Now no one can see them,” she said, and Connie Hammond sighed and turned to James with her hands spread hopelessly.
“I try and I try,” she told him, and he looked up from fiddling with his camera and smiled.
“Why don’t you go on and see to the others,” he said, “and I’ll call you when I’m through. I bet you haven’t even had your ice cream yet.”
“No. No, I’ve been so busy. Well, I might for just a minute, maybe—” She trailed off across the yard, looking relieved, and the last part of her to fade away was her voice, which still flowed on and on.
“She’s putting on weight, don’t you think?” Aunt Hattie asked.
James had the camera ready now, but he was waiting because he wanted the picture to be just right. He bent down and cleared away a dandelion from one of the tripod legs, and then over his shoulder he called, “You comfortable like that? Don’t want to sit down?”
“No. I’ll stand.”
Connie Hammond wouldn’t like that, but James was glad. To him Aunt Hattie looked just right this way—standing against a background of bare grass, holding her shoulders high to hide the beads and jutting her chin out at him. She had terrified high school students for forty years that way, back when she taught Latin I. People still told tales about her. She had declined her nouns in a deafening roar and slammed her yardstick against her desk on the ending of every verb. While students could lead other teachers off their subjects just by asking how they’d met their husbands, Miss Hattie had only strayed from Latin once a year, at Christmastime, when she read aloud from a condensed version of Ben Hur. James could picture that. He wished he had her in a classroom right now, to photograph her the way she stood in his mind. But all he had was this wide lawn, and he would have to make do with that. He stood there, pressing a dandelion between his fingers and squinting across at her. “That’s right,” he told her. “That’s what I want.”
She shifted her feet a little. “How many prints you plan to make of this?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“How many copies.”
“Oh. As many as you want.”
“Well, I want none,” she said. “I’d like to request that you make the one picture asked of you and have that be that.”
“Oh, now.”
“Connie can have one, if she wants it so much. But that’s because I don’t like her. Nothing she could do would make me like her; I just constitutionally don’t. Danny can’t have one.”
“Danny who?” he asked. “Raise your chin a little, please.”
“Danny Hammond. Is there anyone in this world whose last name isn’t Hammond?” She raised her chin but went on talking; James leaned his elbow on his camera and waited. “Danny I put up with,” she said. “How long will they hide him away from me?”
“Danny Hammond? Why, I saw him only last—”
“You saw him. You saw him. But do you think I do? They rush him away the moment I come around; he looks back over his shoulder all bewildered. He’s only seven.”
“Could you turn more toward me?” asked James.
“They think he insulted me last Valentine’s Day.”
“Oh, I don’t think Danny would—”
“Made me a present. None of these easy-breaking things from the gift shop. Made me a ceramic saltshaker in school, and it was the exact shape of my head, with even the wrinkles painted in.”
“That’s nice,” said James.
“Do you know where the salt came out?”
“Well, no.”
>
“My nose. Ho, out my nose. Two little holes punched for nostrils, and out came the salt. Can you picture Connie’s face?”
James laughed. “I sure can,” he said.
“Well, of course she hadn’t seen the thing, prior to my unwrapping it. She thought it was a bobby-pin holder or something. She said, ‘Danny Hammond!’ and made a grab for it, but I was too quick for her. I meant to keep it; it’s not often I get such a personal present. But Connie rushed him off like I would eat him and there I sat, all alone with my saltshaker. No one to thank.”
“Maybe you could—”
“I still use it, though.”
“Ma’am?”
“The saltshaker. I use it daily.”
“Well, I would too,” said James.
“Then you see why he shouldn’t have my picture.”
That stumped him; he had to consider a minute. (If Miss Hattie Hammond was fading out, should he not just let it pass and agree with her?) But Miss Hattie seemed the same to him as ever, as sharp as a rock against the green of the lawn. “I don’t see what you mean,” he said.
“Ah well.”
“I don’t understand what pictures have got to do with it.”
“Not much,” she said. “But they’re photographing me because I’m old, you know. They think I’m dying. (I’m not.) They think they’ll have something to remember me by. But pictures are merely one way, Mr. Green. Should a person that I like have a picture of me?”
“I wouldn’t let it worry me,” said James. “I find no one ever looks at pictures anyway, once they get hold of them.”
“I don’t want Danny remembering just a picture. Remembering something flat and of one tone. What is ever all one way?”
“Well,” James said. He frowned down at his fingers, sticky now with dandelion milk. “Well, plenty of—”
“Photographs,” said Miss Hattie, “are the only thing. Don’t interrupt. Everything else is a mingling of things. Photographers don’t agree, of course. Why else would they take pictures? Press everything flat on little squares of paper—well, that’s all right. But not for people that you’d like to stay interested in you. Not for Danny Hammond.”
“Now, wait a minute,” said James, but Miss Hattie held up her hand.
“I already know,” she said. “I know photographers.”
James grinned and bent over his camera again. “As far as things that’re all one way,” he called, “I can name—”
“No. Not a thing, not a person, Mr. Green. Take your picture.”
He gave up. Through the frame of his viewfinder he saw her standing just the way he wanted her, old-fashioned-looking and symmetrical, with her hands across her stomach and her mouth tight. Her face was like a turtle’s face, long and droopy. It had the same hooded eyes and the same tenacious expression, as if she had lived for centuries and was certain of living much longer. Yet just in that instant, just as his hand tightened on the camera and his eyes relaxed at seeing the picture the way he had planned it, something else swam into his mind. He thought of Miss Hattie coughing, in the center of that family reunion—not defiant then but very soft and mumbling, telling them all she was sorry. He frowned and raised his head.
“Well?” said Miss Hattie.
“Nothing,” James said.
He bent down again, and sighted up the haughty old turtle-face before him and snapped the picture. For a minute he stayed in that position; then he straightened up. “I’m done,” he said.
“I should hope so.”
“I’ll get one copy made, for Mrs. Hammond.”
“I’m going in then. I’m tired.”
“All right,” he said. “Goodbye, Miss Hattie.”
“Goodbye.”
She nodded once, sharply, and turned to go, and James watched after her as long as she was in sight. Then he stared down at his camera. Just to his right Connie Hammond materialized—he caught a fold of lace out of the corner of his eye—but he didn’t look at her.
“Well, now!” Mrs. Hammond said brightly. She was out of breath and looked anxious. She came around in front of him and went to stand where Miss Hattie had stood, with her eyes intent on the ground, as if by tracking down the print of Miss Hattie’s Wedgies she could suddenly come to some understanding of her. “I’m sure it’ll come out good,” she called over her shoulder.
“Well.”
“What’s that?”
“Yes, I’m sure it will,” James said. He folded up his tripod and gathered the rest of his equipment together. “I’m leaving now,” he told her.
“Oh, are you?”
“I’ll have the pictures ready in a day or two.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Mrs. Hammond. But she was still staring at the ground and looking anxious; she didn’t turn around to say goodbye.
James’s pickup truck was parked on the road at the edge of the lawn. He circled around the children, being careful to stay clear of the ones playing statues. Their game was growing rougher now. Little Janice Hammond was frozen in the exact stance of a baseball pitcher, her right arm drawn back nearly out of joint, and even her face was frozen—she was grimacing wildly, showing an entire set of braces on her teeth. But she unfroze just as James passed her; she shook out her arms and smiled at him and he smiled back.
“I want to come out pretty in them pictures,” she said. “You see what you can do about it.”
“I’ll see.”
He placed the camera on the leather seat of the pickup and then went around to the driver’s side and climbed in. It was like an oven inside. First he started up the motor and then he rolled down his window, and while he was doing that he caught sight of Maisie Hammond. She was standing high up on the lawn, waving hard to him and smiling. He waved back. This time when the heavy feeling hit his stomach he didn’t shrug it off; he sat turning it over in his mind, letting the motor idle. As long as he sat there, Maisie went on waving. And when he had shifted into first and rolled on down to the bottom of the hill, he looked in the rear-view mirror and saw her still waving after him. He thought suddenly that she must be having two feelings at once—half one way and half another. Half angry at him, and half sorry because she had told him so. And now she had to keep on waving.
He looked down beside him at the camera, where Miss Hattie was so securely boxed now in her single stance. But the fields he drove through shimmered uncertainly in the sunlight; the road was misted with dust, and he was driving home now not knowing if he wanted to go there or not, not knowing for sure what he thought about anyone. All he could do was put the heavy feeling out of his mind, and let only the road and the fields alongside it occupy his thoughts.
4
That Sunday, Joan began thinking about Simon’s hair. She started out by saying, “Simon, tomorrow morning first thing I want to find you in that barber’s chair,” but Simon said, “Aw, Joan, I don’t want to go downtown.” Since that movie yesterday he had changed his mind about town; he hadn’t even asked to eat in a restaurant today, and Joan could see his point. Going downtown meant people murmuring over him and patting his head, asking Joan in whispers, “How is he taking it? Is his mother coming out of it?” while Simon stood right next to them, his chin tilted defiantly and his eyes on their faces. Little boys who were usually his friends circled him widely, looking back over their shoulders in curious, half-scared glances. They had never seen someone that close to funerals before, not someone their own age. When Simon and Joan were coming out of the movie theater a member of Mrs. Pike’s church had stopped smack in front of them and said to her friend, “Oh, that poor little boy!” Her voice had rung out clearly and hung in the air above them, making other people stop and stare while Simon pulled on Joan’s hand to rush her home. She could understand it if he had never went downtown again.
So instead of insisting, she said, “Well, all right. But we’ve got to cut your hair at home then. Today.”
“It’s not so long,” he said.
“Curls down over your ears.”
r /> “Well, we’ve got nothing to cut it with.”
“Scissors,” Joan reminded him. “Your mother’s sewing scissors. Anything.”
“Okay. Tomorrow, then,” said Simon. “Bright and early.”
“Tomorrow’s a tobacco day; I won’t be here. You know that.”
“Other boys have hair lots longer.”
“Orphans do,” said Joan. “Will you fetch the scissors?”
He slid off the couch, grumbling a little, and went for his mother’s sewing basket. It sat in one corner of the living room, gathering dust, odds and ends of other people’s clothing poking out of it every which-way. (Mrs. Pike was a seamstress; she made clothes for most of the women in Larksville.) The materials on the top Simon threw to the floor, making a huge untidy pile beside the basket, and he rummaged along the bottom until he brought up a large pair of scissors. “These them?” he asked, and walked away from the basket with that heap of material still lying beside it. Joan let the mess stay there. She followed Simon into the kitchen, a few steps behind him, with her eyes on the back of his head. Where it had been pressed against the couch his hair was as matted as a bird’s nest. It would take a sickle to cut all that off.
In the kitchen she found an apron and tied it around his neck, to keep the hair from tickling, and then she had him sit on the high wooden stool beside the kitchen table. He revolved on it slowly, making the seat of it squeak, while Joan looked him over and debated where to start. “I don’t know where you got all that hair,” she told him. “When was the last time you went to the barber’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“It couldn’t have been all that long ago.”
“You sure you know how to cut hair?” Simon asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Whose have you cut?”
“Well, my own,” Joan said.
He stopped revolving and looked at her hairdo. “It’s a little choppy at the ends,” he told her.
“It’s supposed to be.”