Dance of the Happy Shades

will see what he can do to work it in.
    I notice in a little while that we are not turning in any more lanes, though it does not seem to me that we are headed home. “Is this the way to Sunshine?” I ask my father, and he answers, “No ma’am it’s not.” “Are we still in your territory?” He shakes his head. “We’re going fast,” my brother says approvingly, and in fact we are bouncing along through dry puddle-holes so that all the bottles in the suitcases clink together and gurgle promisingly.
    Another lane, a house, also unpainted, dried to silver in the sun.
    “I thought we were out of your territory.”
    “We are.”
    “Then what are we going in here for?”
    “You’ll see.”
    In front of the house a short, sturdy woman is picking up washing, which had been spread on the grass to bleach and dry. When the car stops she stares at it hard for a moment, bends to pick up a couple more towels to add to the bundle under her arm, comes across to us and says in a flat voice, neither welcoming nor unfriendly, “Have you lost your way?”
    My father takes his time getting out of the car. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I’m the Walker Brothers man.”
    “George Golley is our Walker Brothers man,” the woman says, “and he was out here no more than a week ago. Oh, my Lord God,” she says harshly, “it’s you.”
    “It was, the last time I looked in the mirror,” my father says. The woman gathers all the towels in front of her and holds on to them tightly, pushing them against her stomach as if it hurt.“Of all the people I never thought to see. And telling me you were the Walker Brothers man.”
    “I’m sorry if you were looking forward to George Golley,” my father says humbly.
    “And look at me, I was prepared to clean the hen-house. You’ll think that’s just an excuse but it’s true. I don’t go round looking like this every day.” She is wearing a farmer’s straw hat, through which pricks of sunlight penetrate and float on her face, a loose, dirty print smock and running shoes. “Who are those in the car, Ben? They’re not yours?”
    “Well I hope and believe they are,” my father says, and tells our names and ages. “Come on, you can get out. This is Nora, Miss Cronin. Nora, you better tell me, is it still Miss, or have you got a husband hiding in the woodshed?”
    “If I had a husband that’s not where I’d keep him, Ben,” she says, and they both laugh, her laugh abrupt and somewhat angry. “You’ll think I got no manners, as well as being dressed like a tramp,” she says. “Come on in out of the sun. It’s cool in the house.”
    We go across the yard (“Excuse me taking you in this way but I don’t think the front door has been opened since Papa’s funeral, I’m afraid the hinges might drop off”), up the porch steps, into the kitchen, which really is cool, high-ceilinged, the blinds of course down, a simple, clean, threadbare room with waxed worn linoleum, potted geraniums, drinking-pail and dipper, a round table with scrubbed oilcloth. In spite of the cleanness, the wiped and swept surfaces, there is a faint sour smell—maybe of the dishrag or the tin dipper or the oilcloth, or the old lady, because there is one, sitting in an easy chair under the clock shelf. She turns her head slightly in our direction and says, “Nora? Is that company?”
    “Blind,” says Nora in a quick explaining voice to my father. Then, “You won’t guess who it is, Momma. Hear his voice.”
    My father goes to the front of her chair and bends and says hopefully, “Afternoon, Mrs. Cronin.”
    “Ben Jordan,” says the old lady with no surprise. “You haven’t been to see us in the longest time. Have you been out of the country?”
    My father and Nora look at each other.
    “He’s married, Momma,” says Nora cheerfully and aggressively. “Married and got two children and here they are.” She pulls us forward, makes each of us touch the old lady’s dry, cool hand while she says our names in turn. Blind! This is the first blind person I have ever seen close up. Her eyes are closed, the eyelids sunk away down, showing no shape of the eyeball, just hollows. From one hollow comes a drop of silver liquid, a medicine, or a miraculous tear.
    “Let me get into a decent dress,” Nora says. “Talk to Momma. It’s a treat for her. We hardly ever see company, do we Momma?”
    “Not many makes it out this road,” says the old lady placidly. “And the ones that used to