The Tin Can Tree

3

'Hold still,' James said.

He bent over and peered through the camera; No one was holding still. Line upon line of Hammonds, from every corner of the state, littered the Hammonds' front lawn, sitting, kneeling, and standing, letting arms and legs and bits of dresses trail outside the frame of his camera. Whole babies were being omitted; they had crawled to other patches of grass. Yet the grown-ups stood there with their dusty blue, look-alike eyes smiling happily, certain that they and their children were being saved intact for future generations. James straightened up and shook his head.

'Nope,' he said. 'You've moved every which-away again. Close in tighter, now.'

He waited patiently, with his hands on his hips. For five years he had been going through this. Every year there was a picture of the Hammond family reunion to be put in the Larksville paper, and another two or three for the Hammonds themselves to choose for their albums. By now he was resigned to it; he had even started enjoying himself. He smiled, watching all those hordes of Hammonds close in obligingly with sideways steps while their eyes stayed fixed on the camera. Moving like that made them look like chains of paper dolls, bright and shimmering in the heat. Eyelet dresses and seersucker suits blurred together; their whiteness was blinding. James shaded his eyes with one hand, and then he said, 'Okay,' and bent down over his camera again. But someone else was moving. It was Great-Aunt Hattie in the front row; she had started coughing. She was sitting in a cane-bottom chair, with children and animals tangled at her feet and the grown-ups forming a protective wall behind her. When she began her coughing fit, they closed in still tighter in a semicircle and the oldest nephew leaned down with his head next to hers. The coughs grew farther apart. After a minute the nephew raised his head and said, 'She's sorry, she says.' The others murmured behind him, saying it didn't matter. 'Swallowed down the wrong throat,' said the nephew.

Someone called out, 'Give her brown bread.' And someone else said, 'No, rock candy will do it.' But the aunt spread her old hands out in front of her, palms down and fingers stretched apart, signifying she was better now and wanted to hear no more about it. 'Back in your places,' James said, and the twenty or thirty Hammonds closest to him drifted back to their original positions and made their faces stern again. Mothers looked anxiously down the rows, gripping their neighbours' arms and peering around them to make sure their children were at their best, and fathers hooked their thumbs into their belts and glared into the lens. 'Hold it,' James said. When he snapped the picture there was a little stirring through the group, and everyone relaxed. 'That's the second,' he called to the hostess. 'You want another?'

'One more, James.'

While he was fiddling with the camera people began talking again, still standing in their set places, and some lit cigarettes. He peered through the view-finder at them. If this were any other picture he would snap it now, catching them at their ease, but family pictures were different. He liked the way they stood so straight in jumbled, self-conscious rows, and molded themselves to make a block of tensed-up faces. Tm ready,' he warned them, and they did it again – closed their mouths and narrowed their eyes and set their shoulders. He snapped the picture that way. Then he said, 'That's all,' and watched the children as they shook themselves and scattered off to play.

The hostess walked up to him, trailing white lace, sinking into the ground at every step in her high-heeled pumps. 'There's one more I want, James,' she said, and then stopped and let her eyes wander after her youngest child. 'Joey, you know not to ride that dog,' she called.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I want you to photograph Great-Aunt Hattie alone,' she told James. 'She's getting old. Can you do that?'

'If she's willing,' said James.

'She's not.'

'Then maybe we should -'

'Now, don't you worry, 'said Mrs Hammond. _I_ll talk her around. They're serving up the ice cream over there. You go and get you some, and when you're through I'll have Aunt Hattie ready. Hear?'

'Well, okay,' James said. 'But Mrs Hammond hadn't stayed to hear his answer.

He folded his equipment up and put it on the porch, out of the way of the children. Then he went across the yard to the driveway, where the others were standing in line for ice cream. They looked different now, quick-moving and flexible, with the paper-doll stiffness gone. In a way James was sorry. Some of the best pictures he had were these poker-straight rows of families, Hammonds and Ballews and Burnetts; he kept copies of them filed away in his darkroom, and sometimes on long lonesome days he pulled them out and looked at them a while, with a sort of faraway sadness coming up in him if he looked too long. He might have seen any one of those families only that morning in the hardware store, but when he looked at their faces in pictures they seemed lost and long ago. ('I just wish once you'd take a giggly picture,' Ansel said. 'You make me so sorrowful.') Thinking about that made James smile, and the girl in front of him turned around and looked up at him.

'I'm thinking,' he told her.

"That's what it looked like,' she said. Her name was Maisie Hammond, and she lived across town from here and sometimes came visiting Ansel. She thought Ansel was wonderful. James was just considering this when she said, 'How's that brother of yours?' and he smiled at her.

'Just fine,' he said. 'He's home reading magazines.'

'Well, say hello to him.' She moved up a space in line, still facing in James's direction and walking backwards. Standing out in the sunlight like this she was pretty, with her towhead shining and her white skin nearly transparent, but Ansel had always said she was homely and only out to catch a good husband (it was rumoured James and Ansel came from an old family). Whenever she came visiting, Ansel turned his face to the wall and played sicker than he was. That was how he planned to scare her off, but Maisie only stayed longer then and fussed around his couch. She liked taking care of people. She would fetch pillows and ice-water, and Ansel would wave them away. When she was gone, James would say, 'Ansel, what you want to treat her like that for?' But by that time Ansel had fooled even himself, and only tossed his head on the pillow and worried about how faint he felt. To make it up to Maisie now (although she wasn't aware there was anything to be made up), James stepped closer to her in the line and said, 'Maisie, it's been a good two weeks since you've been by.'

'Two days,' said Maisie. 'Day before yesterday I was there.'

'I never heard about it.'

'You were off somewhere. Taking care of some arrangements for the Pikes.'

The man ahead of her left with his Dixie cup of ice cream, and Maisie turned forward again and took two cups from the stack on the table. 'Here,' she said. She passed him a fudge ripple, with a little paper spoon lying across the top of it. 'The children got to the strawberry before us.'

'That's all right,' said James. 'I don't like strawberry.'

He followed her back across the lawn, preferring to stick with her rather than interrupt the little individual reunions that were going on among the others. When she settled on the porch steps, fluffing her skirt out around her, he said, 'You mind if I sit with you?' She shook her head, intent on opening her ice cream. 'I'm going to take a picture of your great-aunt,' he said.

'Oh, her.'

'Do you like sitting out in the sun like this?'

'Yes,' she said. But she looked hot; she was too thin and bird-boned, and being the slightest bit uncomfortable made her seem about to topple over. James was used to Joan, who was unbreakable and built of solid flesh.

When he had pried the lid off his own ice cream, and dipped into it with his paper spoon, he said, 'It's sort of melty-looking.' Maisie didn't answer. She was staring off across the yard. 'Better eat yours before it turns to milk,' he told her.

But Maisie said, 'Ansel was laying down, when I went to see him.'

'He does that,' said James.

'I mean laying still. Not doing anything.'

'Well, it was nice of you to come,' he said.

She shrugged impatiently, as if he hadn't understood her. 'You were out doing something,' she told him. She seemed to be starting all over again now, telling the story a second time. 'You weren't around.'

'I was helping Mr Pike with some arrangements,' said James.

'That's what Ansel said.'

'I'm sorry I wasn't around.'

'Well. When I came in I said, "Hey, Ansel," and Ansel didn't even hear me. He was just laying there. I said, "Hey!" and he jumped a foot, near about. He was a million miles away.'

James was making soup out of his ice cream. He had it down to a sort of pulpy mess now, the way he liked it, and then he looked up and saw Maisie wrinkling her nose at it. He stopped stirring and took his first bite. 'Ansel's a great one for day-dreaming,' he said with his mouth full.

'He wasn't daydreaming.'

'Oh.'

'He was crying, near about.'

'Ansel?'

'Well, almost,' said Maisie. She sat forward, with the ice cream still untasted in her hand. 'I said, "Ansel, what's the matter?" But he never did say. His eyes were all blurry.'

'You got to remember Janie Rose,' James said. 'It was only three days ago.'

'Well, I thought of that. But then I thought, no, Janie wasn't all that much to him. She was right bothersome, as a matter of fact. We had her over for supper just a month ago, her and her family; we gave them chicken. Mama forgot about Janie being vegetarian. Janie said, "This chicken's dead," and her daddy said. "Well, I hope so," and everybody laughed, but Mama's feelings were a little hurt. Though she went to the funeral and all, just like anyone else. I said, "Ansel, is that what's bothering you? Janie Rose Pike being taken?" But the way he was acting, I don't think that was the real reason.'

'His feet hurt him sometimes,' said James.

'This is serious, James.'

'I'm being serious.'

'Anyway,' Maisie sighed, and she took the first mouthful of her ice cream. It bothered him,-the way she ate it; she chewed, slowly and carefully, even though the ice cream was nothing but liquid now. When she had swallowed, she said, 'All he would talk about was dying. He said he could see how it would all turn out; they would mourn him like they mourn Janie Rose, not sad he died but sorry they hadn't liked him more. He'd rather they be sad he died, he said.'

'Oh, now,' said James. 'He's been on that for days. It'll pass.'

'Will you listen? I can't hardly sleep nights, for thinking about it. I keep wondering if he's all right.'

'Of course he's all right,' James said.

But Maisie was still hunching over, frowning into space. Her ice cream was forgotten. A child ran by, chased by another child, grabbing Maisie's knee for support as he pivoted past her, and Maisie only brushed his hand away absent-mindedly. 'Those times he goes away,' she said finally, 'those times he starts to get better and then goes off drinking for a night and can't be found till morning. He'll die of it.'

'He won't die,' said James. 'He could lead a life like any other man, if he wasn't so scared of needles.'

'He might die,' Maisie said. 'What if one of those nights of his, he don't come back?'

But James was getting tired of this. 'Look,' he said firmly. He swallowed the last of his ice cream and said, 'Ansel only goes so far, you notice. Only enough to worry people. You ever thought of that?'

'What? Well, if that isn't the coldest thing. How do you know how far he'll go?'

'I just do,' James said. 'I been through this.'

'Can you say for sure how far he'll go?'

'I been through it hundreds of times.'

'I believe you don't even give it a thought,' said Maisie. 'That's what Ansel said. 'He said, "What does James care -'

'Well, we've got to be clearheaded about this,' James said.

'You're clearheaded, all right.' She jabbed her spoon into her ice cream and left it there, standing straight up in the middle of the cup.' "What does James care," he said, and then just lay there with his eyes all blurry -'

'I do everything I can think of,' said James.

'Oh, foot.'

'I try everything I know.'

'Then tell me this, if you do so much all-fired good. Can you say that never, never once in all your life, have you thought about Ansel's going off and letting you be someday?'

'Well, for-'

'Never thought how nice it would be to live on your own for a change, just one little old TV dinner to pop into the -'

'I try everything I know!' James shouted, and then noticed how loud his voice was and lowered it. 'I mean -'

But Maisie just folded in the rim of her Dixie cup with all her concentration, as if her mind was made up. Then she rose and said, 'Well, I'll be seeing you.' Her skirt was rumpled in back, but she didn't bother smoothing it down. When she walked away James stood up, from force of habit, and waited until she was halfway across the yard before he sat down again. Inside he felt slow and heavy; he was chewing on his lower lip, the way he did when he didn't know what to say. All the way across the yard he watched her, and turned his empty ice cream cup around and around in his hands.

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 of 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 mild. '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 view-finder 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 centre 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.