The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [328]
It's strange to think that since then I've gone to live in one of those picture cities. If I asked him something about what was in there, he never told me more than a name, never saw fit. (I couldn't read then.) We passed each other those sand-pink cities and passionate fountains, the waterfall that rocks snuffed out like a light, islands in the sea, red Pyramids, sleeping towers, checkered pavements on which strollers had come out, with shadows that seemed to steal further each time, as if the strollers had moved, and where the statues had rainbow edges; volcanoes; the Sphinx, and Constantinople; and again the Lakes, like starry fields—brought forward each time so close that it seemed to me the tracings from the beautiful face of a strange coin were being laid against my brain. Yet there were things too that I couldn't see, which could make Uncle Felix pucker his lips as for a kiss.
"Now! Dicey! I want you to tell me how I look!"
Sister Anne had opened the door, to a flash from the front. A low growl filled the room.
"You look mighty dressed up," said Kate for me.
Sister Anne had put on a hat—a hat from no telling where, what visit, what year, but it had been swashbuckling. It was a sort of pirate hat—black, of course.
"Thank you. Oh! Everything comes at once if it comes at all!" she said, looking piratically from one to the other of us. "So you can't turn around fast enough! You come on Mr. Dolollie's day! Now what will I do for Sunday!"
Under that, I heard an inching, delicate sound. Uncle Felix had pulled loose the leaf of the book he had labored over. Now he let me go, and took both swollen fists and over the lump of his body properly folded his page. He nudged it into my tingling hand.
"He'll keep you busy!" said Sister Anne nodding. "That table looks ready to go to market!" Her eyes were so bright, she was in such a state of excitement and pride and suspense that she seemed to lose for the moment all ties with us or the house or any remembrance of where anything was and what it was for. The next minute, with one blunder of her hatbrim against the door, she was gone.
I had slipped the torn page from the book, still folded, into my pocket, working it down through the starch-stuck dimity. Now I leaned down and kissed Uncle Felix's long unshaven, unbathed cheek. He didn't look at me—Kate stared, I felt it—but in a moment his eyes pinched shut.
Kate turned her back and looked out the window. The scent was burrowing into the roses, their heads hung. Out there was the pasture. The small, velvety cows had come up to the far fence and were standing there looking toward the house. They were little, low, black cows, soot-black, with their calves among them, in a green that seemed something to drink from more than something to eat.
Kate groaned under her breath, "I don't care, I've got to see her do it."
"She's doing it now," I said.
We stood on either side of the bed. Again Uncle Felix's head poked forward and held still, the western light full and late on him now.
"Never mind, Uncle Felix. Listen to me, I'll be back," Kate said. "It's nothing—it's all nothing—"
I felt that I had just showed off a good deal in some way. She bent down, hands on knees, but his face did not consult either of us again, although his eyes had opened. Tiptoeing modestly, we left him by himself. In his bleached gown he looked like the story-book picture of the Big Bear, the old white one with star children on his back and more star children following, in triangle dresses, starting down the Milky Way.
We saw Sister Anne at the table signing the book. We hid in the front bedroom before she saw us.
The overflow from outside was sitting in here. Thick around the room, on the rocking chair, on parlor chairs and the murmurous cane chairs from the dining room, our visitors were visiting. A few were standing or sitting at the windows to talk, and leaning against the mantel. The four-poster