Cry of Angels

39

39 THE DAY WORK BEGAN ON THE DANIELS HOUSE, A LITTLE FARTHER up the slope to the right of the other two, more onlookers drifted up from the Ape Yard. Neighbors came to watch, to roam through the curious structures and tease Willie Daniels and his mother about the prospects of living in such a bizarre house. "Where's the door, Sarah?" one asked Willie's mother. "This it here?" "Mist' Jayell don't build no doors," said another, "you got to climb in and out the winders." "One thing sho', nobody gon' break in on you, Sarah, less'n they come down the chimbley." A stocking-capped woman clapped her hands. "Hit ain't got no chimbley neither!" Children climbed through the bright colors and strange geometric shapes, uncertain at first, as though finding themselves in some fantastic world of adult play-houses, disturbed, as children are when adults do outrageous, childlike things. It was a storybook world that 329 A C R Y O F A N G E L S had no relation to the drab, gray existence of the hollow. But in that environment, spurred by the excitement of the boarders and the bustling energy of the shop boys, old crusts of behavior began to fall away, for both the children and the adults. They began to relax and enjoy it too. They wandered about, touching, marveling, laughing at the antics of Jayell as he sprang from house to house, trying to be everywhere at once, absorbed in one of his all-consuming fevers of creation. They drifted down the mountain and brought back other folks to watch, and at sundown men just getting off work came to see. They were still coming in ones and twos when we finally knocked off for the day. That night Em Jojohn was even more worried. He didn't like the idea of building the Daniels house. "There's a pot boilin' down there," he said, pointing to the hollow, "and now we done stuck our hand in it." Again he talked about leaving. He got out his canvas traveling bag. "Em, you're talkin' foolishness! Here things are just startin' to look up for us, and you're wantin' to run off and leave it. That house is going to belong to us just as much as it is the boarders, can't you understand that? For the first time we won't be living off somebody else, we'll have our own place!" "Well, damn, you sound like you're gettin' ready to retire! I don't know what . . . there's the old folks up there jumpin' aroun' like kids, and you're talkin' like an old man. The whole damn place is goin' crazy!" And he grew increasingly uneasy during the next two days as more and more people climbed the hogback hills, and the carnival atmosphere increased. He worked methodically, saying little to anyone , snapped back at Jayell's orders and cursed the visitors in his way, and he became even surlier at night. On Friday morning he was reluctant to leave the loft. He fidgeted. He stalled. He didn't feel well. The damned mountain rocks had scratched up his boots. He couldn't find his sock. He fooled around until we missed the boarders' bus, and breakfast, and then yelled, "Well, go on, if you're in such a damned hurry, I'll come on later!" I ran down to the shop and caught Jayell as he was finishing up his instructions to Skeeter and Jackie and the boys there, and rode with him and Phaedra to the job. 330 B O O K T H R E E When we drove up to the jobsite Jayell took one look and said, "Holy Christ!" The place was jammed with people. More than a hundred of them stood in the trees. When Jayell stopped, Speck Turner came through the crowd. "Mornin', Jayell." "Speck, what the hell's goin' on here?" "Sure some purty houses you got here," the plumber said with a grin. "Yeah, yeah, what's this all about?" "Well, we come to talk a little bi'ness. See, me and Loomis and Simon there all gettin' put off in them little shell things up the hollow, and—well, we figured maybe we could work a little deal and get you to build us houses up here like you doin' for...