Other Voices, Other Rooms Read Online Free PDF

his cheek a painful pinch. “Say now, what can Miss Roberta do for this cute-lookin fella?”
    Joel was overwhelmed. “A cold beer,” he blurted, deafly ignoring the titter of giggles and guffaws that sounded in the background.
    “Can’t serve no beer to minors, babylove, even if you are a mighty cute-lookin fella. Now what you want is a nice NEHI grapepop,” said the woman, lumbering away.
    The giggles swelled to honest laughter, and Joel’s ears turned a humiliated pink. He wondered if the woman was a lunatic. And his eyes scanned the sour-smelling room as if it were a madhouse. There were calendar portraits of toothy bathing beauties on the walls, and a framed certificate which said: This is to certify that Roberta Velma Lacey won Grand Prize in Lying at the annual Double Branches Dog Days Frolic. Hanging from the low ceiling were several poisonous streamers of strategically arranged flypaper, and a couple of naked lightbulbs that were ornamented with shredded ribbons of green-and-red crepe paper. A water pitcher filled with branches of towering pink dogwood sat on the counter.
    “Here y’are,” said the woman, plunking down a dripping wet bottle of purple sodapop. “I declare, little one, you sure are hot and dusty-lookin.” She gave his head a merry pat. “Know somethin, you must be the boy Sam Radclif brung to town, say?”
    Joel admitted this with a nod. He took a swallow of the drink, and it was lukewarm. “I want . . . that is, do you know how far it is from here to Skully’s Landing?” he said, realizing every ear in the place was tuned to him.
    “Ummm,” the woman tinkered with her wart, and walled her eyes up into her head till they all but disappeared. “Hey, Romeo, how far you spec it is out to The Skulls,” she said, and grinned crazily. “I call it The Skulls on accounta . . .” but she did not finish, for at that moment the Negro boy of whom she’d asked the information, answered: “Two miles, more like three, maybe, ma’am.”
    “Three miles,” she parroted. “But if I was you, babylove, I wouldn’t go traipsin over there.”
    “Me neither,” whined a yellow-haired girl.
    “Is there anyway I could get a ride out?”
    Somebody said, “Ain’t Jesus Fever in town?”
    Yeah, I saw Jesus—Jesus, he parked round by the Livery—What? Y’all mean old Jesus Fever? Christamighty, I thought he was way gone and buried!—Nah, man. He’s past a hundred but alive as you are.—Sure, I seen Jesus— Yeah, Jesus is here . . .
    The woman grabbed a flyswatter and slammed it down with savage force. “Shut up that gab. I can’t hear a thing this boy says.”
    Joel felt a little surge of pride, tinged with fright, at being the center of such a commotion. The woman fixed her zany eyes on a point somewhere above his head, and said: “What business you got with The Skulls, babylove?”
    Now this again! He sketched the story briefly, omitting all except the simplest events, even to excluding a mention of the letters. He was trying to locate his father, that was the long and short of it. Could she help him?
    Well, she didn’t know. She stood silent for some time, toying with her wart and staring off into space. “Hey, Romeo,” she said finally, “you say Jesus Fever’s in town?”
    “Yes’m.” The boy she called Romeo was colored, and wore a puffy, stained chef ’s cap. He was stacking dishes in a sink behind the counter.
    “Come here, Romeo,” she said, beckoning, “I got something to discuss.” Romeo joined her promptly in a rear corner. She began whispering excitedly, glancing over her shoulder now and then at Joel, who could not hear what they were saying. It was quiet in the room, and everyone was looking at him. He took out the bullet thefted from Sam Radclif and rolled it nervously in his hands.
    Suddenly the door swung open. The skinny girl with fiery, chopped-off red hair swaggered inside, and stopped dead still, her hands cocked on her hips. Her face was flat, and rather