Free The Tin Can Tree by Anne Tyler Page A

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.

4
    T hat Sunday, Joan began thinking about Simon’s hair. She started out by saying, “Simon, tomorrow morning first thing I want to find you in that barber’s chair,” but Simon said, “Aw, Joan, I don’t want to go downtown.” Since that movie yesterday he had changed his mind about town; he hadn’t even asked to eat in a restaurant today, and Joan could see his point. Going downtown meant people murmuring over him and patting his head, asking Joan in whispers, “How is he taking it? Is his mother coming out of it?” while Simon stood right next to them, his chin tilted defiantly and his eyes on their faces. Little boys who were usually his friends circled him widely, looking back over their shoulders in curious, half-scared glances. They had never seen someone that close to funerals before, not someone their own age. When Simon and Joan were coming out of the movie theater a member of Mrs. Pike’s church had stopped smack in front of them and said to her friend, “Oh, that poor little boy!” Her voice had rung out clearly and hung in the air above them, making other people stop and stare while Simon pulled on Joan’s hand to rush her home. She could understand it if he had never went downtown again.
    So instead of insisting, she said, “Well, all right. But we’ve got to cut your hair at home then. Today.”
    “It’s not so long,” he said.
    “Curls down over your ears.”
    “Well, we’ve got nothing to cut it with.”
    “Scissors,” Joan reminded him. “Your mother’s sewing scissors.
Anything.
”
    “Okay. Tomorrow, then,” said Simon. “Bright and early.”
    “Tomorrow’s a tobacco day; I won’t be here. You know that.”
    “
Other
boys have hair
lots
longer.”
    “Orphans do,” said Joan. “Will you fetch the scissors?”
    He slid off the couch, grumbling a little, and went for his mother’s sewing basket. It sat in one corner of the living room, gathering dust, odds and ends of other people’s clothing poking out of it every which-way. (Mrs. Pike was a seamstress; she made clothes for most of the women in Larksville.) The materials on the top Simon threw to the floor, making a huge untidy pile beside the basket, and he rummaged along the bottom until he brought up a large pair of scissors. “These them?” he asked, and walked away from the basket with that heap of material still lying beside it. Joan let the mess stay there. She followed Simon into the kitchen, a few steps behind him, with her eyes on the back of his head. Where it had been pressed against the couch his hair was as matted as a bird’s nest. It would take a sickle to cut all that off.
    In the kitchen she found an apron and tied it around his neck, to keep the hair from tickling, and then she had him sit on the high wooden stool beside the kitchen table. He revolved on it slowly, making the seat of itsqueak, while Joan looked him over and debated where to start. “I don’t know where you
got
all that hair,” she told him. “When was the last time you went to the barber’s?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It couldn’t have been all that long ago.”
    “You sure you know how to cut hair?” Simon asked.
    “Of course I do.”
    “Whose have you cut?”
    “Well, my own,” Joan said.
    He stopped revolving and looked at her hairdo. “It’s a little choppy at the ends,” he told her.
    “It’s supposed to be.”
    “Will mine come out like that?”
    “I surely hope not.”
    “If it does, what will we—”
    “Now, Simon,” Joan said, “I don’t want to hear