A Matter of Conviction

Four

He went back to the street the next morning and realized in an instant that the image of Harlem as he knew it was no longer valid.

Standing on the corner of 120th Street and First Avenue, he looked westward and tried to visualize himself as a boy and found that geography had passed the dagger of befuddlement to time, and that both had conspired to stab memory.

On the north side of the street, spreading from Second Avenue where the grocery store used to be, where he’d flipped picture cards on hot summer days, spreading from there almost halfway down the block was an open lot, leveled by the bulldozers for a new housing project. The house in which he’d been born and raised — his Aunt Serrie had served as midwife during the delivery — still stood in the center of the block on the south side of the street, but the candy store that had been alongside it was boarded up and demolition had already begun on the houses across the way from it.

“This isn’t where the kids come from,” Detective First Grade Michael Larsen said. “It’s a few blocks over, sir.”

“I know,” Hank answered.

He looked up the street again, feeling change as a sentient thing, wondering if change were truly synonymous with progress. For if the geography of Harlem had changed, if the architecture of the city had imposed upon the gridwork of streets a new pattern of sterile red brick, the model caves of the Miltown Men, the people of Harlem had changed, too. His earlier concept of the three Harlems was one of clear territorial division: Italian, Spanish and Negro. In his mind, he had almost erected the border inspection posts. He recognized now that there was no true border separating the three. Harlem was Harlem. The streets of Italian Harlem were dotted with the tan and white faces of Puerto Ricans, the deeper brown of Negroes. In Harlem could be read the entire immigration pattern of New York City: the Irish and the Italians being the first to succumb to the slow steadiness of integration; the Negroes — later arrivals — melting imperceptibly into the pot of white Protestant respectability; the Puerto Ricans entering last, reaching desperately across a cultural and lingual barrier for the extended hand of acceptance. The hand, they discovered, held an open switch blade.

He wondered what the city had learned, if anything. He knew there were studies, countless studies of housing conditions and traffic problems and schools and recreation centers and occupational opportunities, scores of studies compiled by learned men who knew all about immigration. And yet, projecting the city into the not too distant future, twenty years, twenty-five years, he could visualize it as a giant wheel. The hub of that wheel would be the midtown area where the Idea Men worked, grinding out communications for the entire nation, Eat Crunchies, Wash With Wadley’s, Smoke Saharas, shaping the taste and the thought of the country with their words. And surrounding the camp of the Idea Men would be the nomadic tribes, fighting among themselves for the unproductive earth of the city streets, roaming, shifting, still searching for that welcoming hand of acceptance. A huge loudspeaker would be set atop the Empire State Building in the heart of the hub owned by the Idea Men. And every hour on the hour, the loud-speaker would bleat out a single word which would ring loud and clear on the air of the city, crossing into the territories ruled by the barbarian tribes roaming the fringes of the hub.

And that word would be “Tolerance!”

And Rafael Morrez, swimming in a sea of words, drowned because words don’t float.

“Are you familiar at all with Harlem, sir?” Larsen said.

“I was born here,” Hank answered. “On this street.”

“Oh? Yeah?” Larsen looked at him curiously. “Well, it’s changed a lot since then, I guess.”

“Yes. It has.”

“You know,” Larsen said, “we could’ve brought this girl to your office. You didn’t have to come to Harlem.”

“I wanted to come.”

Walking with the detective who’d caught the initial squeal, he wondered now why he’d wanted to come. Perhaps it was the note, he thought. Perhaps the note challenged my bravery and my manhood. Or perhaps I wanted to see what it was about Harlem that could alternately produce a district attorney and three young killers.

“This is the block,” Larsen said. “The three of them lived right here. And the Puerto Rican kid lived on this same street, only farther west. Great, huh?”

Hank looked up the street. The asphalt had grown gummy in the heat of morning. In the middle of the block, a group of boys had turned on the fire hydrant, and they ran through the stream of water in their clothes, tee shirts sticking wetly to their bodies. The water plunged upward, deflected by a tin can wired to the nozzle of the pump, cascading downward in a waterfall that was costing the city money. Farther up the block, a stickball game was in progress. The garbage cans were stacked alongside the curb, awaiting the D.S.C. pickup trucks. Women in housedresses sat on the front stoops, fanning themselves. Outside the candy store, a group of teen-age boys stood talking.

“If you’re wondering what Thunderbirds look like in their leisure time, you’re looking at them now,” Larsen said.

The boys looked entirely harmless. Sitting on the wooden newsstand outside the store, they chatted and laughed quietly among themselves.

“The girl lives in that building alongside the candy store,” Larsen said. “I phoned before I left the squad, so she knows we’re coming. Don’t mind the dirty looks on the faces of the yardbirds. They know I’m a bull. I’ve kicked their asses around the corner more times than I can count.”

The boys’ conversation tapered off and then stopped as Hank and Larsen approached. Tight-lipped, inscrutable, they studied the pair as they entered the tenement. The entrance hallway was dark and narrow. A stench hit the nostrils immediately, the stench of bodies and of body waste, the stench of cooking, the stench of sleeping and waking, the stench of life contained, confined.

“I don’t know how the hell people manage to live here,” Larsen said. “Some of them make good salaries, too, would you believe it? You’d think they’d get out. This ain’t good for people. You live like a pig, you begin to feel like a pig. She’s on the third floor.”

They climbed the narrow steps. He could remember climbing similar steps when he was a boy. The façade of Harlem might have changed, but the guts were the same. Even the stench was familiar. As a boy, he had urinated behind the first-floor staircase, adding to the stench. You live like a pig, you begin to feel like a pig.

“This is it,” Larsen said, stopping before an apartment marked 3B. “Both parents work, so the kid’ll be alone. She’s sixteen, but she looks a lot older and a lot harder. She seems to be a nice kid, though.” He knocked on the door.

The door opened almost instantly, as if the girl had been standing behind it waiting for the knock. She was a dark-haired girl with wide brown eyes and clean features. Lipstick was the only make-up she wore. She wore a red peasant skirt and a white blouse, and her hair was caught at the back of her neck with a red ribbon.

“Hello,” she said, “come in.”

They entered the apartment. The linoleum was worn, and the plaster was chipped and peeling, and an electrical outlet hung loose from the wall, its naked copper wires exposed. But the apartment was scrupulously clean.

“Miss Rugiello, this is Mr. Bell, the district attorney.”

“How do you do?” the girl said. She spoke in a low whisper, as if she were afraid of being overheard.

“How do you do?” Hank said.

“Would you like some coffee or something? I can put some on. It’d only take a minute.”

“No, thank you,” Hank said.

The girl nodded, as if, convinced beforehand that he would not accept her hospitality, she were now affirming her conviction.

“Well... sit down... won’t you?”

They sat at a kitchen table with an enamel top, the girl sitting at the far end, Hank and Larsen taking chairs on opposite sides of her.

“What’s your first name, miss?” Hank said.

“Angela,” she said.

“I have a daughter almost your age,” Hank said.

“Yeah?” the girl said in seeming interest, but she watched Hank suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“That’s nice,” Angela said.

“Mr. Bell would like to ask you some questions,” Larsen said.

“Yes?” She put the word almost as a question, but she nodded simultaneously, indicating that she knew why the district attorney was here.

“About what happened on the night Morrez was stabbed,” Larsen said. “About the knives.”

“Yes?” she said again, and again it was almost a query.

“Yes,” Hank said. “Can you tell me what happened in your own words?”

“Well, I didn’t see the stabbing or anything. You understand that, don’t you? I didn’t have anything at all to do with the stabbing.”

“Yes, we understand that.”

“Is it wrong that I took the knives? Can I get in trouble for taking the knives?”

“No,” Hank said. “Tell us what happened.”

“Well, Carol and I were sitting on the front stoop downstairs. Carol is my cousin. Carol Rugiello. It was, you know, early yet. Just after supper. You know. Quiet. And none of the fellows was around, but we figured that was because they were getting ready to go bopping. It was decided that afternoon, you see. About the stuff being on between them and the Horsemen, I mean.”

“The Spanish gang?” Hank asked.

“Yeah, the spies,” she said gently, nodding. “They had a truce on before, them and the Birds, but that afternoon the warlords met and decided the stuff was on again. So we knew they were going bopping that night. And there’s a lot of things they have to do before they go, so we figured that’s why none of them was around. Carol’s boy friend is the warlord of the Thunderbirds, so she knew all about it.”

“Do you have a boy friend on the club?”

“Well, no, not a steady or anything like that. I go to their jumps and like that. But I ain’t really interested in none of them. I mean, not for a boy friend. But they’re nice boys. I mean, they seem like nice boys, you know?”

“Yes, go on.”

“Well, we were sitting there on the front stoop, and it was very quiet. It looked like rain. I remember saying to Carol it looked like it was going to rain...”

CAROL: That’s what we need, all right, is a little rain.

ANGELA: I wouldn’t mind it. It’s been hot all day.

CAROL: I wouldn’t neither. It’s what I said, ain’t it?

ANGELA: I thought you were being sarcastic.

CAROL: No. (She pauses, sighs.) Listen, let’s take a walk or something. I’m dying of boredom here on the stoop.

ANGELA: All right, come on. The fellows won’t be back till late, anyway.

CAROL: They haven’t even started yet. It ain’t even dark.

(They rise from the stoop. They are both wearing blue flaring skirts and white sleeveless blouses. Carol is the taller of the two girls, and the older. They are dressed in what might seem good taste were it not for the high pointed thrust of their brassières. They walk, too, with an exaggerated femininity, as if anxious to emphasize their femaleness in what must seem to them a male-dominated society. They pass Second Avenue and continue westward. Some boys on the corner whistle at them, and they tilt their teenage noses to the sky, aloofly but not without a smug female satisfaction. They are pretty girls, and they know it. Carol knows, too, that she is good in bed. She has been told so. Angela is a virgin, but she tries hard to give an impression of vast sexual knowledge. As they approach Third Avenue, it begins to rain. Running, their skirts flapping about their legs, they duck into a doorway and then look up toward Lexington Avenue.)

CAROL: Hey! What’s that? Up the street! Look!

ANGELA (peering westward, where the thunderclouds are banked against the horizon): It’s Tower, ain’t it? Who’s that with him?

CAROL: Batman and Danny. They’re running!

ANGELA: But I thought...

CAROL: Oh God, they’re all full of blood!

(The boys break across Third Avenue in long loping sprints. Behind them is the sound of a police siren. Fear is mingled with the excitement on their faces. Their hands are drenched with blood. Each is still carrying a bloody knife.)

TOWER (spotting the girls): Hey... hey! Hey, c’mere, quick!

CAROL: What is it? What happened?

TOWER: Never mind, the cops are behind us. Take these! Get rid of them! Come on! Come on, take them! (The knives are offered. They ring the girls in dripping steel. Carol is frozen.)

CAROL: What happened?

DANNY: A spic tried to jap us. We stabbed him. Take the knives! Take them!

(Carol does not move. Her eyes wide, she stares at the blood-smeared fists thrust at her. Angela suddenly offers her hand, and the blades are clasped into it, one, two, three, and then the boys are running again, heading for the safety of their own turf. Angela rushes to the nearest stoop, climbing to the top step, which is shielded from the rain. She sits quickly, thrusting the knives under her skirt, pulling the skirt over them, feeling the long thin blades against her naked flesh, thinking she can feel the oozing blood on each separate long blade.)

CAROL: I’m scared. Oh God, I’m scared.

ANGELA: Shhhh, shhhh.

(The rain lashes the long street. A squad car skids across Third Avenue, its siren wailing. Another squad car, ignoring the One Way sign, enters the other end of the block.)

CAROL (whispering): The knife! One of the knives — it’s showing. Pull down your skirt!

ANGELA: Shhh, shhhh. (She reaches beneath her skirt, thrusting the knife deeper beneath her thighs. There is a narcoticized look on her face. The sirens ring in her ears, and then come the terrifying sounds of two explosions, the policemen firing in the air and the rushed babble of many voices, and then Carol again, whispering beside her.)

CAROL: They got ’em. Oh, God, they’re busted. What were they doing over there alone? Angela, they stabbed a guy!

ANGELA: Yes. (Her voice is a whisper now, too.) Yes, oh yes, they stabbed him.

CAROL: What should we do with the knives? Let’s throw them down the sewer. Now. Before the cops get to us.

ANGELA: No. No, I’ll take them home with me.

CAROL: Angela...

ANGELA: I’ll take them home with me.

“We found them here, sir,” Larsen said. “In the girl’s dresser drawer.”

“Why’d you accept the knives, Angela?” Hank asked.

“I don’t know. I was excited. The boys were so excited, I guess I got excited, too. You should have seen their faces. So they offered the knives to me. So... so I took them. All three of them. One after the other. And I hid them. And then I took them home with me and put them in a paper bag and put them in my drawer, at the back of the drawer where my father couldn’t see them. He’d have got mad as hell if he saw the knives. He’d have begun telling me a good girl shouldn’t have taken the knives like that from the three of them. So I hid them from him.”

“Why’d you call the police?”

“Because I later realized I done wrong. I felt terribly guilty. It was wrong what I done, hiding the knives like that. So I called the cops and told them I had them. I felt terribly guilty.”

“You said that Danny told you Morrez had japped them. Is that exactly what he said?”

“Yes.”

“That he’d been japped?”

“No, that a spic had tried to jap them and they stabbed him. That’s what he said. At least, I think so. I was very excited.”

“Have you read anything about this case in the newspapers?”

“Sure, everybody on the block is reading the stories.”

“Then you’re aware, are you not, that the three boys claim Morrez came at them with a knife. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure. I know it.”

“Is it possible that Danny Di Pace said nothing at all about being japped? Is it possible you only think he said that — after reading the boys’ claims in the newspapers?”

“It’s possible, but I doubt it. I know what I heard. I took his knife, too, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

“You know something?” the girl said.

“What?”

“I still got the blood on my skirt. I can’t get the stain out. From when I was sitting on the knives. I still got blood there.”

At the dinner table that night, he looked across at his daughter Jennifer and wondered what kind of girl she’d have been had she lived in Harlem. She was a pretty girl, with her mother’s hazel eyes and fine blond hair, a bosom embarrassingly ripening into womanhood. Her appetite amazed him. She ate rapidly, shoveling food into her mouth with the abandon of a truck driver.

“Slow down, Jennie,” he said. “We’re not expecting a famine.”

“I know, Pop, but Agatha’s expecting me at eight-thirty, and she’s got some creamy new records, and Mom said dinner would be at seven, but you were late. So it’s really your fault I’m gulping my food.”

“Agatha’s creamy new records can wait,” Hank said. “You slow down before you choke.”

“It’s not really Agatha’s records that are causing the speed,” Karin said. “There’ll be some boys there, Hank.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Well, for Pete’s sake, Pop, don’t look as if I’m going into some opium den or something. We’re only going to dance a little.”

“Who are these boys?” Hank asked.

“Some of the kids from the neighborhood. Actually, they’re all bananas except Lonnie Gavin. He’s cool.”

“Well, that at least is reassuring,” Hank said, and he winked at Karin. “Why don’t you bring him to the house sometime?”

“Pop, he’s only been here about eighty times already.”

“And where was I?”

“Oh, preparing a brief or giving some witness the rubber hose, I guess.”

“I don’t think that’s very funny, Jennie,” Karin said. “Your father doesn’t beat his witnesses.”

“I know. That was just a euphemism.”

“And I suggest you brush up on your figures of speech, which are more incriminating than your original statements,” Hank said.

“Hyperbole?” Jennie asked.

“That’s more like it.”

“We’ve got a creep teaching English,” Jennie said. “It’s a wonder I learn anything. They ought to shoot him up with the next Vanguard.”

She seized her napkin, wiped her mouth, shoved her chair back, and kissed Karin briefly.

“May I please be excused?” she said as she rushed from the dining room. He could see her applying lipstick to her mouth, standing in front of the hall mirror. Then, unself-consciously, she tugged at her brassière, waved back at her parents, and slammed out of the house.

“How about that?” Hank said.

Karin shrugged.

“I’m worried,” Hank said.

“Why?”

“She’s a woman.”

“She’s a girl.”

“She’s a woman, Karin. She applies lipstick like an expert, and she adjusts her bra as if she’s been wearing one all her life. Are you sure it’s all right for her to go over to this Agatha’s house to dance? With boys?”

“I’d be more worried if she were dancing with girls.”

“Honey, don’t get glib.”

“I’m not. For the information of the district attorney, his daughter began to blossom at the age of twelve. She’s been wearing lipstick and bra for almost two years now. She has, I believe, been kissed.”

“By whom?” Hank said, his brow creasing.

“Oh, my God. By many boys, I’m sure.”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Karin.”

“How do you suggest we prevent it?”

“Well, I don’t know.” He paused. “But it doesn’t seem right to me that a thirteen-year-old girl should go around necking with everybody in the neighborhood.”

“Jennie’s almost fourteen and I’m sure she chooses the boys she wants to kiss.”

“And where does she go from there?”

“Hank!”

“I’m serious. I’d better have a talk with that girl.”

“And what will you tell her?”

“Well...”

With a calm smile on her mouth, Karin said, “Will you tell her to keep her legs crossed?”

“In essence, yes.”

“And will that keep them crossed?”

“It seems to me she should know...”

“She knows, Hank.”

“You don’t seem very concerned,” he said.

“I’m not. Jennie’s a sensible girl, and I think she’d only be embarrassed if you gave her a lecture. I think it might be more important if you—” She stopped suddenly.

“If I what?”

“If you came home earlier more often. If you saw the boys who are dating her. If you took an interest in her, and in them.”

“I didn’t even know she was dating. Isn’t she too young to be dating?”

“Biologically, she’s as old as I am.”

“And apparently following in your footsteps,” Hank said, and was immediately sorry afterward.

“Enter the Slut of Berlin,” Karin said dryly.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite all right. There’s just one thing, Hank. I wish you’d someday have the guts to believe it was you I fell in love with — and not an American chocolate bar.”

“I do believe that.”

“Do you? Then why do you constantly refer to my ‘lurid’ past? To hear you tell it, I was the chief prostitute in a red-light district which stretched for miles.”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Hank said.

“Well, I would. Once and for all, I would like to talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“There’s a lot to say. And it’s better to say it than to hint at it. Does it trouble you greatly that I went to bed with one other man before I met you?”

He did not answer.

“Hank, I’m talking to you.”

“Yes, goddamnit, it troubles me greatly. It annoys the hell out of me that I was introduced to you by the bombardier of my ship — and that he knew you a lot longer and possibly a lot better than I ever did.”

“He was very kind,” Karin said softly.

“I don’t want to hear about his goddamn virtues. What’d he do, bring you nylons?”

“Yes. But so did you.”

“And did you tell him the same things you told me?”

“I told him I loved him. And I did.”

“Great,” Hank said.

“Perhaps you’d have preferred me to go to bed with a man I despised?”

“I’d have preferred you not to have gone to bed with anyone!”

“Not even you?”

“You married me!” Hank hurled.

“Yes. Because I loved you from the first moment I met you. That is why I married you. That is why I asked Peter never to see me again. Because I loved you.”

“But you loved Pete first.”

“Yes. And didn’t you love someone first?”

“I didn’t go to bed with her!”

“And perhaps she didn’t live in wartime Germany!” Karin snapped.

“No, she didn’t. And you did, and don’t try to tell me that every German girl was fair prey for every American soldier.”

“I can speak for no German girl but myself,” Karin said. “I was hungry. And scared. Damnit, I was scared. Have you ever been scared?”

“I’ve been scared all my life,” he said.

A silence fell over the table. They sat watching each other with slightly dazed expressions on their faces, as if recognizing for the first time that they really did not know each other.

He pushed back his chair. “I’m going for a walk,” he said.

“All right. Be careful, please.”

He went out of the house, and the words “Be careful, please” echoed in his mind because these were the words she’d said to him each time he left her, years ago, to return to the base. He could still remember driving the jeep through the streets of a bombed-out Berlin awakening to face the silent dawn. Those had been good times, and this had been a stupid argument and oh, damnit, what the hell was the matter with him anyway?

He began walking up the street, a well-ordered street with old trees and carefully landscaped plots and meticulous lawns and great white houses with neatly painted shutters, a miniature suburb set in the heart of the city. A city of contrasts, New York, changing in the sudden space of two blocks from the worst slum to the most aristocratic neighborhood. Even here in Inwood, if you walked east for several blocks you came upon a neighborhood succumbing to the shoddiness of time.

He turned and began walking west, toward the river.

Why had he fought with Karin?

And what had he meant when he’d said to her, “I’ve been scared all my life”? The words had leaped from his lips involuntarily, as if wrenched from a secret inner person of whom he had no knowledge.

Scared, yes, at the controls of a bomber with flak bursting silently around the ship. Scared when they were hit over the Channel once and had to ditch, scared when the Messerschmitt dived and strafed the water and he could see the line of slugs ripping up a narrow path as the plane dived and gained altitude and then dived again at the floating crew members.

But all his life? Scared all his life?

He walked onto the path between the bushes at the end of the street, heading for the big rock which overlooked the railroad tracks and the Hudson. He and Karin walked here often on summer nights. Here you could sit and look at the lights of Palisades Amusement Park across the river downtown, the strung necklace of the George Washington Bridge, the moving lights of the water craft. And here, too, you could listen to the water lapping gently against the smaller rocks below, and there seemed to be in this spot a serenity which had somehow passed by the rest of the city, the rest of the world.

He found the rock in the darkness and climbed to its top. He lighted a cigarette then and looked out over the water. He sat smoking for a long while, listening to the sounds of the insects, hearing below him the lapping sounds of the river. Then he started back for the house.

The two boys were standing under the street lamp at the end of the block. They were standing quite still, apparently talking to each other harmlessly, but he felt his heart lurch into his throat at the sight of them. He did not know who they were; he was sure they were not any of the neighborhood boys.

He clenched his fists.

His own house was a half block beyond the lamppost. He would have to pass the boys if he wanted to get home.

He felt the way he’d felt over Bremen with a full cargo of bombs.

He did not break his stride. He continued walking with his fists clenched at his sides, closer to the two husky teen-agers who stood idling by the street lamp.

When he passed them, the taller of the two looked up and said, “Why, good evening, Mr. Bell.”

He said, “Good evening,” and continued walking. He could feel the boys’ eyes on his back. When he reached the front door of his house, he was trembling. He sat on the front steps and groped for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. His hands shaking, he lighted one and blew out a hasty stream of smoke. Then he looked down the street toward the lamppost. The boys were gone. But the trembling would not leave him. He held his left hand in front of him, watched the spasmodic jerking of his fingers until, in self-condemning anger, he bunched the fingers into a tight fist and slammed the fist down onto his knee.

I’m not afraid, he told himself, and the words had a familiar ring. He squeezed his eyes shut and again he told himself, “I’m not afraid,” aloud this time, and the words echoed on the silent street, but the trembling would not stop.

I’m not afraid.

I’m not afraid.

It had been one of those suffocatingly hot August days that capture the city and refuse to let go of it. People moved about the streets with great effort. The black asphalt had begun to run so that crossing the street became a sticky task. At noon, with the sun directly overhead, there was no shade in the concrete canyon of the city block. The tar glistened blackly, and the sidewalks gleamed whitely with a hard flat glare in the merciless sunlight.

Hank Belani was twelve years old, a gangling awkward youth on the edge of adolescence, a boy whose image of himself was rapidly becoming lost, obscured by the changes of rapid growth. It was for this reason — though he could not have explained his motivation if he’d tried — that he wore the lock. He had bought the lock in the five-and-ten on Third Avenue. He had paid a quarter for it. The lock had no practical value whatever. It was a miniature chromium-and-black ornament meant for decoration alone and not seriously intended as a safeguard for anything. It had come complete with two tiny keys. He wore the lock on the belt loop of his trousers, the loop to the right of his fly. Religiously, he unlocked it whenever he changed his trousers, shifting it from one trouser loop to the other, locking it again, and then putting the miniature key into the top drawer of his dresser, alongside the spare key. The lock was, for Hank Belani, a trademark. It was doubtful that anyone but Hank even knew of its existence. It had certainly attracted no attention until that day in August. The important thing, of course, was that Hank knew it was there, and for him it was a trademark.

The heat had rendered the boys on the block lifeless. They had matched War cards for a while — at that time the War cards showed the Sino-Japanese war and vividly illustrated the atrocities of the Japanese — but then had grown weary of even such limited activity. It was too hot to be flipping cards. Eventually, they all just stretched out alongside the brick wall of the grocery store and talked about swimming. Hank sat with the rest of the boys, his sneakered feet stretched out, lying on one hip so that the lock in his trouser loop hung suspended and caught the unblinking rays of the sun.

One of the boys in the crowd was called Bobby. He was only thirteen, but one of those kids who are very big for their age, with straight blond hair and a lot of pimples on his face. He was always picking at his pimples or saying, “I need a shave again,” even though all the other kids knew he didn’t shave yet, although he did have a lot of blond fuzz all over his face. The kids in those days hadn’t tipped to the luxury of dungarees. In the winter, they wore knickers with knee socks, and in the summer they wore shorts. Hank’s knees were always scabby in the summer, but all the kids’ knees were that way, because flesh and concrete didn’t blend too well. Bobby was wearing shorts. He had big muscular legs, well, he was big all over, and he had this thick blond caterpillar fuzz on his legs, too. Everybody was just laying there talking about swimming, and all of a sudden Bobby said, “What’s that?”

At first, Hank didn’t know what he was talking about. He’d been listening to the swimming talk and wishing he was swimming, and he was in a sort of hazy dream mood because he was so hot and because it was nice to just sit with the fellows and talk about swimming on a day like this.

“What’s that on your pants, Hank?” Bobby said.

Hank looked at him sleepily and then looked down to where the lock hung on his trouser loop. “Oh, that’s a lock,” he said.

“A lock!” Bobby said.

“Yeah, a lock.”

“A lock!” The idea seemed to repel and fascinate Bobby. He turned to the other boys and said, “He’s got a lock on his pants,” and he laughed his curious laugh, a mixture of a man’s and a boy’s, and he said again, “A lock!”

“Yeah, a lock,” Hank answered, not seeing at all what was so peculiar about the darn thing.

One of the other kids started talking about how to do a jackknife dive, but Bobby wouldn’t let it go. He brought his voice up a little higher and he said, “Why you got a lock on your pants?”

“Why not?” Hank said. He was not angry. He just didn’t want to be bothered. It was much too hot to be going into why he did or didn’t have a lock on his pants.

“What’re you lockin’ up?” Bobby wanted to know.

“I ain’t lockin’ up anything.”

“Then why you got the lock?”

“’Cause I want the lock.”

“That seems pretty stupid to me,” Bobby said.

The kid who was explaining the jackknife said, “The whole secret is how you get the jump on the board. You got to spring so that...”

Bobby said, “That seems pretty stupid to me,” a little louder this time.

“Hey, you mind?” the other kid asked. “I’m trying to explain something.”

“Well, it seems pretty stupid somebody should have a lock on his pants,” Bobby persisted. “That’s the first time in my life I ever seen anybody with a lock on his pants, I swear to God.”

“So don’t look at it,” the other kid said. “If you don’t spring right, you can’t get to touch your toes. Sometimes, you get these boards where...”

“You wear them on all your pants?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, all my pants.”

“You change it from pants to pants?”

“Yeah, I change it from pants to pants.”

“That seems pretty stupid. It looks pretty stupid, too, you want to know the truth.”

“So don’t look at it,” Hank said, repeating the other kid.

“Well, I don’t like it. That’s all. I don’t like it.”

“Well, who cares what you like? It’s my pants, and it’s my lock. So if you don’t like it, who cares? I don’t care.” He was beginning to feel a little frightened. Bobby was much bigger than he, and he didn’t want to start a fight with a boy who could kill him. He wished desperately that Bobby would let go of the conversation. But Bobby wasn’t in a mood to let go of anything. Bobby was having a real good time.

“Whyn’t you put the lock on your shirt, too?”

“I don’t want no lock on my shirt.”

“Whyn’t you put it on your underwear?”

“Whyn’t you shut up?” Hank said. He was beginning to tremble. I’m not afraid, he told himself.

“Whyn’t you stick it on your pecker?”

“Oh, come on,” Hank said. “Shut up, willya?”

“What’s the matter? You nervous about your damn lock?”

“I ain’t nervous at all. I just don’t want to talk about it. You mind?”

“I want to talk about it,” Bobby said. “Let’s see that damn lock, anyway.” He leaned over and stretched out his hand, ready to touch the lock, ready to have a closer look at it. Hank backed away a little.

“Keep your hands off it!” he said, and he wondered in that moment why this had to be, why he couldn’t be left alone, and he felt the trembling inside him, and again he told himself, I’m not afraid, knowing that he was afraid, and hating the fear, and hating Bobby, and watching the older boy’s face break into a malicious grin.

“What’s the matter? I can’t touch it even?”

“No, you can’t touch it,” he said. Come on, stop it, he thought. What do we have to fight for? Come on.

“What’s the matter? It’s gold?”

“Yeah, it’s platinum. Keep your hands off it.”

“I only wanted to look at it.”

“You said you didn’t like to look at it. So keep your hands off it. Go look someplace else. Go look around the corner, why don’t you?”

The lock hung from the trouser loop, steel and fabric wedded together. Bobby glanced at it. And suddenly he reached out for it, grasping the lock and pulling it, ripping the trouser loop, clutching the lock in his closed fist. Hank was too shocked to move for an instant. Bobby was grinning. Hank hesitated. The gauntlet had been dropped. Trembling, fighting to keep the tears from his eyes, he got to his feet.

“Give me the lock,” he said.

Bobby stood up. He was at least a head taller than Hank, and easily twice as wide. “What’s the matter?” he asked innocently.

“Give me that lock!”

“I think I’ll throw it down the sewer with the rest of the crap,” Bobby said, and he took a step toward the gutter, not realizing that for all intents and purposes he was holding Hank’s heart clutched in his fist, was holding an identity, an existence, a life in his fingers. He had reasoned correctly that Hank was afraid of him. He could see fear in Hank’s narrow, trembling body, could read it in the tightly controlled face, the eyes moist and refusing to succumb to the onslaught of tears. But he did not know he was holding something precious in his hand, something that gave meaning and reality in a concrete and asphalt maze that threatened anonymity. He did not know until Hank hit him.

He hit Bobby quite hard, so hard that Bobby’s nose began to bleed instantly. Bobby felt the blood gushing from his nostrils, and his eyes went wide with surprise. Hank hit him again, and then again, and Bobby kept trying to feel his nose while he was being hit, and suddenly he was falling to the hot pavement, and Hank was straddling him, and he felt fingers around his throat, wildly clutching at his windpipe, and he recognized in a moment of terrifying awareness that Hank would choke him to death.

“Give him the lock, Bobby,” one of the other kids said, and Bobby — twisting his head, trying to escape the viselike fingers around his throat — sputtered, “Take it, here, take it!”

He opened his fist and the lock dropped to the sidewalk. Hank picked it up quickly. He held the lock clenched in one fist, the other hand closed over it, and the tears finally reached his eyes, spilled down his face. Stuttering, he said, “Why why why c-c-c-couldn’t you m-m-mind your own b-b-business?”

“Go home, Bobby,” one of the other kids said. “Your goddamn nose is all bloody.”

That was the end of the fight, and the last of the trouble he was to have with Bobby. He stopped wearing the lock immediately afterward. He wore something else from that day on: a recognition of his own fear and the lengths to which he would go to keep it from erupting.

“Dad?”

He looked up. For a moment, he did not recognize the young lady standing before him, the long blond hair, the face with the questioning look of a woman, the firm bosom, the narrow waist and long legs. My daughter? he thought. A woman already? When did you leave my knee, Jennie? When did you join the mysterious sorority?

“Are you all right, Dad?” she asked. There was concern in her voice.

“Yes,” he said. “Just having a last cigarette before I turned in.”

“It’s a nice night,” Jennie said. She sat on the stoop beside him, pulling her skirt over her knees.

“Yes.” He paused. “Did you walk home from Agatha’s?”

“Yeah. The kids are still there, but I left. It was a big drag.” She paused. “Lonnie wasn’t there.”

“Lonnie?”

“Lonnie Gavin.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

They sat in silence for several moments.

“It sure is a nice night,” Jennie said.

“Yes.”

The silence closed in on them.

“You... you didn’t see anyone in the street, did you? On your way home?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Some boys?”

“No. Nobody.”

“You shouldn’t go walking around alone at night,” he said.

“Oh, there’s nothing to be afraid of around here,” she answered.

“Well, still.”

“Don’t worry,” she said.

Again they were silent. He had the oddest feeling that Jennie wanted to talk to him. He felt it would be good for the two of them to talk together, but instead they sat like strangers in the waiting room of a small-town railroad station, uncommunicative, ill at ease.

At last his daughter rose and smoothed her skirt.

“Mom up?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Think I’ll have a glass of milk with her,” Jennie said, and she went into the house.

He sat alone in the darkness.

At nine o’clock the next morning, he started his working day by requesting the assignment of a team of detectives to a twenty-four-hour surveillance of his house.