Death Sentence

19

The wind had blown the snow off the trees but it lay deep in Washington Park coated with a frozen crust. The roadways and sidewalks had been cleared after a fashion but the night’s hard cold had left glazings of ice and two black women walked with slow care balancing their supermarket bags in their arms. On the bench Paul watched them from the edge of his vision, propping the newspaper against the wooden rail. Wind fluttered the corners of the newspaper and he could see the black women’s breath. Beyond them, beyond the trees and the end of the park he could see the slum houses: porches rotting off, cardboard in the windows. Two young men near the edge of the park were throwing snowballs at passing cars.

The two women approached the sidewalk and prepared to cross the road but one of them slipped on the ice. Paul saw the parcels fall. Groceries from the split bags sprayed across the snow, sliding on the glaze. The woman got to her feet with her friend’s help.

The two youths went toward them, tossing snowballs aside.

Paul folded his newspaper and slipped the glove off his right hand and gripped the gun in his pocket. He got to his feet and moved toward them.

The youths reached the women, who watched without expression — expecting anything. Paul moved from tree to tree, unnoticed, fifty feet away from them.

He saw one of the young men speak; the wind was wrong, Paul couldn’t hear the words. The woman who had fallen nodded bleakly.

But her friend smiled a little and then the two youths began gathering the scattered groceries.

A taxi went by, tire chains jingling. The paper bags were beyond use, broken in shreds; the woman stuffed things in the pockets of her threadbare coat and the two youths gathered armloads: a box of soap powder, a chicken wrapped in transparent plastic. The four of them waited for a truck to pass and then went slowly across the road.

Paul watched, moving forward without hurry. They might be Good Samaritans. Then again they might be going along until they had the women in a more private place. The woman who still had her packages had a handbag slung from her shoulder and women who did that much shopping at one time probably had cash in their purses.

Cut-Rate Liquors. First Baptist Church. The four pedestrians turned off into a dismal street of attached tenements.

From the corner Paul watched them climb the porch. But then the two youths emptied tins and jars from their pockets, stacked everything neatly on the porch and went back down to the street. He heard one of the women call her thanks across the snow.

He turned away and walked back toward the park.