The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Part Two

THIS summer was different from any other time Mick could remember. Nothing much happened that she could describe to herself in thoughts or words--but there was a feeling of change. AH the time she was excited. In the morning she couldn’t wait to get out of bed and start going for the day. And at night she hated like hell to have to sleep again.

Right after breakfast she took the kids out, and except for meals they were gone most of the day. A good deal of the time they just roamed around the streets--with her pulling Ralph’s wagon and Bubber following along behind. Always she was busy with thoughts and plans. Sometimes she would look up suddenly and they would be way off in some part of town she didn’t even recognize. And once or twice they ran into Bill on the streets and she was so busy thinking he had to grab her by the arm to make her see him.

Early in the mornings it was a little cool and their shadows stretched out tall on the sidewalk in front of them. But in the middle of the day the sky was always blazing hot. The glare was so bright it hurt to keep your eyes open. A lot of times the plans about the things that were going to happen to her were mixed up with ice and snow. Sometimes it was like she was out in Switzerland and all the mountains were covered with snow and she was skating on cold, greenish-colored ice.

Mister Singer would be skating with her. And maybe Carole Lombard or Arturo Toscanini who played on the radio. They would be skating together and then Mister Singer would fall through the ice and she would dive in without regard for peril and swim under the ice and save his life. That was one of the plans always going on in her mind.

Usually after they had walked awhile she would park Bubber and Ralph in some shady place. Bubber was a swell kid and she had trained him pretty good. If she told him not to go out of hollering distance from Ralph she wouldn’t ever find him shooting marbles with kids two or three blocks away. He played by himself near the wagon, and when she left them she didn’t have to worry much. She either went to the library and looked at the National Geographic or else just roamed around and thought some more. If she had any money she bought a dope or a Milky Way at Mister Brannon’s. He gave kids a reduction. He sold them nickel things for three cents.

But all the time--no matter what she was doing--there was music. Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts. Some she heard over radios, and some was in her mind already without her ever having heard it anywhere.

In the night-time, as soon as the kids were in bed, she was free. That was the most important time of all. A lot of things happened when she was by herself and it was dark. Right after supper she ran out of the house again. She couldn’t tell anybody about the things she did at night, and when her Mama asked her questions she would answer with any little tale that sounded reasonable. But most of the time if anybody called her she just ran away like she hadn’t heard. That went for everybody except her Dad. There was something about her Dad’s voice she couldn’t run away from. He was one of the biggest, tallest men in the whole town. But his voice was so quiet and kindly that people were surprised when he spoke.

No matter how much of a hurry she was in, she always had to stop when her Dad called.

This summer she realized something about her Dad she had never known before. Up until then she had never thought about him as being a real separate person. A lot of times he would call her. She would go in the front room where he worked and stand by him a couple of minutes--but when she listened to him her mind was never on the things he said to her. Then one night she suddenly realized about her Dad. Nothing unusual happened that night and she didn’t know what it was that made her understand. Afterward she felt older and as though she knew him as good as she could know any person.

It was a night in late August and she was in a big rush. She had to be at this house by nine o’clock, and no maybe either.

Her Dad called and she went into the front room. He was sitting slumped over his workbench. For some reason it never did seem natural to see him there. Until the time of his accident last year he had been a painter and carpenter. Before daylight every morning he would leave the house in his overalls, to be gone all day. Then at night sometimes he fiddled around with clocks as an extra work. A lot of times he had tried to get a job in a jewelry store where he could sit by himself at a desk all day with a clean white shirt on and a tie.

Now when he couldn’t carpenter any more he had put a sign at the front of the house reading ‘Clocks and Watches Repaired Cheap.’ But he didn’t look like most jewelers--the ones downtown were quick, dark little Jew men. Her Dad was too tall for his workbench, and his big bones seemed joined together in a loose way.

Her Dad just stared at her. She could tell he didn’t have any reason for calling. He only wanted real bad to talk to her. He tried to think of some way to begin. His brown eyes were too big for his long, thin face, and since he had lost every single hair the pale, bald top of his head gave him a naked look. He looked at her without speaking and she was in a hurry.

She had to be at that house by nine sharp and there was no time to waste. Her Dad saw she was in a hurry and he cleared his throat ‘I got something for you,’ he said. ‘Nothing much, but maybe you can treat yourself with it.’

He didn’t have to give her any nickel or dime just because he was lonesome and wanted to talk. Out of what he made he only kept enough to have beer about twice a week. Two bottles were on the floor by his chair now, one empty and one just opened. And whenever he drank beer he liked to talk to somebody. Her Dad fumbled with his belt and she looked away. This summer he had gotten like a kid about hiding those nickels and dimes he kept for himself. Sometimes he hid them in his shoes, and other times in a little slit he had cut in his belt. She only halfway wanted to take the dime, but when he held it out her hand was just naturally open and ready.

‘I got so much work to do I don’t know where to begin,’ he said.

That was just the opposite to the truth, and he knew it good as she did. He never had many watches to fix, and when he finished he would fool around the house doing any little job that was needed. Then at night he sat at his bench, cleaning old springs and wheels and trying to make the work last out until bedtime. Ever since he broke his hip and couldn’t work steady he had to be doing something every minute.

‘I been thinking a lot tonight,’ her Dad said. He poured out his beer and sprinkled a few grains of salt on the back of his hand.

Then he licked up the salt and took a swallow out of the glass.

She was in such a hurry that it was hard to stand still. Her Dad noticed this. He tried to say something--but he had not called to tell her anything special. He only wanted to talk with her for a little while. He started to speak and swallowed. They just looked at each other. The quietness grew out longer and neither of them could say a word.

That was when she realized about her Dad. It wasn’t like she was learning a new fact--she had understood it all along in every way except with her brain. Now she just suddenly knew that she knew about her Dad. He was lonesome and he was an old man. Because none of the kids went to him for anything and because he didn’t earn much money he felt like he was cut off from the family. And in his lonesomeness he wanted to be close to one of his kids --and they were all so busy that they didn’t know it. He felt like he wasn’t much real use to anybody.

She understood this while they were looking at each other. It gave her a queer feeling. Her Dad picked up a watch spring and cleaned it with a brush dipped in gasoline.

‘I know you’re in a hurry. I just hollered to say hello.’

‘No, I’m not in any rush,’ she said. ‘Honest.’ That night she sat down in a chair by his bench and they talked awhile. He talked about accounts and expenses and how things would have been if he had just managed in a different way. He drank beer, and once the tears came to his eyes and he snuffled his nose against his shirt-sleeve. She stayed with him a good while that night. Even if she was in an awful hurry. Yet for some reason she couldn’t tell him about the things in her mind--about the hot, dark nights.

These nights were secret, and of the whole summer they were the most important time. In the dark she walked by herself and it was like she was the only person in the town. Almost every street came to be as plain to her in the nighttime as her own home block. Some kids were afraid to walk through strange places in the dark, but she wasn’t. Girls were scared a man would come out from somewhere and put his teapot in them like they was married. Most girls were nuts. If a person the size of Joe Louis or Mountain Man Dean would jump out at her and want to fight she would run. But if it was somebody within twenty pounds her weight she would give him a good sock and go right on.

The nights were wonderful, and she didn’t have time to think about such things as being scared. Whenever she was in the dark she thought about music. While she walked along the streets she would sing to herself. And she felt like the whole town listened without knowing it was Mick Kelly.

She learned a lot about music during these free nights in the summer-time. When she walked out in the rich parts of town every house had a radio. All the windows were open and she could hear the music very marvelous. After a while she knew which houses tuned in for the programs she wanted to hear.

There was one special house that got all the good orchestras.

And at night she would go to this house and sneak into the dark yard to listen. There was beautiful shrubbery around this house, and she would sit under a bush near the window. And after it was all over she would stand in the dark yard with her hands in her pockets and think for a long time. That was the realest part of all the summer--her listening to this music on the radio and studying about it ‘Cerra fa puerta, senor’ Mick said.

Bubber was sharp as a briar. ‘Haga me usted el favor, senorita,’ he answered as a comeback.

It was grand to take Spanish at Vocational. There was something about speaking in a foreign language that made her feel like she’d been around a lot. Every afternoon since school had started she had fun speaking the new Spanish words and sentences. At first Bubber was stumped, and it was funny to watch his face while she talked the foreign language. Then he caught on in a hurry, and before long he could copy everything she said. He remembered the words he learned, too. Of course he didn’t know what all the sentences meant, but she didn’t say them for the sense they made, anyway. After a while the kid learned so fast she gave out of Spanish and just gabbled along with made-up sounds. But it wasn’t long before he caught her out at that--nobody could put a thing over on old Bubber Kelly.

‘I’m going to pretend like I’m walking into this house for the first time,’ Mick said. ‘Then I can tell better if all the decorations look good or not.’

She walked out on the front porch and then came back and stood in the hall. All day she and Bubber and Portia and her Dad had been fixing the hall and the dining-room for the party. The decoration was autumn leaves and vines and red crepe paper. On the mantelpiece in the dining-room and sticking up behind the hat rack there were bright yellow leaves.

They had trailed vines along the walls and on the table where the punch bowl would be. The red crepe paper hung down in long fringes from the mantel and also was looped around the backs of the chairs. There was plenty decoration. It was O.K.

She rubbed her hand on her forehead and squinted her eyes.

Bubber stood beside her and copied every move she made. ‘I sure do want this party to turn out all right. I sure do.’

This would be the first party she had ever given. She had never even been to more than four or five. Last summer she had gone to a prom party. But none of the boys asked her to prom or dance, she just stood by the punch bowl until all the refreshments were gone and then went home. This party was not going to be a bit like that one. In a few hours now the people she had invited would start coming and the to-do would begin.

It was hard to remember just how she got the idea of this party. The notion came to her soon after she started at Vocational. High School was swell. Everything about it was different from Grammar School. She wouldn’t have liked it so much if she had had to take a stenographic course like Hazel and Etta had done--but she got special permission and took mechanical shop like a boy. Shop and Algebra and Spanish were grand. English was mighty hard. Her English teacher was Miss Minner. Everybody said Miss Minner had sold her brains to a famous doctor for ten thousand dollars, so that after she was dead he could cut them up and see why she was so smart. On written lessons she cracked such questions as ‘Name eight famous contemporaries of Doctor Johnson,’ and ‘Quote ten lines from ‘The Vicar of Wakefield.’ She called on people by the alphabet and kept her grade book open during the lessons. And even if she was brainy she was an old sourpuss. The Spanish teacher had traveled once in Europe.

She said that in France the people carried home loaves of bread without having them wrapped up. They would stand talking on the streets and hit the bread on a lamp post. And there wasn’t any water in France--only wine.

In nearly all ways Vocational was wonderful. They walked back and forth in the hall between classes, and at lunch period students hung around the gym. Here was the thing that soon began to bother her. In the halls the people would walk up and down together and everybody seemed to belong to some special bunch. Within a week or two she knew people in the halls and in classes to speak to them--but that was all. She wasn’t a member of any bunch. In Grammar School she would have just gone up to any crowd she wanted to belong with and that would have been the end of the matter. Here it was different.

During the first week she walked up and down the halls by herself and thought about this. She planned about being with some bunch almost as much as she thought of music. Those two ideas were in her head all the time. And finally she got the idea of the party.

She was strict with the invitations. No Grammar School kids and nobody under twelve years old. She just asked people between thirteen and fifteen. She knew everybody she invited good enough to speak to them in the halls--and when she didn’t know their names she asked to find out. She called up those who had a telephone, and the rest she invited at school.

On the telephone she always said the same thing. She let Bubber stick in his ear to listen. ‘This is Mick Kelly,’ she said.

If they didn’t understand the name she kept on until they got it.

I’m having a prom party at eight o’clock Saturday night and I’m inviting you now. I live at 103 Fourth Street, Apartment A.’ That Apartment A sounded swell on the telephone. Nearly everybody said they would be delighted. A couple of tough boys tried to be smarty and kept on asking her name over and over. One of them tried to act cute and said, ‘I don’t know you.’

She squelched him in a hurry: ‘You go eat grass!’ Outside of that wise guy there were ten boys and ten girls and she knew that they were all coming. This was a real party, and it would be better and different from any party she had ever gone to or heard about before.

Mick looked over the hall and dining-room one last time. By the hat rack she stopped before the picture of Old Dirty-Face.

This was a photo of her Mama’s grandfather. He was a major way back in the Civil War and had been killed in a battle.

Some kid once drew eyeglasses and a beard on his picture, and when the pencil marks were erased it left his face all dirty.

That was why she called him Old Dirty-Face. The picture was in the middle of a three-part frame. On both sides were pictures of his sons. They looked about Bubber’s age. They had on uniforms and their faces were surprised. They had been killed in battle also. A long time ago.

Tm going to take this down for the party. I think it looks common. Don’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bubber said. ‘Are we common, Mick?’

‘I’m not.’

She put the picture underneath the hat rack. The decoration was O.K. Mister Singer would be pleased when he came home. The rooms seemed very empty and quiet. The table was set for supper. And then after supper it would be time for the party. She went into the kitchen to see about the refreshments.

‘You think everything will be all right?’ she asked Portia.

Portia was making biscuits. The refreshments were on top of the stove. There were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate snaps and punch. The sandwiches were covered with a damp dishcloth. She peeped at them but didn’t take one.

‘I done told you forty times that everthing going to be all right,’ Portia said. ‘Just soon as I come back from fixing supper at home I going to put on that white apron and serve the food real nice. Then I going to push off from here by nine-thirty.

This here is Saturday night and Highboy and Willie and me haves our plans, too.’

‘Sure,’ Mick said. ‘I just want you to help out till things sort of get started--you know.’

She gave in and took one of the sandwiches. Then she made Bubber stay with Portia and went into the middle room. The dress she would wear was laying out on the bed. Hazel and Etta had both been good about lending her their best clothes--considering that they weren’t supposed to come to the party.

There was Etta’s long blue crepe de chine evening dress and some white pumps and a rhinestone tiara for her hair. These clothes were really gorgeous. It was hard to imagine how she would look in them.

The late afternoon had come and the sun made long, yellow slants through the window. If she took two hours over dressing for the party it was time to begin now. When she thought about putting on the fine clothes she couldn’t just sit around and wait. Very slowly she went into the bathroom and shucked off her old shorts and shirt and turned on the water.

She scrubbed the rough parts of her heels and her knees and especially her elbows. She made the bath take a long time.

She ran naked into the middle room and began to dress. Silk teddies she put on, and silk stockings. She even wore one of Etta’s brassieres just for the heck of it. Then very carefully she put on the dress and stepped into the pumps. This was the first time she had ever worn an evening dress. She stood for a long time before the mirror. She was so tall that the dress came up two or three inches above her ankles--and the shoes were so short they hurt her. She stood in front of the mirror a long tune, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.

Six different ways she tried out her hair. The cowlicks were a little trouble, so she wet her bangs and made three spit curls.

Last of all she stuck the rhinestones in her hair and put on plenty of lipstick and paint. When she finished she lifted up her chin and half-closed eyes like a movie star. Slowly she turned her face from one side to the other. It was beautiful she looked--just beautiful.

‘She didn’t feel like herself at all. She was somebody different from Mick Kelly entirely. Two hours had to pass before the party would begin, and she was ashamed for any of the family to see her dressed so far ahead of time. She went into the bathroom again and locked the door. She couldn’t mess up her dress by sitting down, so she stood in the middle of the floor. The close walls around her seemed to press hi all the excitement. She felt so different from the old Mick Kelly that she knew this would be better than anything else in all her whole life--this party.

‘Yippee! The punch!’

‘The cutest dress--’

‘Say! You solve that one about the triangle forty-six by twen--’

‘Lemme by! Move out my way!’ The front door slammed every second as the people swarmed into the house. Sharp voices and soft voices sounded together until there was just one roaring noise. Girls stood in bunches in their long, fine evening dresses, and the boys roamed around in clean duck pants or R.O.T.C. uniforms or new dark fall suite. There was so much commotion that Mick couldn’t notice any separate face or person. She stood by the hat rack and stared around at the party as a whole.

‘Everybody get a prom card and start signing up.’

At first the room was too loud for anyone to hear and pay attention. The boys were so thick around the punch bowl that the table and the vines didn’t show at all. Only her Dad’s face rose up above the boys’ heads as he smiled and dished up the punch into the little paper cups. On the seat of the hat rack beside her were a jar of candy and two handkerchiefs. A couple of girls thought it was her birthday, and she had thanked them and unwrapped the presents without telling them she wouldn’t be fourteen for eight more months.

Every person was as clean and fresh and dressed up as she was. They smelled good. The boys had their hair plastered down wet and slick. The girls with their different-colored long dresses stood together, and they were like a bright hunk of flowers. The start was marvelous. The beginning of this party was O.K.

‘I’m part Scotch Irish and French and--’

‘I got German blood--’ She hollered about the prom cards one more time before she went into the dining-room. Soon they began to pile in from the hall. Every person took a prom card and they lined up in bunches against the walls of the room. This was the real start now.

It came all of a sudden in a very queer way--this quietness.

The boys stood together on one side of the room and the girls were across from them. For some reason every person quit making noise at once. The boys held their cards and looked at the girls and the room was very still. None of the boys started asking for proms like they were supposed to do. The awful quietness got worse and she had not been to enough parties to know what she should do. Then the boys started punching each other and talking. The girls giggled--but even if they didn’t look at the boys you could tell they only had their minds on whether they were going to be popular or not. The awful quietness was gone now, but there was something jittery about the room.

After a while a boy went up to a girl named Delores Brown.

As soon as he had signed her up the other boys all began to rush Delores at once. When her whole card was full they started on another girl, named Mary. After that everything suddenly stopped again. One or two extra girls got a couple of proms--and because she was giving the party three boys came up to her. That was all.

The people just hung around in the dining-room and the hall.

The boys mostly flocked around the punch bowl and tried to show off with each other. The girls bunched together and did a lot of laughing to pretend like they were having a good time. The boys thought about the girls and the girls thought about the boys. But all that came of it was a queer feeling in the room.

It was then she began to notice Harry Minowitz. He lived in the house next door and she had known him all her life.

Although he was two years older she had grown faster than him, and in the summer-time they used to wrestle and fight out on the plot of grass by the street. Harry was a Jew boy, but he did not look so much like one. His hair was light brown and straight. Tonight he was dressed very neat, and when he came in the door he had hung a grown man’s panama hat with a feather in it on the hat rack.

It wasn’t his clothes that made her notice him. There was something changed about his face because he was without the horn-rimmed specs he usually wore. A red, droopy sty had come out on one of his eyes and he had to cock his head sideways like a bird in order to see. His long, thin hands kept touching around his sty as though it hurt him. When he asked for punch he stuck the paper cup right into her Dad’s face. She could tell he needed his glasses very bad. He was nervous and kept bumping into people. He didn’t ask any girl to prom except her--and that was because it was her party.

All the punch had been drunk. Her Dad was afraid she would be embarrassed, so he and her Mama had gone back to the kitchen to make lemonade. Some of the people were on the front porch and the sidewalk. She was glad to get out in the cool night air. After the hot, bright house she could smell the new autumn in the darkness.

Then she saw something she hadn’t expected. Along the edge of the sidewalk and in the dark street there was a bunch of neighborhood kids. Pete and Sucker Wells and Baby and Spareribs--the whole gang that started at below Bubber’s age and went on up to over twelve. There were even kids she didn’t know at all who had somehow smelled a party and come to hang around. And there were kids her age and older that she hadn’t invited either because they had done something mean to her or she had done something mean to them. They were all dirty and in plain shorts or draggle-tailed knickers or old everyday dresses. They were just hanging around in the dark to watch the party. She thought of two feelings when she saw those kids--one was sad and the other was a kind of warning.

‘I got this prom with you.’ Harry Minowitz made out like he was reading on his card, but she could see nothing was written on it. Her Dad had come onto the porch and blown the whistle that meant the beginning of the first prom.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Let’s get going.’

They started out to walk around the block. In the long dress she still felt very ritzy. ‘Look yonder at Mick Kelly!’ one of the kids in the dark hollered. ‘Look at her!’ She just walked on like she hadn’t heard, but it was that Spare-ribs, and some day soon she would catch him. She and Harry walked fast along the dark sidewalk, and when they came to the end of the street they turned down another block.

‘How old are you now, Mick--thirteen?’

‘Going on fourteen.’

She knew what he was thinking. It used to worry her all the time. Five feet six inches tall and a hundred and three pounds, and she was only thirteen. Every kid at the party was a runt beside her, except Harry, who was only a couple of inches shorter. No boy wanted to prom with a girl so much taller than him. But maybe cigarettes would help stunt the rest of her growth.

‘I grew three and a fourth inches just in last year,’ she said.

‘Once I saw a lady at the fair who was eight and a half feet tall. But you probably won’t grow that big.’

Harry stopped beside a dark crepe myrtle bush. Nobody was in sight. He took something out of his pocket and started fooling with whatever it was. She leaned over to see--it was his pair of specs and he was wiping them with his handkerchief.

‘Pardon me,’ he said. Then he put on his glasses and she could hear him breathe deep.

‘You ought to wear your specs all the time.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How come you go around without them?’

The night was very quiet and dark. Harry held her elbow when they crossed the street.

‘There’s a certain young lady back at the party that thinks it’s sissy for a fellow to wear glasses. This certain person--oh well, maybe I am a--’ He didn’t finish. Suddenly he tightened up and ran a few steps and sprang for a leaf about four feet above his head. She just could see that high leaf in the dark. He had a good spring to his jumping and he got it the first time. Then he put the leaf in his mouth and shadow-boxed for a few punches in the dark. She caught up with him. As usual a song was in her mind. She was humming to herself. ‘What’s that you’re singing? ‘ .It’s a piece by a fellow named Mozart’ Harry felt pretty good. He was sidestepping with his feet like a fast boxer. ‘That sounds like a sort of German name.’

‘I reckon so.’

‘Fascist?’ he asked. ‘What?’

‘I say is that Mozart a Fascist or a Nazi? ‘ Mick thought a minute. ‘No. They’re new, and this fellow’s been dead some time.’

‘It’s a good thing.’ He began punching in the dark again. He wanted her to ask why. ‘I say it’s a good thing,’ he said again. ‘Why? ‘ ‘Because I hate Fascists. If I met one walking on the street I’d kill him.’ She looked at Harry. The leaves against the street light made quick, freckly shadows on his face. He was excited. ‘How come?’ she asked. ‘Gosh! Don’t you ever read the paper? You see, it’s this way--‘ They had come back around the block. A commotion was going on at her house. People were yelling and running on the sidewalk. A heavy sickness came in her belly. There’s not time to explain unless we prom around the block again. I don’t mind telling you why I hate Fascists. I’d like to tell about it.’ This was probably the first chance he had got to spiel these ideas out to somebody. But she didn’t have time to listen.

She was busy looking at what she saw in the front of her house. ‘O.K. I’ll see you later.’ The prom was over now, so she could look and put her mind on the mess she saw.

What had happened while she was gone? When she left the people were standing around in the fine clothes and it was a real party. Now--after just five minutes--the place looked more like a crazy house. While she was gone those kids had come out of the dark and right into the party itself. The nerve they had! There was old Pete Wells banging out of the front door with a cup of punch hi his hand. They bellowed and ran and mixed with the invited people--in their old loose-legged knickers and everyday clothes.

Baby Wilson messed around on the front porch--and Baby wasn’t more than four years old. Anybody could see she ought to be home in bed by now, same as Bubber. She walked down the steps one at a time, holding the punch high up over her head. There was no reason for her to be here at all. Mister Brannon was her uncle and she could get free candy and drinks at his place any time she wanted to. As soon as she was on the sidewalk Mick caught her by the arm. ‘You go right home, Baby Wilson. Go on, now.’ Mick looked around to see what else she could do to straighten things out again like they ought to be. She went up to Sucker Wells. He stood farther down the sidewalk, where it was dark, holding his paper cup and looking at everybody in a dreamy way. Sucker was seven years old and he had on shorts. His chest and feet were naked. He wasn’t causing any of the commotion, but she was mad I as hell at what had happened.

She grabbed Sucker by the shoulders and began to shake him.

At first he held his jaws tight, but after a minute his teeth began to rattle. ‘You go home, Sucker Wells. You quit hanging around where you’re not invited.’ When she let him go, Sucker tucked his tail and walked slowly down the street.

But he didn’t go all the way home. After he got to the corner she saw him sit down on the curb and watch the party where he thought she couldn’t see him.

For a minute she felt good about shaking the spit out of Sucker. And then right afterward she had a bad worry feeling in her and she started to let him come back. The big kids were the ones who messed up everything. Real brats they were, and with the worst nerve she had ever seen.

Drinking up the refreshments and ruining the real party into all this commotion. They slammed through the front door and hollered and bumped into each other. She went up to Pete Wells because he was the worst of all. He wore his football helmet and butted into people. Pete was every bit of fourteen, yet he was still stuck in the seventh grade. She went up to him, but he was too big to shake like Sucker. When she told him to go home he shimmied and made a nose dive at her.

‘I been in six different states. Florida, Alabama--. Made out of silver cloth with a sash. The party was all messed up. Everybody was talking at once.

The invited people from Vocational were mixed with the neighborhood gang. The boys and the girls still stood in separate bunches, though---and nobody prommed. In the house the lemonade was just about gone. There was only a little puddle of water with floating lemon peels at the bottom of the bowl. Her Dad always acted too nice with kids. He had served out the punch to anybody who stuck a cup at him.

Portia was serving the sandwiches when she went into the dining-room. In five minutes they were all gone. She only got one--a jelly kind with pink sops come through the bread.

Portia stayed in the dining-room to watch the party. ‘I having too good a time to leave,’ she said. ‘I done sent word to Highboy and Willie to go on with the Saturday Night without me. Everbody so excited here I going to wait and see the end of this party.’

Excitement--that was the word. She could feel it all through the room and on the porch and the sidewalk. She felt excited, too. It wasn’t just her dress and the beautiful way her face looked when she passed by the hat rack mirror and saw the red paint on her cheeks and the rhinestone tiara in her hair. Maybe it was the decoration and all these Vocational people and kids being jammed together.

‘Watch her run!’

‘Ouch! Cut it out--’

‘Act your age!’

A bunch of girls were running down the street, holding up their dresses and with the hair flying out behind them. Some boys had cut off the long, sharp spears of a Spanish bayonet bush and they were chasing the girls with them.

Freshmen in Vocational all dressed up for a real prom party and acting just like kids. It was half playlike and half not playlike at all. A boy came up to her with a sticker and she started running too.

The idea of the party was over entirely now. This was just a regular playing-out. But it was the wildest night she had ever seen. The kids had caused it. They were like a catching sickness, and their coming to the party made all the other people forget about High School and being almost grown. It was like just before you take a bath in the afternoon when you might wallow around in the back yard and get plenty dirty just for the good feel of it before getting into the tub. Everybody was a wild kid playing out on Saturday night--and she felt like the very wildest of all.

She hollered and pushed and was the first to try any new stunt.

She made so much noise and moved around so fast she couldn’t notice what anybody else was doing. Her breath wouldn’t come fast enough to let her do all the wild things she wanted to do.

The ditch down the street! The ditch! The ditch!’ She started for it first. Down a block they had put in new pipes under the street and dug a swell deep ditch. The flambeaux around the edge were bright and red in the dark. She wouldn’t wait to climb down. She ran until she reached the little wavy flames and then she jumped.

With her tennis shoes she would have landed like a cat--but the high pumps made her slip and her stomach hit this pipe.

Her breath was stopped. She lay quiet with her eyes closed.

The party--For a long time she remembered how she thought it would be, how she imagined the new people at Vocational. And about the bunch she wanted to be with every day. She would feel different in the halls now, knowing that they were not something special but like any other kids. It was O.K. about the ruined party. But it was all over. It was the end.

Mick climbed out of the ditch. Some kids were playing around the little pots of flames. The fire made a red glow and there were long, quick shadows. One boy had gone home and put on a dough-face bought in advance for Halloween. Nothing was changed about the party except her.

She walked home slowly. When she passed kids she didn’t speak or look at them. The decoration in the hall was torn down and the house seemed very empty because everyone had gone outside. In the bathroom she took off the blue evening dress. The hem was torn and she folded it so the raggedy place wouldn’t show. The rhinestone tiara was lost somewhere. Her old shorts and shirt were lying on the floor just where she had left them. She put them on. She was too big to wear shorts any more after this. No more after this night Not any more.

Mick stood out on the front porch. Her face was very white without the paint. She cupped her hands before her mouth and took a deep breath. ‘Everybody go home! The door is shut! The party is over!’ In the quiet, secret night she was by herself again. It was not late-yellow squares of light snowed in the windows of the houses along the streets. She walked slow, with her hands in her pockets and her head to one side. For a long time she walked without noticing the direction.

Then the houses were far apart from each other and there were yards with big trees in them and black shrubbery. She looked around and saw she was near this house where she had gone so many times in the summer. Her feet had just taken her here without her knowing. When she came to the house she waited to be sure no person could see. Then she went through the side yard.

The radio was on as usual. For a second she stood by the window and watched the people inside. The bald-headed man and the gray-haired lady were playing cards at a table. Mick sat on the ground. This was a very fine and secret place. Close around were thick cedars so that she was completely hidden by herself. The radio was no good tonight--somebody sang popular songs that all ended in the same way. It was like she was empty. She reached in her pockets and felt around with her fingers. There were raisins and a buckeye and a string of beads--one cigarette with matches. She lighted the cigarette and put her arms around her knees. It was like she was so empty there wasn’t even a feeling or thought in her.

One program came on after another, and all of them were punk. She didn’t especially care. She smoked and picked a little bunch of grass blades. After a while a new announcer started talking. He mentioned Beethoven. She had read in the library about that musician--his name was pronounced with an a and spelled with double e. He was a German fellow like Mozart When he was living he spoke in a foreign language and lived in a foreign place--like she wanted to do. The announcer said they were going to play his third symphony.

She only halfway listened because she wanted to walk some more and she didn’t care much what they played. Then the music started. Mick raised her head and her fist went up to her throat.

How did it come? For a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other. Like a walk or march. Like God strutting in the night. The outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart. She could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight. After a while the music came again, harder and loud. It didn’t have anything to do with God. This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her--the real plain her.

She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to certain wonderful parts and think them over so that later she would not forget--or should she let go and listen to each part that came without thinking or trying to remember? Golly! The whole world was this music and she could not listen hard enough. Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart And the first part was over.

This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored--a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of instruments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again.

But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best--glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music nice this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

It was over, and she sat very stiff with her arms around her knees. Another program came on the radio and she put her fingers in her ears. The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.

The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. The night was very dark. Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp.

She grabbed a handful of them and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night.

With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.

Why hadn’t the explorers known by looking at the sky that the world was round? The sky was curved, like the inside of a huge glass ball, very dark blue with the sprinkles of bright stars. The night was quiet. There was the smell of warm cedars. She was not trying to think of the music at all when it came back to her. The first part happened hi her mind just as it had been played. She listened in a quiet, slow way and thought the notes out like a problem in geometry so she would remember. She could see the shape of the sounds very clear and she would not forget them.

Now she felt good. She whispered some words out loud: ‘Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.’ Why did she think of that? Everybody in the past few years knew there wasn’t any real God. When she thought of what she used to imagine was God she could only see Mister Singer with a long, white sheet around him. God was silent--maybe that was why she was reminded. She said the words again, just as she would speak them to Mister Singer: ‘Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth not what I do.’

This part of the music was beautiful and clear. She could sing it now whenever she wanted to. Maybe later on, when she had just waked up some morning, more of the music would come back to her. If ever she heard the symphony again there would be other parts to add to what was already in her mind. And maybe if she could hear it four more times, just four more times, she would know it all. Maybe.

Once again she listened to this opening part of the music.

Then the notes grew slower and soft and it was like she was sinking down slowly into the dark ground.

Mick awoke with a jerk. The air had turned chilly, and as she was coming up out of the sleep she dreamed old Etta Kelly was taking all the cover. ‘Gimme some blanket --’ she tried to say. Then she opened her eyes. The sky was very black and all the stars were gone. The grass was wet.

She got up in a hurry because her Dad would be worried. Then she remembered the music. She couldn’t tell whether the time was midnight or three in the morning, so she started beating it for home in a rush. The air had a smell in it like autumn. The music was loud and quick in her mind, and she ran faster and faster on the sidewalks leading to the home block.

BY OCTOBER the days were blue and cool. Biff Brannon changed his light seersucker trousers for dark-blue serge ones.

Behind the counter of the cafe he installed a machine that made hot chocolate. Mick was very partial to hot chocolate, and she came in three or four times a week to drink a cup. He served it to her for a nickel instead of a dime and he wanted to give it to her free. He watched her as she stood behind the counter and he was troubled and sad. He wanted to reach out his hand and touch her sunburned, tousled hair--but not as he had ever touched a woman. In him there was an uneasiness, and when he spoke to her his voice had a rough, strange sound.

There were many worries on his mind. For one thing, Alice was not well. She worked downstairs as usual from seven in the morning until ten at night, but she walked very slowly and brown circles were beneath her eyes. It was in the business that she showed this illness most plainly. One Sunday, when she wrote out the day’s menu on the typewriter, she marked the special dinner with chicken a la king at twenty cents instead of fifty, and did not discover the mistake until several customers had already ordered and were ready to pay. Another time she gave back two fives and three ones as change for ten dollars. Biff would stand looking at her for a long time, rubbing his nose thoughtfully and with his eyes half-closed.

They did not speak of this together. At night he worked downstairs while she slept, and during the morning she managed the restaurant alone. When they worked together he stayed behind the cash register and looked after the kitchen and the tables, as was their custom. They did not talk except on matters of business, but Biff would stand watching her with his face puzzled.

Then in the afternoon of the eighth of October there was a sudden cry of pain from the room where they slept. Biff hurried upstairs. Within an hour they had taken Alice to the hospital and the doctor had removed from her a tumor almost the size of a newborn child. And then within another hour Alice was dead.

Biff sat by her bed at the hospital in stunned reflection. He had been present when she died. Her eyes had been drugged and misty from the ether and then they hardened like glass.

The nurse and the doctor withdrew from the room. He continued to look into her face. Except for the bluish pallor there was little difference. He noted each detail about her as though he had net watched her every day for twenty-one years.

Then gradually as he sat there his thoughts turned to a picture that had long been stored inside him.

The cold green ocean and a hot gold strip of sand. The little children playing on the edge of the silky line of foam. The sturdy brown baby girl, the thin little naked boys, the half-grown children running and calling out to each other with sweet, shrill voices. Children were here whom he knew, Mick and his niece, Baby, and there were also strange young faces no one had ever seen before. Biff bowed his head.

After a long while he got up from his chair and stood in the middle of the room. He could hear his sister-in-law, Lucile, walking up and down the hall outside. A fat bee crawled across the top of the dresser, and adroitly Biff caught it in his hand and put it out the open window. He glanced at the dead face one more time, and then with widowed sedateness he opened the door mat led out into the hospital corridor.

Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs.

Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved--so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living? Why? Biff bent close over his sewing and meditated on many things.

He sewed skillfully, and the calluses on the tips of his fingers were so hard that he pushed the needle through the cloth without a thimble. Already the mourning bands had been sewn around the arms of two gray suits, and now he was on the last.

The day was bright and hot, and the first dead leaves of the new autumn scraped on the sidewalks. He had gone out early.

Each minute was very long. Before him there was infinite leisure. He had locked the door of the restaurant and hung on the outside a white wreath of lilies. To the funeral home he went first and looked carefully at the selection of caskets. He touched the materials of the linings and tested the strength of the frames.

‘What is the name of the crepe of this one--Georgette?’

The undertaker answered his questions in an oily, unctuous voice.

‘And what is the percentage of cremations in your business?’

Out on the street again Biff walked with measured formality.

From the west there was a warm wind and the sun was very bright. His watch had stopped, so he turned down toward the street where Wilbur Kelly had recently put out his sign as watchmaker. Kelly was sitting at his bench in a patched bathrobe. His shop was also a bedroom, and the baby Mick pulled around with her in a wagon sat quietly on a pallet on the floor. Each minute was so long that in it there was ample time for contemplation and enquiry. He asked Kelly to explain the exact use of jewels in a watch. He noted the distorted look of Kelly’s right eye as it appeared through his watchmaker’s loupe. They talked for a while about Chamberlain and Munich. Then as the time was still early he decided to go up to the mute’s room.

Singer was dressing for work. Last night there had come from him a letter of condolence. He was to be a pallbearer at the funeral. Biff sat on the bed and they smoked a cigarette together. Singer looked at him now and then with his green observant eyes. He offered him a drink of coffee. Biff did not talk, and once the mute stopped to pat him on the shoulder and look for a second into his face. When Singer was dressed they went out together.

Biff bought the black ribbon at the store and saw the preacher of Alice’s church. When all was arranged he came back home.

To put things in order--that was the thought in his mind. He bundled up Alice’s clothes and personal possessions to give to Lucile. He thoroughly cleaned and straightened the bureau drawers. He even rearranged the shelves of the kitchen downstairs and removed the gaily colored crepe streamers from the electric fans. Then when this was done he sat in the tub and bathed himself all over. And the morning was done.

Biff bit the thread and smoothed the black band on the sleeve of his coat. By now Lucile would be waiting for him. He and she and Baby would ride in the funeral car together. He put away the work basket and fitted the coat with the mourning band very carefully on his shoulders. He glanced swiftly around the room to see that all was well before going out again. An hour later he was in Lucile’s kitchenette. He sat with his legs crossed, a napkin over his thigh, drinking a cup of tea. Lucile and Alice had been so different in all ways that it was not easy to realize they were sisters. Lucile was thin and dark, and today she had dressed completely in black. She was fixing Baby’s hair. The kid waited patiently on the kitchen table with her hands folded in her lap while her mother worked on her. The sunlight was quiet and mellow in the room. ‘Bartholomew--’ said Lucile. .What?’

‘Don’t you ever start thinking backward?’

‘I don’t,’said Biff.

‘You know it’s like I got to wear blinders all the time so I won’t think sideways or in the past. All I can let myself think about is going to work every day and fixing meals and Baby’s future.’

That’s the right attitude.’

‘I been giving Baby finger waves down at the shop. But they come out so quick I been thinking about letting her have a permanent. I don’t want to give it to her myself--I think maybe take her up to Atlanta when I go to the cosmetologist convention and let her get it there.’

‘Motherogod! She’s not but four. It’s liable to scare her. And besides, permanents tend to coarsen the hair.’

Lucile dipped the comb in a glass of water and mashed the curls over Baby’s ears. ‘No, they don’t. And she wants one.

Young as Baby is, she already has as much ambition as I got.

And that’s saying plenty.’

Biff polished his nails on the palm of his hand and shook his head.

‘Every time Baby and I go to the movies and see those kids in all the good roles she feels the same way I do. I swear she does, Bartholomew. I can’t even get her to eat her supper afterward.’

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Biff said.

‘She’s getting along so fine with her dancing and expression lessons. Next year I want her to start with the piano because I think it’ll be a help for her to play some.

Her dancing teacher is going to give her a solo in the soiree. I feel like I got to push Baby all I can. Because the sooner she gets started on her career the better it’ll be for both of us.’

‘Motherogod!’

‘You don’t understand. A child with talent can’t be treated like ordinary kids. That’s one reason I want to get Baby out of this common neighborhood. I can’t let her start to talk vulgar like these brats around her or run wild like they do.’

‘I know the kids on this block,’ Biff said. ‘They’re all right.’

Those Kelly kids across the street--the Crane boy--.

‘You know good and well that none of them are up to Baby’s level.’

Lucile set the last wave in Baby’s hair. She pinched the kid’s little cheeks to put more color in them. Then she lifted her down from the table. For the funeral Baby had on a little white dress with white shoes and white socks and even small white gloves. There was a certain way Baby always held her head when people looked at her, and it was turned that way now.

They sat for a while in the small, hot kitchenette without saying anything. Then Lucile began to cry. ‘It’s not like we was ever very close as sisters. We had our differences and we didn’t see much of each other. Maybe it was because I was so much younger. But there’s something about your own blood kin, and when anything like this happens--’ Biff clucked soothingly.

‘I know how you two were,’ she said. It wasn’t all just roses with you and she. But maybe that sort of makes it worse for you now.’

Biff caught Baby under the arms and swung her up to his shoulder. The kid was getting heavier. He held her carefully as he stepped into the living-room. Baby felt warm and close on his shoulder, and her little silk skirt was white against the dark cloth of his coat. She grasped one of his ears very tight with her little hand.

‘Unca Biff! Watch me do the split.’

Gently he set Baby on her feet again. She curved both arms above her head and her feet slid slowly in opposite directions on the yellow waxed floor. In a moment she was seated with one leg stretched straight in front of her and one behind. She posed with her arms held at a fancy angle, looking sideways at the wall with a sad expression.

She scrambled up again. ‘Watch me do a handspring. Watch me do a--’

‘Honey, be a little quieter,’ Lucile said. She sat down beside Biff on the plush sofa. ‘Don’t she remind you a little of him--something about her eyes and face?’

‘Hell, no. I can’t see the slightest resemblance between Baby and Leroy Wilson.’

Lucile looked too thin and worn out for her age. Maybe it was the black dress and because she had been crying. ‘After all, we got to admit he’s Baby’s father,’ she said.

‘Can’t you ever forget about that man?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I always been a fool about two things. And that’s Leroy and Baby.’

Bill’s new growth of beard was blue against the pale skin of his face and his voice sounded tired. ‘Don’t you ever just think a thing through and find out what’s happened and what ought to come from that? Don’t you ever use logic--if these are the given facts this ought to be the result?’

‘Not about him, I guess.’

Biff spoke in a weary manner and his eyes were almost closed.

‘You married this certain party when you were seventeen, and afterward there was just one racket between you after another.

You divorced him. Then two years later you married him a second time. And now he’s gone off again and you don’t know where he is. It seems like those facts would show you one thing--you two are not suited to each other. And that’s aside from the more personal side--the sort of man this certain party happens to be anyway.’

‘God knows I been realizing all along he’s a heel. I just hope he won’t ever knock on that door again.’

‘Look, Baby,’ Biff said quickly. He laced his fingers and held up his hands. ‘This is the church and this is the steeple. Open the door and here are God’s people.’

Lucile shook her head. ‘You don’t have to bother about Baby. I tell her everything. She knows about the whole mess from A to Z.’

‘Then if he comes back you’ll let him stay here and sponge on you just as long as he pleases--like it was before?’

‘Yeah. I guess I would. Every time the doorbell or the phone rings, every time anybody steps up on the porch, something in the back of my mind thinks about that man.’ Biff spread out the palms of his hands. ‘There you are.’ The clock struck two.

The room was very close and hot. Baby turned another handspring and made a split again on the waxed floor. Then Biff took her up into his lap. Her little legs dangled against his shin. She unbuttoned his vest and burrowed her face into him.

‘Listen,’ Lucile said. ‘If I ask you a question will you promise to answer me the truth?’

‘Sure.’

‘No matter what it is?’

Biff touched Baby’s soft gold hair and laid his hand gently on the side of her little head. ‘Of course.’

‘It was about seven years ago. Soon after we was married the first time. And he came in one night from your place with big knots all over his head and told me you caught him by the neck and banged his head against the side of the wall. He made up some tale about why you did it, but I want to know the real reason.’

Biff turned the wedding ring on his finger. I just never did like Leroy, and we had a fight In those days I was different from now.’

‘No. There was some definite thing you did that for. We been knowing each other a pretty long time, and I understand by now that you got a real reason for every single thing you ever do. Your mind runs by reasons instead of just wants. Now, you promised you’d tell me what it was, and I want to know.’

‘It wouldn’t mean anything now.’

‘I tell you I got to know.’

‘All right,’ Biff said. ‘He came in that night and started drinking, and when he was drunk he shot off his mouth about you. He said he would come home about once a month and beat hell out of you and you would take it. But then afterward you would step outside in the hall and laugh aloud a few times so that the neighbors in the other rooms would think you both had just been playing around and it had all been a joke. That’s what happened, so just forget about it’ Lucile sat up straight and there was a red spot on each of her cheeks. ‘You see, Bartholomew, that’s why I got to be like I have blinders on all the time so as not to think backward or sideways. All I can let my mind stay on is going to work every day and fixing three meals here at home and Baby’s career.’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope you’ll do that too, and not start thinking backward.’

Biff leaned his head down on his chest and closed his eyes.

During the whole long day he had not been able to think of Alice. When he tried to remember her face there was a queer blankness in him. The only thing about her that was clear in his mind was her feet--stumpy, very soft and white with puffy toes. The bottoms were pink and near the left heel there was a tiny brown mole. The night they were married he had taken off her shoes and stockings and kissed her feet. And, come to think of it, that was worth considerable, because the Japanese believe that the choicest part of a woman--Biff stirred and glanced at his watch. In a little while they would leave for the church where the funeral would be held.

In his mind he went through the motions of the ceremony. The church-riding, dirge-paced behind the hearse with Lucile and Baby--the group of people standing with bowed heads in the September sunshine. Sun on the white tombstones, on the fading flowers and the can--was tent covering the newly dug grave. Then home again ‘ --and what? ‘No matter how much you quarrel there’s something about your own blood sister,’ Lucile said.

Biff raised his head. ‘Why don’t you marry again? Some nice young man who’s never had a wife before, who would take care of you and Baby? If you’d just forget about Leroy you would make a good man a fine wife.’

Lucile was slow to answer. Then finally she said: ‘You know how we always been--we nearly all the time understand each other pretty well without any kind of throbs either way. Well, that’s the closest I ever want to be to any man again.’

‘I feel the same way,’ Biff said.

Half an hour later there was a knock on the door. The car for the funeral was parked before the house. Biff and Lucile got up slowly. The three of them, with Baby in her white silk dress a little ahead, walked in solemn quietness outside.

Biff kept the restaurant closed during the next day. Then in the early evening he removed the faded wreath of lilies from the front door and opened the place for business again. Old customers came in with sad faces and talked with him a few minutes by the cash register before giving their orders. The usual crowd was present--Singer, Blount, various men who worked in stores along the block and in the mills down on the river. After supper Mick Kelly showed up with her little brother and put a nickel into the slot machine. When she lost the first coin she banged on the machine with her fists and kept opening the receiver to be sure that nothing had come down. Then she put in another nickel and almost won the jackpot. Coins came clattering out and rolled along the floor.

The kid and her little brother both kept looking around pretty sharp as they picked them up, so that no customer would put his foot on one before they could get to it The mute was at the table in the middle of the room with his dinner before him.

Across from him Jake Blount sat drinking beer, dressed in his Sunday clothes, and talking. Everything was the same as it had always been before. After a while the air became gray with cigarette smoke and the noise increased. Biff was alert, and no sound or movement escaped him.

‘I go around,’ Blount said. He leaned earnestly across the table and kept his eyes on the mute’s face. ‘I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can’t make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can’t seem to make them see, the truth.’

Singer nodded and wiped his mouth with his napkin. His dinner had got cold because he couldn’t look down to eat, but he was so polite that he let Blount go on talking. The words of the two children at the slot machine were high and clear against the coarser voices of the men. Mick was putting her nickels back into the slot. Often she looked around at the middle table, but the mute had his back turned to her and did not see.

‘Mister Singer’s got fried chicken for his supper and he hasn’t eaten one piece yet,’ the little boy said.

Mick pulled down the lever of the machine very slowly. ‘Mind your own business.’

‘You’re always going up to his room or some place where you know he’ll be.’

‘I told you to hush, Bubber Kelly.’

‘You do.’

Mick shook him until his teeth rattled and turned him around toward the door. ‘You go on home to bed. I already told you I get a bellyful of you and Ralph in the daytime, and I don’t want you hanging around me at night when I’m supposed to be free.’

Bubber held out his grimy little hand. Well, give me a nickel, then.’ When he had put the money in his shirt pocket he left for home.

Biff straightened his coat and smoothed back his hair. His tie was solid black, and on the sleeve of his gray coat there was the mourning band that he had sewn there. He wanted to go up to the slot machine and talk with Mick, but something would not let him. He sucked in his breath sharply and drank a glass of water. A dance orchestra came in on the radio, but he did not want to listen. All the tunes in the last ten years were so alike he couldn’t tell one from the other. Since 1928 he had not enjoyed music. Yet when he was young he used to play the mandolin, and he knew the words and the melody of every current song.

He laid his finger on the side of his nose and cocked his head to one side. Mick had grown so much in the past year that soon she would be taller than he was. She was dressed in the red sweater and blue pleated skirt she had worn every day since school started. Now the pleats had come out and the hem dragged loose around her sharp, jutting knees. She was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl.

And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men’s voices grow high and reedy and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow dark little mustaches. And he even proved it himself--the part of him that sometimes almost wished he was a mother and that Mick and Baby were his kids.

Abruptly Biff turned from the cash register.

The newspapers were in a mess. For two weeks he hadn’t filed a single one. He lifted a stack of them from under the counter.

With a practiced eye he glanced from the masthead to the bottom of the sheet. Tomorrow he would look over the stacks of them in the back room and see about changing the system of files. Build shelves and use those solid boxes canned goods were shipped in for drawers. Chronologically from October 27, 1918, on up to the present date. With folders and top markings outlining historical events. Three sets of outlines--one international beginning with the Armistice and leading through the Munich aftermath, the second national, the third all the local dope from the time Mayor Lester shot his wife at the country club up to the Hudson Mill fire. Everything for the past twenty years docketed and outlined and complete. Biff beamed quietly behind his hand as he rubbed his jaw. And yet Alice had wanted him to haul out the papers so she could turn the room into a ladies’ toilet. That was just what she had nagged him to do, but for once he had battered her down. For that one time.

With peaceful absorption Biff settled down to the details of the newspaper before him. He read steadily and with concentration, but from habit some secondary part of him was alert to everything around him. Jake Blount was still talking, and often he would hit his fist on the table. The mute sipped beer. Mick walked restlessly around the radio and stared at the customers. Biff read every word in the first paper and made a few notes on the margins.

Then suddenly he looked up with a surprised expression. His mouth had been open for a yawn and he snapped it shut. The radio swung into an old song that dated back to the time when he and Alice were engaged. ‘Just a Baby’s Prayer at Twilight.’

They had taken the streetcar one Sunday to Old Sardis Lake and had rented a rowboat. At sunset he played on the mandolin while she sang. She had on a sailor hat, and when he put his arm around her waist she--Alice--a dragnet for lost feelings. Biff folded the newspapers and put them back under the counter. He stood on one foot and then the other. Finally he called across the room to Mick.

‘You’re not listening, are you?’

Mick turned off the radio. ‘No. Nothing on tonight.’ All of that he would keep out of his mind, and concentrate on something else. He leaned over the counter and watched one customer after another. Then at last his attention rested on the mute at the middle table. He saw Mick edge gradually up to him and at his invitation sit down. Singer pointed to something on the menu and the waitress brought a Coca-Cola for her. Nobody but a freak like a deaf-mute, cut off from other people, would ask a right young girl to sit down to the table where he was drinking with another man. Blount and Mick both kept their eyes on Singer. They talked, and the mute’s expression changed as he watched them. It was a funny thing. The reason --was it in them or in him? He sat very still with his hands in his pockets, and because he did not speak it made him seem superior. What did that fellow think and realize? What did he know? Twice during the evening Biff started to go over to the middle table, but each time he checked himself. After they were gone he still wondered what it was about this mute--and in the early dawn when he lay in bed he turned over questions and solutions in his mind without satisfaction. The puzzle had taken root in him. It worried him in the back of his mind and left him uneasy. There was something wrong.

3

MANY times Doctor Copeland talked to Mr. Singer. Truly he was not like other white men. He was a wise man, and he understood the strong, true purpose in a way that other white men could not. He listened, and in his face there was something gentle and Jewish, the knowledge of one who belongs to a race that is oppressed. On one occasion he took Mr. Singer with him on his rounds. He led him through cold and narrow passages smelling of dirt and sickness and fried fatback. He showed him a successful skin graft made on the face of a woman patient who had been severely burned. He treated a syphilitic child and pointed out to Mr. Singer the scaling eruption on the palms of the hand, the dull, opaque surface of the eye, the sloping upper front incisors. They visited two-room shacks that housed as many as twelve or fourteen persons. In a room where the fire burned low and orange on the hearth they were helpless while an old man strangled with pneumonia. Mr. Singer walked behind him and watched and understood. He gave nickels to the children, and because of his quietness and decorum he did not disturb the patients as would have another visitor. The days were chilly and treacherous. In the town there was an outbreak of influenza so that Dr. Copeland was busy most of the hours of the day and night. He drove through the Negro sections of the town in the high Dodge automobile he had used for the past nine years. He kept the isinglass curtains snapped to the windows to cut off the draughts, and tight around his neck he wore his gray wool shawl. During this time he did not see Portia or William or Highboy, but often he thought of them. Once when he was away Portia came to see him and left a note and borrowed half a sack of meal. There came a night when he was so exhausted that, although there were other calls to make, he drank hot milk and went to bed. He was cold and feverish so that at first he could not rest. Then it seemed that he had only begun to sleep when a voice called him. He got up wearily and, still in his long flannel nightshirt, he opened the front door. It was Portia. ‘The Lord Jesus help us, Father,’ she said. Doctor Copeland stood shivering with his nightshirt drawn close around his waist. He held his hand to his throat and looked at her and waited. ‘It about our Willie. He been a bad boy and done got hisself in mighty bad trouble. And us got to do something.’ Doctor Copeland walked from the hall with rigid steps. He stopped in the bedroom for his bathrobe, shawl, and slippers and went back to the kitchen. Portia was waiting for him there. The kitchen was lifeless and cold. ‘All right. What has he done? What is it?’

‘Just wait a minute. Just let me find brain room so I can study it all out and tell it to you plain.’ He crushed some sheets of newspaper lying on the hearth and picked up a few sticks of kindling.

‘Let me make the fire,’ Portia said. ‘You just sit down at the table, and soon as this here stove is hot us going to have a cup of coffee. Then maybe it all won’t seem so bad.’

‘There is not any coffee. I used the last of it yesterday.’

When he said this Portia began to cry. Savagely she stuffed paper and wood into the stove and lighted it with a trembling hand. ‘This here the way it is,’ she said. ‘Willie and Highboy were messing around tonight at a place where they got no business being. You know how I feels like I always got to keep my Willie and my Highboy close to me? Well, if I’d been there none of this trouble would of come about. But I were at the Ladies’ Meeting at the church and them boys got restless.

They went down to Madame Reba’s Palace of Sweet Pleasure.

And Father, this is sure one bad, wicked place. They got a man sells tickets on the bug--but they also got these strutting, bad-blood, tail-shaking nigger gals and these here red satin curtains and--’

‘Daughter,’ said Doctor Copeland irritably. He pressed his hands to the side of his head. ‘I know the place. Get to the point.’

‘Love Jones were there--and she is one bad colored gal.

Willie he drunk liquor and shimmied around with her until first thing you know he were in a fight. He were in a fight with this boy named Junebug--over Love. And for a while they fights there with their hands and then this Junebug got out his knife. Our Willie didn’t have no knife, so he commenced to bellow and run around the parlor. Then finally Highboy found Willie a razor and he backed up and nearbout cut this Junebug’s head off.’

Doctor Copeland drew his shawl closer around him. ‘Is he dead?’

‘That boy too mean to die. He in the hospital, but he going to be out and making trouble again before long.’

‘And William?’

‘The police come in and taken him to the jail in the Black Maria. He still locked up.’

‘And he did not get hurt?’

‘Oh, he got a busted eye and a little chunk cut out his behind.

But it won’t bother him none. What I can’t understand is how come he would be messing around with that Love. She at least ten shades blacker than I is and she the ugliest nigger I ever seen. She walk like she have a egg between her legs and don’t want to break it. She ain’t even clean. And here Willie done cut the buck like this over her.’

Doctor Copeland leaned closer to the stove and groaned. He coughed and his face stiffened. He held his paper handkerchief to his mouth and it became spotted with blood.

The dark skin of his face took on a greenish pallor.

‘Course Highboy come and tell me soon as it all happened. Understand, my Highboy didn’t have nothing to do with these here bad gals. He were just keeping Willie company. He so grieved about Willie he been sitting out on the street curb in front of the jail ever since.’ The fire-colored tears rolled down Portia’s face. ‘You know how us three has always been. Us haves our own plan and nothing ever went wrong with it before. Even money hasn’t bothered us none. Highboy he pay the rent and I buys the food--and Willie he takes care of Saturday Night. Us has always been like three-piece twinses.’

At last it was morning. The mill whistles blew for the first shift. The sun came out and brightened the clean saucepans hanging on the wall above the stove. They sat for a long time.

Portia pulled at the rings on her ears until her lobes were irritated and purplish red. Doctor Copeland still held his head in his hands.

‘Seem to me,’ Portia said finally, ‘if us can just get a lot of white peoples to write letters about Willie it might help out some. I already been to see Mr. Brannon. He written exactly what I told him to. He were at his cafe after it all happened like he is ever night. So I just went in there and explained how it was. I taken the letter home with me. I done put it in the Bible so I won’t lose it or dirty it’

‘What did the letter say?’

‘Mr. Brannon he wrote just hike I asked him to. The letter tell about how Willie has been working for Mr. Brannon going on three year. It tell how Willie is one fine upstanding colored boy and how he hasn’t ever been in no trouble before now. It tell how he always had plenty chances to take things in the cafe if he were like some other type of colored boy and how--’

‘Pshaw!’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘All that is no good.’

‘Us just can’t sit around and wait. With Willie locked up in the jail. My Willie, who is such a sweet boy even if he did do wrong tonight. Us just can’t sit around and wait’

‘We will have to. That is the only thing we can do.’

‘Well, I know I ain’t’ Portia got up from the chair. Her eyes roved distractedly around the room as though searching for something. Then abruptly she went toward the front door.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Where do you intend to go now?’

‘I got to work. I sure got to keep my job. I sure have to stay on with Mrs. Kelly and get my pay ever week.’

‘I want to go to the jail,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Maybe I can see William.’

‘I going to drop by the jail on my way to work. I got to send Highboy off to his work, too--else he liable to sit there grieving about Willie all the morning.’

Doctor Copeland dressed hurriedly and joined Portia in the hall. They went out into the cool, blue autumn morning. The men at the jail were rude to them and they were able to find out very little. Doctor Copeland then went to consult a lawyer with whom he had had dealings before. The following days were long and full of worried thoughts. At the end of three weeks the trial for William was held and he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to nine months of hard labor and sent immediately to a prison in the northern part of the state.

Even now the strong true purpose was always in him, but he had no time in which to think on it He went from one house to another and the work was unending. Very early in the morning he drove off in the automobile, and then at eleven o’clock the patients came to the office. After the sharp autumn air outside there would be a hot, stale odor in the house that made him cough. The benches in the hall were always full of sick and patient Negroes who waited for him, and sometimes even the front porch and his bedroom would be crowded. All the day and frequently half the night there was work. Because of the tiredness in him he wanted sometimes to lie down on the floor and beat with his fists and cry. If he could rest he might get well. He had tuberculosis of the lungs, and he measured his temperature four times a day and had an X-ray once a month.

But he could not rest. For there was another thing bigger than the tiredness--and this was the strong true purpose.

He would think of this purpose until sometimes, after a long day and night of work, he would become blank so that he would forget for a minute just what the purpose was. And then it would come to him again and he would be restless and eager to take on a new task. But the words often stuck in his mouth, and his voice now was hoarse and not loud as it had been before. He pushed the words into the sick and patient faces of the Negroes who were his people.

Often he talked to Mr. Singer. With him he spoke of chemistry and the enigma of the universe. Of the infinitesimal sperm and the cleavage of the ripened egg. Of the complex million-fold division of the cells. Of the mystery of living matter and the simplicity of death. And also he spoke with him of race.

‘My people were brought from the great plains, and the dark, green jungles,’ he said once to Mr. Singer. ‘On the long chained journeys to the coast they died by the thousands. Only the strong survived. Chained in the foul ships that brought them here they died again. Only the hardy Negroes with will could live. Beaten and chained and sold on the block, the least of these strong ones perished again. And finally through the bitter years the strongest of my people are still here. Their sons and daughters, their grandsons and great grandsons.’

‘I come to borrow and I come to ask a favor,’ Portia said.

Doctor Copeland was alone in his kitchen when she walked through the hall and stood in the doorway to tell him this. Two weeks had passed since William had been sent away. Portia was changed. Her hair was not oiled and combed as usual, her eyes were bloodshot as though she had partaken of strong drink. Her cheeks were hollow, and with her sorrowful, honey-colored face she truly resembled her mother now.

‘You know them nice white plates and cups you have?’

‘You may have them and keep them.’

‘No, I only wants to borrow. And also I come here to ask a favor of you.’

‘Anything you wish,’ said Doctor Copeland.

Portia sat down across the table from her father. First I suppose I better explain. Yesdiddy I got this here message from Grandpapa saying they all coming in tomorrow and spend the night and part of Sunday with us. Course they been mighty worried about Willie, and Grandpapa feel like us all ought to get together again. He right, too. I sure do want to see our kinfolks again. I been mighty homesick since Willie been gone.’

‘You may have the plates and anything else you can find around here,’ Doctor Copeland said. ‘But hold up your shoulders, Daughter. Your carriage is bad.’

‘It going to be a real reunion. You know this is the first time Grandpapa have spent the night in town for twenty years. He haven’t ever slept outside of his own home except two times in his whole life. And anyway he kind of nervous at night. All during the dark he have to get up and drink water and be sure the childrens is covered up and all right. I a little worried about if Grandpapa will be comfortable here.’

‘Anything of mine you think you will need--’

‘Course Lee Jackson bringing them in,’ said Portia. ‘And with Lee Jackson it going to take them all day to get here. I not expecting them till around supper-time. Course Grandpapa always so patient with Lee Jackson he wouldn’t make him hurry none.’

‘My soul! Is that old mule still alive? He must be fully eighteen years old.’

‘He even older than that. Grandpapa been working him now for twenty years. He done had that mule so long he always say it just like Lee Jackson is one of his blood kin. He understand and love Lee Jackson like he do his own grandchildrens. I never seen a human who know so good what a animal is thinking as Grandpapa. He haves a close feeling for everthing that walks and eats.’

‘Twenty years is a long time to work a mule.’

‘It sure is. Now Lee Jackson is right feeble. But Grandpapa sure do take good care of him. When they plows out in the hot sun Lee Jackson haves a great big straw hat on his head just like Grandpapa--with holes cut for his ears. That mule’s straw hat is a real joke, and Lee Jackson won’t budge a step when he going to plow without that hat is on his head.’

Doctor Copeland took down the white china dishes from the shelf and began to wrap them in a newspaper. ‘Have you enough pots and pans to cook all the food you will need?’

‘Plenty,’ Portia said. ‘I not going to any special trouble.

Granpapa, he Mr. Thoughtful hisself--and he always bring in something to help out when the fambly come to dinner. I only going to have plenty meal and cabbage and two pounds of nice mullet.’

‘Sounds good.’

Portia laced her nervous yellow fingers together. ‘There one thing I haven’t told you yet. A surprise. Buddy going to | be here as well as Hamilton. Buddy just come back from Mobile. He helping out on the farm now.’

‘It has been five years since I last saw Karl Marx.’

‘And that just what I come to ask you about,’ said Portia. ‘You remember when I walked in the door I told you I come to borrow and to ask a favor.’

Doctor Copeland cracked the points of his fingers. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, I come to see if I can’t get you to be there tomorrow at the reunion. All your childrens but Willie going to be there.

Seem to me like you ought to join us. I sure will be glad if you come.’

Hamilton and Karl Marx and Portia--and William. Doctor Copeland removed his spectacles and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. For a minute he saw the four of them very plainly as they were a long time ago. Then he looked up and straightened his glasses on his nose. Thank you,’ he said. ‘I will come.’

That night he sat alone by the stove in the dark room and remembered. He thought back to the time of his childhood.

His mother had been born a slave, and after freedom she was a washerwoman. His father was a preacher, who had once known John Brown. They had taught him, and out of the two or three dollars they had earned each week they saved. When he was seventeen years old they had sent him North with eighty dollars hidden in his shoe. He had worked in a blacksmith’s shop and as a waiter and as a bellboy in a hotel.

And all the while he studied and read and went to school. His father died and his mother did not live long without him. After ten years of struggle he was a doctor and he knew his mission and he came South again. He married and made a home. He went endlessly from house to house and spoke the mission and the truth. The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. At times he drank strong liquor and beat his head against the floor. In his heart there was a savage violence, and once he grasped the poker from the hearth and struck down his wife. She took Hamilton, Karl Marx, William, and Portia with her to her father’s home. He wrestled in his spirit and fought down the evil blackness. But Daisy did not come back to him. And eight years later when she died his sons were not children any more and they did not return to him. He was left an old man in an empty house.

Promptly at five o’clock the next afternoon he arrived at the house where Portia and Highboy lived. They resided in the part of town called Sugar Hill, and the house was a narrow cottage with a porch and two rooms. From inside there was a babble of mixed voices. Doctor Copeland approached stiffly and stood in the doorway holding his shabby felt hat in his hand.

The room was crowded and at first he was not noticed. He sought the faces of Karl Marx and Hamilton. Besides them there was Grandpapa and two children who sat together on the floor. He was still looking into the faces of his sons when Portia perceived him standing in the door. ‘Here Father,’ she said.

The voices stopped. Grandpapa turned around in his chair. He was thin and bent and very wrinkled. He was wearing the same greenish-black suit that he had worn thirty years before at his daughter’s wedding. Across his vest there was a tarnished brass watch chain. Karl Marx and Hamilton looked at each other, then down at the floor, and finally at their father.

‘Benedict Mady--’ said the old man. ‘Been a long time. A real long time.’

‘Ain’t it, though!’ Portia said. ‘This here the first reunion us is all had in many a year. Highboy, you get a chair from the kitchen. Father, here Buddy and Hamilton.’ Doctor Copeland shook hands with his sons. They were both tall and strong and awkward. Against their blue shirts and overalls their skin had the same rich brown color as did Portia’s. They did not look him in the eye, and in their faces there was neither love nor hate. It sure is a pity everybody couldn’t come--Aunt Sara and Jim and all the rest,’ said Highboy. ‘But this here is a real pleasure to us.’

‘Wagon too full,’ said one of the children. ‘Us had to walk a long piece cause the wagon too full anyways.’

Grandpapa scratched Ms ear with a matchstick. ‘Somebody got to stay home.’

Nervously Portia licked her dark, thin lips. ‘It our Willie I thinking about. He were always a big one for any kind of party or to-do. My mind just won’t stay off our Willie.’

Through the room there was a quiet murmur of agreement.

The old man leaned back in his chair and waggled his head up and down. ‘Portia, Hon, supposing you reads to us a little while. The word of God sure do mean a lot in a time of trouble.’

Portia took up the Bible from the table in the center of the room. ‘What part you want to hear now, Grandpapa?’

‘It all the book of the Holy Lord. Just any place your eye fall on will do.’

Portia read from the Book of Luke. She read slowly, tracing the words with her long, limp finger. The room was still.

Doctor Copeland sat on the edge of the group, cracking his knuckles, his eyes wandering from one point to another. The room was very small, the air close and stuffy. The four walls were cluttered with calendars and crudely painted advertisements from magazines. On the mantel there was a vase of red paper roses. The fire on the hearth burned slowly and the wavering light from the oil lamp made shadows on the wall. Portia read with such slow rhythm that the words slept in Doctor Copeland’s ears and he was drowsy. Karl Marx lay sprawled upon the floor beside the children. Hamilton and Highboy dozed. Only the old man seemed to study the meaning of the words. Portia finished the chapter and closed the book. ‘I done pondered over this thing a many a time.’ said Grandpapa. The people in the room came out of their drowsiness. ‘What? ‘ asked Portia. ‘It this way. You recall them parts Jesus raising the dead and curing the sick? ‘ ‘Course we does, sir,’ said Highboy deferentially. ‘Many a day when I be plowing or working,’ Grandpapa said slowly, ‘I done thought and reasoned about the time when Jesus going to descend again to this earth. ‘Cause I done always wanted it so much it seem to me like it will be while I am living. I done studied about it many a time. And this here the way I done planned it. I reason I will get to stand before Jesus with all my childrens and grandchildrens and great grandchildrens and kinfolks and friends and I say to him, ‘Jesus Christ, us is all sad colored peoples. ‘And then he will place His holy hand upon our heads and straightway us will be white as cotton. That the plan and reasoning that been in my heart a many and a many a time.’

A hush fell on the room. Doctor Copeland jerked the cuff of his sleeves and cleared his throat. His pulse beat too fast and his throat was tight Sitting in the corner of the room he felt isolated and angry and alone.

‘Has any of you ever had a sign from Heaven?’ asked Grandpapa.

‘I has, sir,’ said Highboy. ‘Once when I were sick with the pneumonia I seen God’s face looking out the fireplace at me. It were a large white man’s face with a white beard and blue eyes.’

‘I seen a ghost,’ said one of the children--the girl ‘Once I seen--’ began the little boy.

Grandpapa held up his hand. ‘You childrens hush. You. Celia--and you, Whitman--it now the time for you to listen but not be heard,’ he said. ‘Only one time has I had a real sign.’

And this here the way it come about. It were in the summer of last year, and hot. I were trying to dig up the roots of that big oak stump near the hogpen and when I leaned down a kind of catch, a misery, come suddenly in the small of my back. I straightened up and then all around went dark. I were holding my hand to my back and looking up at the sky when suddenly I seen this little angel. It were a little white girl angel--look to me about the size of a field pea--with yellow hair and a white robe. Just flying around near the sun. After that I come in the house and prayed. I studied the Bible for three days before I went out in the field again.’

Doctor Copeland felt the old evil anger in him. The words rose inchoately to his throat and he could not speak them. They would listen to the old man. Yet to words of reason they would not attend. These are my people, he tried to tell himself--but because he was dumb this thought did not help him now. He sat tense and sullen.

‘It a queer thing,’ said Grandpapa suddenly. ‘Benedict Mady, you a fine doctor. How come I get them miseries sometime in the small of my back after I been digging and planting for a good while? How come that misery bother me?’

‘How old are you now?’

‘I somewhere between seventy and eighty year old.’

The old man loved medicine and treatment Always when he used to come in with his family to see Daisy he would have himself examined and take home medicine and salves for the whole group of them. But when Daisy left him the old man did not come anymore and he had to content himself with purges and kidney pills advertised in the newspapers. Now the old man was looking at him with timid eagerness.

‘Drink plenty of water,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘And rest as much as you can.’

Portia went into the kitchen to prepare the supper. Warm smells began to fill the room. There was quiet, idle talking, but Doctor Copeland did not listen or speak. Now and then he looked at Karl Marx or Hamilton. Karl Marx talked about Joe Louis. Hamilton spoke mostly of the hail that had ruined some of the crops. When they caught their father’s eye they grinned and shuffled their feet on the floor. He kept staring at them with angry misery.

Doctor Copeland clamped his teeth down hard. He had thought so much about Hamilton and Karl Marx and William and Portia, about the real true purpose he had had for them, that the sight of their faces made a black swollen feeling in him. If once he could tell it all to them, from the far away beginning until this very night, the telling would ease the sharp ache in his heart. But they would not listen or understand.

He hardened himself so that each muscle in his body was rigid and strained. He did not listen or look at anything around him.

He sat in a corner like a man who is blind and dumb. Soon they went into the supper table and the old man said grace.

But Doctor Copeland did not eat. When Highboy brought out a pint ,bottle of gin, and they laughed and passed the bottle from mouth to mouth, he refused that also. He sat in rigid silence, and at last he picked up his hat and left the house without a farewell. If he could not speak the whole long truth no other word would come to him.

He lay tense and wakeful throughout the night. Then the next day was Sunday. He made half a dozen calls, and in the middle of the morning he went to Mr. Singer’s room. The visit blunted the feeling of loneliness in him so that when he said goodbye he was at peace with himself once more.

However, before he was out of the house this peace had left him. An accident occurred. As he started down the stairs he saw a white man carrying a large paper sack and he drew close to the banisters so that they could pass each other. But the white man was running up the steps two at a time, without looking, and they collided with such force that Doctor Copeland was left sick and breathless.

‘Christ! I didn’t see you.’

Doctor Copeland looked at him closely but made no answer.

He had seen this white man once before. He remembered the stunted, brutal-looking body and the huge, awkward hands. Then with sudden clinical interest he observed the white man’s face, for in his eyes he saw a strange, fixed, and withdrawn look of madness. ‘Sorry,’ said the white man. Doctor Copeland put his hand on the banister and passed on.

WHO was that?’ Jake Blount asked. ‘Who was the tall, thin colored man that just come out of here? ‘ The small room was very neat. The sun lighted a bowl of purple grapes on the table. Singer sat with his chair tilted back and his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window. ‘I bumped into him on the steps and he gave me this look--why, I never had anybody to look at me so dirty.’ Jake put the sack of ales down on the table. He realized with a shock that Singer did not know he was in the room. He walked over to the window and touched Singer on the shoulder.

‘I didn’t mean to bump into him. He had no cause to act like that.’

Jake shivered. Although the sun was bright there was a chill in the room. Singer held up his forefinger and went into the hall.

When he returned he brought with him a scuttle of coal and some kindling. Jake watched him kneel before the hearth.

Neatly he broke the sticks of kindling over his knee and arranged them on the foundation of paper. He put the coal on according to a system. At first the fire would not draw. The flames quivered weakly and were smothered by a black roll of smoke. Singer covered the grate with a double sheet of newspapers. The draught gave the fire new life. In the room there was a roaring sound. The paper glowed and was sucked inward. A crackling orange sheet of flame filled the grate.

The first morning ale had a fine mellow taste. Jake gulped his share down quickly and wiped his mouth with file back of his hand.

There was this lady I knew a long time ago,’ he said. ‘You sort of remind me of her, Miss Clara. She had a little farm in Texas. And made pralines to sell in the cities. She was a tall, big, fine-looking lady. Wore those long, baggy sweaters and clodhopper shoes and a man’s hat. Her husband was dead when I knew her. But what I’m getting at is this: If it hadn’t been for her I might never have known. I might have gone on through life like the millions of others who don’t know. I would have just been a preacher or a linthead or a salesman.

My whole life might have been wasted.’

Jake shook his head wonderingly.

To understand you got to know what went before. You see, I lived in Gastonia when I was a youngun. I was a knock-kneed little runt, too small to put in the mill. I worked as pin boy in a bowling joint and got meals for pay. Then I heard a smart, quick boy could make thirty cents a day stringing tobacco not very far from there. So I went and made that thirty cents a day.

That was when I was ten years old. I just left my folks. I didn’t write. They were glad I was gone. You understand how those things are. And besides, nobody could read a letter but my sister.’

He waved his hand in the air as though brushing something from his face. ‘But I mean this. My first belief was Jesus.

There was this fellow working in the same shed with me. He had a tabernacle and preached every night. I went and listened and I got this faith. My mind was on Jesus all day long. In my spare time I studied the Bible and prayed. Then one night I took a hammer and laid my hand on the table. I was angry and I drove the nail all the way through. My hand was nailed to the table and I looked at it and the fingers fluttered and turned blue.’

Jake held out his palm and pointed to the ragged, dead-white scar in the center.

‘I wanted to be an evangelist. I meant to travel around the country preaching and holding revivals. In the meantime I moved around from one place to another, and when I was nearly twenty I got to Texas. I worked in a pecan grove near where Miss Clara lived. I got to know her and at night sometimes I would go to her house. She talked to me.

Understand, I didn’t begin to know all at once. That’s not the way it happens to any of us. It was gradual. I began to read. I would work just so I could put aside enough money to knock off for a while and study. It was like being born a second time.

Just us who know can understand what it means. We have opened our eyes and have seen. We’re like people from way off yonder somewhere.’

Singer agreed with him. The room was comfortable in a homey way. Singer brought out from the closet the tin box in which he kept crackers and fruit and cheese. He selected an orange and peeled it slowly. He pulled off shreds ‘ of pith until the fruit was transparent in the sun. He sectioned the orange and divided the plugs between them. Jake ate two sections at a time and with a loud whoosh spat the seeds into the fire. Singer ate his share slowly and deposited his seeds neatly in the palm of one hand. They opened two more ales.

‘And how many of us are there in this country? Maybe ten thousand. Maybe twenty thousand. Maybe a lot more. I been to a lot of places but I never met but a few of us. But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about.

He watched the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house.

He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live.

He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted.

He sees war coming. He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it’s as plain as the shining sun--the don’t--knows have lived with that lie so long they just can’t see it.’

The red corded vein in Jake’s forehead swelled angrily. He grasped the scuttle on the hearth and rattled an avalanche of coal on the fire. His foot had gone to sleep, and he stamped it so hard that the floor shook.

‘I been all over this place. I walk around. I talk. I try to explain to them. But what good does it do? Lord God!’ He gazed into the fire, and a flush from the ale and heat deepened the color of his face. The sleepy tingling in his foot spread up his leg. He drowsed and saw the colors of the fire, the tints of green and blue and burning yellow. ‘You’re the only one,’ he said dreamily. ‘The only one.’

He was a stranger no longer. By now he knew every street, every alley, every fence in all the sprawling slums of the town.

He still worked at the Sunny Dixie. During the fall the show moved from one vacant lot to another, staying always within the fringes of the city limit, until at last it had encircled the town. The locations were changed but the settings were alike--a strip of wasteland bordered by rows of rotted shacks, and somewhere near a mill, a cotton gin, or a bottling plant. The crowd was the same, for the most part factory workers and Negroes. The show was gaudy with colored lights in the evening. The wooden horses of the flying-jinny revolved in the circle to the mechanical music. The swings whirled, the rail around the penny throwing game was always crowded.

From the two booths were sold drinks and bloody brown hamburgers and cotton candy.

He had been hired as a machinist, but gradually the range of his duties widened. His coarse, bawling voice called out through the noise, and continually he was lounging from one place on the show grounds to another. Sweat stood out on his forehead and often his mustache was soaked with beer. On Saturday his job was to keep the people in order. His squat, hard body pushed through the crowd with savage energy. Only his eyes did not share the violence of the rest of him, Wide gazing beneath his massive scowling forehead, they had a withdrawn and distracted appearance.

He reached home between twelve and one in the morning. The house where he lived was squared into four rooms and the rent was a dollar fifty per person. There was a privy in the back and a hydrant on the stoop. In his room the walls and floor had a wet, sour smell. Sooty, cheap lace curtains hung at the window. He kept his good suit in his bag and hung his overalls on a nail. The room had no heat and ho electricity. However, a street light shone outside the window and made a pale greenish reflection inside. He never lighted the oil lamp by his bed unless he wanted to read. The acrid smell of burning oil in the cold room nauseated him.

If he stayed at home he restlessly walked the floor. He sat on the edge of the unmade bed and gnawed savagely at the broken, dirty ends of his fingernails. The sharp taste of grime lingered in his mouth. The loneliness in him was so keen that he was filled with terror. Usually he had a pint of bootleg white lightning. He drank the raw liquor and by daylight he was warm and relaxed. At five o’clock the whistles from the mills blew for the first shift. The whistles made lost, eerie echoes, and he could never sleep until after they had sounded.

But usually he did not stay at home. He went out into the narrow, empty streets. In the first dark hours of the morning the sky was black and the stars hard and bright. Sometimes the mills were running. From the yellow-lighted buildings came the racket of the machines. He waited at the gates for the early shift. Young girls in sweaters and print dresses came out into the dark street. The men came out carrying their dinner pails.

Some of them always went to a streetcar cafe for Coca-Cola or coffee before going home, and Jake went with them. Inside the noisy mill the men could hear plainly every word that was spoken, but for the first hour outside they were deaf.

In the streetcar Jake drank Coca-Cola with whiskey added. He talked. The winter dawn was white and smoky and cold. He looked with drunken urgency into the drawn, yellow faces of the men. Often he was laughed at, and when this happened he held his stunted body very straight and spoke scornfully hi words of many syllables. He stuck his little finger out from his glass and haughtily twisted his mustache. And if he was still laughed at he sometimes fought. He swung his big brown fists with crazed violence and sobbed aloud.

After such mornings he returned to the show with relief. It eased him to push through the crowds of people. The noise, the rank stinks, the shouldering contact of human flesh soothed his jangled nerves.

Because of the blue laws hi the town the show closed for the Sabbath. On Sunday he got up early in the morning and took from the suitcase his serge suit. He went to the main street.

First he dropped into the New York Cafe and bought a sack of ales. Then he went to Singer’s room. Although he knew many people in the town by name or face, the mute was his only friend. They would idle in the quiet room and drink the ales.

He would talk, and the words created themselves from the dark mornings spent in the streets or hi his room alone. The words were formed and spoken with relief.

The fire had died down. Singer was playing a game of fools with himself at the table. Jake had been asleep. He awoke with a nervous quiver. He raised his head and turned to Singer.

‘Yeah,’ he said as though in answer to a sudden question.

‘Some of us are Communists. But not all of us. Myself, I’m not a member of the Communist Party. Because in the first place I never knew but one of them.

You can bum around for years and not meet Communists.

Around here there’s no office where you can go up and say you want to join--and if there is I never heard of it. And you just don’t take off for New York and join. As I say I never knew but one--and he was a seedy little teetotaler whose breath stunk. We had a fight. Not that I hold that against the Communists. The main fact is I don’t think so much of Stalin and Russia. I hate every damn country and government there is. But even so maybe I ought to joined up with the Communists first place. I’m not certain one way or the other. What do you think?’

Singer wrinkled his forehead and considered. He reached for his silver pencil and wrote on his pad of paper that he didn’t know.

‘But there’s this. You see, we just can’t settle down after knowing, but we got to act And some of us go nuts. There’s too much to do and you don’t know where to start It makes you crazy. Even me--I’ve done things that when I look back at them they don’t seem rational Once I started an organization myself. I picked out twenty lint-heads and talked to them until I thought they knew. Our motto was one word: Action. Huh! We meant to start riots--stir up all the big trouble we could.

Our ultimate goal was freedom--but a real freedom, a great freedom made possible only by the sense of justice of the human soul. Our motto, "Action," signified the razing of capitalism. In the constitution (drawn up by myself) certain statutes dealt with the swapping of our motto from "Action" to "Freedom" as soon as our work was through.’

Jake sharpened the end of a match and picked a troublesome cavity in a tooth. After a moment he continued: ‘Then when the constitution was all written down and the first followers well organized--then I went out on a hitch-hiking tour to organize component units of the society. Within three months I came back, and what do you reckon I found? What was the first heroic action? Had their righteous fury overcome planned action so that they had gone ahead without me? Was it destruction, murder, revolution?’

Jake leaned forward in his chair. After a pause he said somberly: ‘My friend, they had stole the fifty-seven dollars and thirty cents from the treasury to buy uniform caps and free Saturday suppers. I caught them sitting around the conference table, rolling the bones, their caps on their heads, and a ham and a gallon of gin in easy reach.’

A timid smile from Singer followed Jake’s outburst of laughter. After a while the smile on Singer’s face grew strained and faded. Jake still laughed. The vein in his forehead swelled, his face was dusky red. He laughed too long. Singer looked up at the clock and indicated the time--half-past twelve. He took his watch, his silver pencil and pad, his cigarettes and matches from the mantel and distributed them among his pockets. It was dinner-time.

But Jake still laughed. There was something maniacal in the sound of his laughter. He walked about the room, jingling the change in his pockets. His long, powerful arms swung tense and awkward. He began to name over parts of his coming meal. When he spoke of food his face was fierce with gusto.

With each word he raised his upper lip like a ravenous animal.

‘Roast beef with gravy. Rice. And cabbage and light bread.

And a big hunk of apple pie. I’m famished. Oh, Johnny, I can hear the Yankees coming. And speaking of meals, my friend, did I ever tell you about Mr. Clark Patterson, the gentleman who owns the Sunny Dixie Show? He’s so fat he hasn’t seen his privates for twenty years, and all day he sits in his trailer playing solitaire and smoking reefers. He orders his meals from a short-order joint nearby and every day he breaks his fast with--’ Jake stepped back so that Singer could leave the room. He always hung back at doorways when he was with the mute. He always followed and expected Singer to lead. As they descended the stairs he continued to talk with nervous volubility. He kept his brown, wide eyes on Singer’s face.

The afternoon was soft and mild. They stayed indoors. Jake had brought back with them a quart of whiskey. He sat brooding and silent on the foot of the bed, leaning now and then to fill his glass from the bottle on the floor. Singer was at his table by the window playing a game of chess. Jake had relaxed somewhat. He watched the game of his friend and felt the mild, quiet afternoon merge with the darkness of evening.

The firelight made dark, silent waves on the walls of the room.

But at night the tension came in him again. Singer had put away his chess men and they sat facing each other.

Nervousness made Jake’s lips twitch raggedly and he drank to soothe himself. A backwash of restlessness and desire overcame him. He drank down the whiskey and began to talk again to Singer. The words swelled with him and gushed from his mouth. He walked from the window to the bed and back again--again and again. And at last the deluge of swollen words took shape and he delivered them to the mute with drunken emphasis: ‘The things they have done to us! The truths they have turned into lies. The ideals they have fouled and made vile. Take Jesus. He was one of us. He knew. When He said that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God--he damn well meant just what he said. But look what the Church has done to Jesus during the last two thousand years. What they have made of him. How they have turned every word he spoke for their own vile ends. Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today. Jesus would be one who really knows. Me and Jesus would sit across the table and I would look at him and he would look at me and we would both know that the other knew. Me and Jesus and Karl Marx could all sit at a table and-- ‘And look what has happened to our freedom. The men who fought the American Revolution were no more like these D.A.R. dames than I’m a pot-bellied, perfumed Pekingese dog.

They meant what they said about freedom. They fought a real revolution. They fought so that this could be a country where every man would be free and equal. Huh! And that meant every man was equal in the sight of Nature--with an equal chance. This didn’t mean that twenty per cent of the people were free to rob the other eighty per cent of the means to live.

This didn’t mean for one rich man to sweat the piss out of ten thousand poor men so that he can get richer. This didn’t mean the tyrants were free to get this country in such a fix that millions of people are ready to do anything--cheat, lie, or whack off their right arm--just to work for three squares and a flop. They have made the word freedom a blasphemy. You hear me? They have made the word freedom stink like a skunk to all who know.’

The vein in Jake’s forehead throbbed wildly. His mouth worked convulsively. Singer sat up, alarmed, Jake tried to speak again and the words choked in his mouth. A shudder passed through his body. He sat down in the chair and pressed his trembling lips with his fingers. Then he said huskily: ‘It’s this way, Singer. Being mad is no good. Nothing we can do is any good. That’s the way it seems to me. All we can do is go around telling the truth. And as soon as enough of the don’t knows have learned the truth then there won’t be any use for fighting. The only thing for us to do is let them know. All that’s needed. But how? Huh?’

The fire shadows lapped against the walls. The dark, shadowy waves rose higher and the room took on motion. The room rose and fell and all balance was gone. Alone Jake felt himself sink downward, slowly in wavelike motions downward into a shadowed ocean. In helplessness and terror he strained his eyes, but he could see nothing except the dark and scarlet waves that roared hungrily over him. Then at last he made out the thing which he sought. The mute’s face was faint and very far away. Jake closed his eyes.

The next morning he awoke very late. Singer had been gone for hours. There was bread, cheese, an orange, and a pot of coffee on the table. When he had finished his breakfast it was time for work. He walked somberly, his head bent, across the town toward his room. When he reached the neighborhood where he lived he passed through a certain narrow street that was flanked on one side by a smoke-blackened brick warehouse. On the wall of this building there was something that vaguely distracted him. He started to walk on, and then his attention was suddenly held. On the wall a message was written in bright red chalk, the letters drawn thickly and curiously formed: Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth.

He read the message twice and looked anxiously up and down the street. No one was in sight. After a few minutes of puzzled deliberation he took from his pocket a thick red pencil and wrote carefully beneath the inscription: Whoever wrote the above meet me here tomorrow at noon, Wednesday, November 29. Or the next day.

At twelve o’clock the next day he waited before the wall.

‘Now and then he walked impatiently to the corner to look : up and down the streets. No one came. After an hour he had to leave for the show. The next day he waited, also. Then on Friday there was a long, slow winter rain. The wall was sodden and the messages streaked so that no word could be read. The rain continued, gray and bitter and cold. Bubber said. ‘I come to believe we all gonna drown.’ It was true that it like to never quit raining. Mrs. Wells rode them back and forth to school in her car, and every afternoon they had to stay on the front porch or in the house. She and Bubber played Parcheesi and Old Maid and shot marbles on the living-room rug. It was nearing along toward Christmas time and Bubber began to talk about the Little Lord Jesus and the red bicycle he wanted Santa Claus to bring him. The rain was silver on the windowpanes and the sky was wet and cold and gray. The river rose so high that some of the factory people had to move out of their houses. Then when it looked like the rain would keep on and on forever it suddenly stopped. They woke up one morning and the bright sun was shining. By afternoon the weather was almost warm as summer. Mick came home late from school and Bubber and Ralph and Spareribs were on the front sidewalk. The kids looked hot and sticky and their winter clothes had a sour smell. Bubber had his slingshot and a pocketful of rocks.

Ralph sat up in his wagon, his hat crooked on his head, and he was fretful. Spareribs had his new rifle with him. The sky was a wonderful blue.

‘We waited for you a long time, Mick,’ Bubber said. ‘Where you been?’

She jumped up the front steps three at a time and threw her sweater toward the hat rack. ‘Practicing on the piano in the gym.’

Every afternoon she stayed after school for an hour to play.

The gym was crowded and noisy because the girls’ team had basketball games. Twice today she was hit on the head with the ball. But getting a chance to sit at a piano was worth any amount of knocks and trouble. She would arrange bunches of notes together until the sound came that she wanted. It was easier than she had thought. After the first two or three hours she figured out some sets of chords in the bass that would fit in with the main tune her right hand was playing. She could pick out almost any piece now. And she made up new music too. That was better than just copying tunes. When her hands hunted out these beautiful new sounds it was the best feeling she had ever known.

She wanted to learn how to read music already written down.

Delores Brown had taken music lessons for five years. She paid Delores the fifty cents a week she got for lunch money to give her lessons. This made her very hungry all through the day. Delores played a good many fast, runny pieces--but Delores did not know how to answer all the questions she wanted to know. Delores only taught her about the different scales, the major and minor chords, the values of the notes, and such beginning rules as those.

Mick slammed the door of the kitchen stove. ‘This all we got to eat?’

‘Honey, it the best I can do for you,’ Portia said. Just cornpones and margarine. As she ate she drank a glass of water to help wash down the swallows.

‘Quit acting so greedy. Nobody going to snatch it out your hand.’

The kids still hung around in front of the house. Bubber had put his slingshot in his pocket and now he played with the rifle. Spareribs was ten years old and his father had died the month before and this had been his father’s gun--All the smaller kids loved to handle that rifle. Every few minutes Bubber would haul the gun up to his shoulder. He took aim and made a loud pow sound.

‘Don’t monkey with the trigger,’ said Spareribs. I got the gun loaded.’

Mick finished the cornbread and looked around for something to do. Harry Minowitz was sitting on his front porch banisters with the newspaper. She was glad to see him. For a joke she threw up her arm and hollered to him, ‘Heil!’ But Harry didn’t take it as a joke. He went into his front hall and shut the door. It was easy to hurt his feelings. She was sorry, because lately she and Harry had been right good friends. They had always played in the same gang when they were kids, but in the last three years he had been at Vocational while she was still in grammar school. Also he worked at part-time jobs. He grew up very suddenly and quit hanging around the back and front yards with kids. Sometimes she could see him reading the paper in his bedroom or undressing late at night. In mathematics and history he was the smartest boy at Vocational. Often, now that she was in high school too, they would meet each other on the way home and walk together. They were in the same shop class, and once the teacher made them partners to assemble a motor. He read books and kept up with the newspapers every day. World politics were all the time on his mind. He talked slow, and sweat stood out on his forehead when he was very serious about something. And now she had made him mad with her.

‘I wonder has Harry still got his gold piece,’ Spareribs said.

‘What gold piece?’

‘When a Jew boy is born they put a gold piece in the bank for him. That’s what Jews do.’

‘Shucks. You got it mixed up,’ she said. ‘It’s Catholics you’re thinking about. Catholics buy a pistol for a baby soon as it’s born. Some day the Catholics mean to start a war and kill everybody else.’

‘Nuns give me a funny feeling,’ Spareribs said. ‘It scares me when I see one on the street.’

She sat down on the steps and laid her head on her knees. She went into the inside room. With her it was like there was two places--the inside room and the outside room. School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. The songs she thought about were there. And the symphony. When she was by herself hi this inside room the music she had heard that night after the party would come back to her. This symphony grew slow like a big flower in her mind. During the day sometimes, or when she had just waked up in the morning, a new part of the symphony would suddenly come to her. Then she would have to go into the inside room and listen to it many times and try to join it into the parts of the symphony she remembered. The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.

Spareribs stuck his dirty hand up to her eyes because she had been staring off at space. She slapped him.

‘What is a nun?’ Bubber asked.

‘A Catholic lady,’ Spareribs said. ‘A Catholic lady with a big black dress that comes up over her head.’

She was tired of hanging around with the kids. She would go to the library and look at pictures in the National Geographic.

Photographs of all the foreign places in the world. Paris, France. And big ice glaciers. And the wild jungles in Africa.

‘You kids see that Ralph don’t get out in the street,’ she said.

Bubber rested the big rifle on his shoulder. ‘Bring me a story back with you.’

It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself--and he never asked anybody else to read to him.

‘What kind you want this time?’

‘Pick out some stories with something to eat in them. I like that one a whole lot about them German kids going out in the forest and coming to this house made out of all different kinds of candy and the witch. I like a story with something to eat in it.’

‘I’ll look for one,’ said Mick.

‘But I’m getting kinda tired of candy,’ Bubber said. ‘See if you can’t bring me a story with something like a barbecue sandwich in it. But if you can’t find none of them I’d like a cowboy story.’

She was ready to leave when suddenly she stopped and stared.

The kids stared too. They all stood still and looked at Baby Wilson coming down the steps of her house across the street.

‘Ain’t Baby cute!’ said Bubber softly.

Maybe it was the sudden hot, sunny day after all those rainy weeks. Maybe it was because their dark winter clothes were ugly to them on an afternoon like this one. Anyway Baby looked like a fairy or something in the picture show. She had on her last year’s soiree costume--with a little pink-gauze skirt that stuck out short and stiff, a pink body waist, pink dancing shoes, and even a little pink pocketbook. With her yellow hair she was all pink and white and gold--and so small and clean that it almost hurt to watch her. She prissed across the street in a cute way, but would not turn her face toward them.

‘Come over here,’ said Bubber. ‘Lemme look at your little pink pocketbook--’ Baby passed them along the edge of the street with her head held to one side. She had made up her mind not to speak to them.

There was a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and when Baby reached it she stood still for a second and then turned a handspring.

‘Don’t pay no mind to her,’ said Spareribs. ‘She always tries to show off. She’s going down to Mister Brannon’s cafe to get candy. He’s her uncle and she gets it free.’

Bubber rested the end of the rifle on the ground. The big gun was too heavy for him. As he watched Baby walk off down the street he kept pulling the straggly bangs of his hair. ‘That sure is a cute little pink pocketbook,’ he said.

‘Her Mama always talks about how talented she is,’ said Spareribs. ‘She thinks she’s gonna get Baby in the movies.’

It was too late to go look at the National Geographic. Supper was almost ready. Ralph tuned up to cry and she took him off the wagon and put him on the ground. Now it was December, and to a kid Bubber’s age that was a long time from summer.

All last summer Baby had come out in that pink soiree costume and danced in the middle of the street. At first the kids would flock around and watch her, but soon they got tired of it. Bubber was the only one who would watch her as she came out to dance. He would sit on the curb and yell to her when he saw a car coming. He had watched Baby do her soiree dance a hundred times--but summer had been gone for three months and now it seemed new to him again.

‘I sure do wish I had a costume,’ Bubber said.

‘What kind do you want?’

‘A real cool costume. A real pretty one made out of all different colors. Like a butterfly. That’s what I want for Christmas. That and a bicycle!’

‘Sissy,’ said Spareribs.

Bubber hauled the big rifle up to his shoulder again and took aim at a house across the street. ‘I’d dance around in my costume if I had one. I’d wear it every day to school.’ Mick sat on the front steps and kept her eyes on Ralph. Bubber wasn’t a sissy like Spareribs said. He just loved pretty things.

She’d better not let old Spareribs get away with that.

‘A person’s got to fight for every single thing they get,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’ve noticed a lot of times that the farther down a kid comes in the family the better the kid really is. Younger kids are always the toughest. I’m pretty hard ‘cause I’ve a lot of them on top of me. Bubber --he looks sick, and likes pretty things, but he’s got guts underneath that. If all this is true Ralph sure ought to be a real strong one when he’s old enough to get around. Even though he’s just seventeen months old I can read something hard and tough in that Ralph’s face already.’

Ralph looked around because he knew he was being talked about. Spareribs sat down on the ground and grabbed Ralph’s hat off his head and shook it in his face to tease him.

‘All right!’ Mick said. ‘You know what do to you if you start him to cry. You just better watch out’

Everything was quiet. The sun was behind the roofs of the houses and the sky in the west was purple and pink. On the next block there was the sound of kids skating. Bubber leaned up against a tree and he seemed to be dreaming about something. The smell of supper came out of the house and it would be time to eat soon.

‘Lookit,’ Bubber said suddenly. ‘Here comes Baby again. She sure is pretty in the pink costume.’

Baby walked toward them slowly. She had been given a prize box of popcorn candy and was reaching in the box for the prize. She walked in that same prissy, dainty way. You could tell that she knew they were all looking at her.

‘Please, Baby--’ Bubber said when she started to pass them. ‘Lemme see your little pink pocketbook and touch your pink costume.’ Baby started humming a song to herself and did not listen. She passed by without letting Bubber play with her. She only ducked her head and grinned at him a little.

Bubber still had the big rifle up to his shoulder. He made a loud pow sound and pretended like he had shot. Then he called to Baby again--in a soft, sad voice like he was calling a little kitty. ‘Please, Baby--come here, Baby--‘ He was too quick for Mick to stop him. She had just seen his hand on the trigger when there was the terrible ping of the gun. Baby crumpled down to the sidewalk. It was like she was nailed to the steps and couldn’t move or scream. Spareribs had his arm up over his head.

Bubber was the only one that didn’t realize. ‘Get up, Baby,’ he hollered. ‘I ain’t mad with you.’

It all happened in a second. The three of them reached Baby at the same time. She lay crumpled down on the dirty sidewalk.

Her skirt was over her head, showing her pink panties and her little white legs. Her hands were open--in one there was the prize from the candy and in the other the pocketbook. There was blood all over her hair ribbon and the top of her yellow curls. She was shot in the head and her face was turned down toward the ground.

So much happened in a second. Bubber screamed and dropped the gun and ran. She stood with her hands up to her face and screamed too. Then there were many people. Her Dad was the first to get there. He carried Baby into the house.

‘She’s dead,’ said Spareribs. ‘She’s shot through the eyes. I seen her face.’

Mick walked up and down the sidewalk, and her tongue stuck in her mouth when she tried to ask was Baby killed. Mrs.

Wilson came running down the block from the beauty parlor where she worked. She went into the house and came back out again. She walked up and down in the street, crying and pulling a ring on and off her finger. Then the ambulance came and the doctor went in to Baby. Mick followed him. Baby was lying on the bed in the front room. The house was quiet as a church.

Baby looked like a pretty little doll on the bed. Except for the blood she did not seem hurt. The doctor bent over and looked at her head. After he finished they took Baby out on a stretcher. Mrs. Wilson and her Dad got into the ambulance with her.

The house was still quiet. Everybody had forgotten about Bubber. He was nowhere around. An hour passed. Her Mama and Hazel and Etta and all the boarders waited in the front room. Mister Singer stood in the doorway.

After a long time her Dad came home. He said Baby wouldn’t die but that her skull was fractured. He asked for Bubber.

Nobody knew where he was. It was dark outside. They called Bubber in the back yard and in the street. They sent Spareribs and some other boys out to hunt for him. It looked like Bubber had gone clear out of the neighborhood. Harry went around to a house where they thought he might be.

Her Dad walked up and down the front porch. ‘I never have whipped any of my kids yet,’ he kept saying. ‘I never believed in it. But I’m sure going to lay it onto that kid as soon as I get my hands on him.’

Mick sat on the banisters and watched down the dark street. ‘I can manage Bubber. Once he comes back I can take care of him all right.’

‘You go out and hunt for him. You can find him better than anybody else.’

As soon as her Dad said that she suddenly knew where Bubber was. In the back yard there was a big oak and in the summer they had built a tree house. They had hauled a big box up in this oak, and Bubber used to love to sit up in the tree house by himself. Mick left the family and the boarders on the front porch and walked back through the alley of the dark yard.

She stood for a minute by the trunk of the tree. ‘Bubber--,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s Mick.’

He didn’t answer, but she knew he was there. It was like she could smell him. She swung up on the lowest branch and climbed slowly. She was really mad with that kid and would have to teach him a lesson. When she reached the tree house she spoke to him again--and still there wasn’t any answer. She climbed into the big box and felt around the edges. At last she touched him. He was scrounged up in a corner and his legs were trembling. He had been holding his breath, and when she touched him the sobs and the breath came out all at once.

‘I-I didn’t mean Baby to fall. She was just so little and cute--seemed to me like I just had to take a pop at her.’

Mick sat down on the floor of the tree house. ‘Baby’s dead,’ she said. ‘They got a lot of people hunting for you.’

Bubber quit crying. He was very quiet.

‘You know what Dad’s doing in the house?’ It was like she could hear Bubber listening.

‘You know Warden Lawes--you heard him over the radio.

And you know Sing Sing. Well, our Dad’s writing a letter to Warden Lawes for him to be a little bit kind to you when they catch you and send you to Sing Sing.’

The words were so awful-sounding in the dark that a shiver came over her. She could feel Bubber trembling.

‘They got little electric chairs there--just your size. And when they turn on the juice you just fry up like a piece of burnt bacon. Then you go to Hell.’

Bubber was squeezed up in the corner and there was not a sound from him. She climbed over the edge of the box to get down. ‘You better stay up here because they got policemen guarding the yard. Maybe in a few days I can bring you something to eat’ Mick leaned against the trunk of the oak tree. That would teach Bubber all right. She had always managed him and she knew more about that kid than anybody else. Once, about a year or two ago, he was always wanting to stop off behind bushes and pee and play with himself awhile. She had caught on to that pretty quick. She gave him a good slap every time it happened and in three days he was cured. Afterwards he never even peed normal like other kids--he held his hands behind him. She always had to nurse that Bubber and she could always manage him. In a little while she would go back up to the tree house and bring him in. After this he would never want to pick up a gun again in all his life.

There was still this dead feeling in the house. The boarders all sat on the front porch without talking or rocking in the chairs.

Her Dad and her Mama were in the front room. Her Dad drank beer out of a bottle and walked up and down the floor. Baby was going to get well all right, so this worry was not about her. And nobody seemed to be anxious about Bubber. It was something else.

‘That Bubber!’ said Etta.

‘I’m shamed to go out of the house after this,’ Hazel said.

Etta and Hazel went into the middle room and closed the door.

Bill was in his room at the back. She didn’t want to talk with them. She stood around in the front hall and thought it over by herself.

Her Dad’s footsteps stopped. ‘It was deliberate,’ he said. ‘It’s not like the kid was just fooling with the gun and it went off by accident. Everybody who saw it said he took deliberate aim.’

‘I wonder when we’ll hear from Mrs. Wilson,’ her Mama said.

‘We’ll hear plenty, all right!’

‘I reckon we will.’

Now that the sun was down the night was cold again like November. The people came in from the front porch and sat in the living-room--but nobody lighted a fire. Mick’s sweater was hanging on the hat rack, so she put it on and stood with her shoulders bent over to keep warm. She thought about Bubber sitting out in the cold, dark tree house. He had really believed every word she said. But he sure deserved to worry some. He had nearly killed that Baby.

‘Mick, can’t you think of some place where Bubber might be?’her Dad asked.

‘He’s in the neighborhood, I reckon.’

Her Dad walked up and down with the empty beer bottle in his hand. He walked like a blind man and there was sweat on his face. ‘The poor kid’s scared to come home. If we could find him I’d feel better. I’ve never laid a hand on Bubber. He oughtn’t be scared of me.’

She would wait until an hour and a half was gone. By that time he would be plenty sorry for what he did. She always could manage that Bubber and make him learn.

After a while there was a big excitement in the house. Her Dad telephoned again to the hospital to see how Baby was, and in a few minutes Mrs. Wilson called back. She said she wanted to have a talk with them and would come to the house.

Her Dad still walked up and down the front room like a blind man. He drank three more bottles of beer. ‘The way it all happened she can sue my britches off. All she could get would be the house outside of the mortgage. But the way it happened we don’t have any comeback at all.’

Suddenly Mick thought about something. Maybe they would really try Bubber in court and put him in a children’s jail.

Maybe Mrs. Wilson would send him to reform school. Maybe they would really do something terrible to Bubber. She wanted to go out to the tree house right away and sit with him and tell him not to worry. Bubber was always so thin and little and smart. She would kill anybody that tried to send that kid out of the family. She wanted to kiss him and bite him because she loved him so much.

But she couldn’t miss anything. Mrs. Wilson would be there in a few minutes and she had to know what was going on. Then she would run out and tell Bubber that all the things she said were lies. And he would really have learned the lesson he had coming to him.

A ten-cent taxicab drove up to the sidewalk. Everybody waited on the front porch, very quiet and scared. Mrs. Wilson got out of the taxi with Mister Brannon. She could hear her Dad grinding his teeth together in a nervous way as they came up the steps. They went into the front room and she followed along after them and stood in the doorway. Etta and Hazel and Bill and the boarders kept out of it.

‘I’ve come to talk over all this with you,’ Mrs. Wilson said.

The front room looked tacky and dirty and she saw Mister Brannon notice everything. The mashed celluloid doll and the beads and junk Ralph played with were scattered on the floor.

There was beer on her Dad’s workbench, and the pillows on the bed where her Dad and Mama slept were right gray.

Mrs. Wilson kept pulling the wedding ring on and off her finger. By the side of her Mister Brannon was very calm. He sat with his legs crossed. His jaws were blue-black and he looked like a gangster in the movies. He had always had this grudge against her. He always spoke to her in this rough voice different from the way he talked to other people. Was it because he knew about the time she and Bubber swiped a pack of chewing gum off his counter? She hated him.

‘It all boils down to this,’ said Mrs. Wilson. ‘Your kid shot my baby in the head on purpose.’

Mick stepped into the middle of the room. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said. ‘I was right there. Bubber had been aiming that gun at me and Ralph and everything around there. He just happened to aim it at Baby and his finger slipped. I was right there.’

Mister Brannon rubbed his nose and looked at her in a sad way. She sure did hate him.

‘I know how you all feel--so I want to come to the point right now.’

Mick’s Mama rattled a bunch of keys and her Dad sat very still with his big hands hanging over his knees.

‘Bubber didn’t have it in his mind beforehand,’ Mick said. ‘He just--’ Mrs. Wilson jabbed the ring on and oft her finger. Wait a minute. I know how everything is. I could bring it to court and sue for every cent you own.’

Her Dad didn’t have any expression on his face. ‘I tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much to sue for. All we got is--’

‘Just listen to me,’ said Mrs. Wilson. ‘I haven’t come here with any lawyer to sue you. Bartholomew--Mister Brannon--and I talked it over when we came and we just about agree on the main points. In the first place, I want to do the fair, honest thing--and in the second place, I don’t want Baby’s name mixed up in no common lawsuit at her age.’

There was not a sound and everybody in the room sat stiff in their chairs. Only Mister Brannon halfway smiled at Mick, but she squinted her eyes back at him in a tough way.

Mrs. Wilson was very nervous and her hand shook when she lighted a cigarette. ‘I don’t want to have to sue you or anything like that. All I want is for you to be fair. I’m not asking you to pay for all the suffering and crying Baby went through with until they gave her something to sleep. There’s not any pay that would make up for that. And I’m not asking you to pay for the damage this will do to her career and the plans we had made. She’s going to have to wear a bandage for several months. She won’t get to dance in the soiree--maybe there’ll even be a little bald place on her head.’

Mrs. Wilson and her Dad looked at each other like they was hypnotized. Then Mrs. Wilson reached around to her pocketbook and took out a slip of paper. ‘The things you got to pay are just the actual price of what it will cost us in money. There’s Baby’s private room in the hospital and a private nurse until she can come home. There’s the operating room and the doctor’s bill--and for once I intend the doctor to be paid right away. Also, they shaved all Baby’s hair off and you got to pay me for the permanent wave I took her to Atlanta to get--so when her hair grows back natural she can have another one. And there’s the price of her costume and other little extra bills like that. I’ll write all the items down just as soon as I know what they’ll be. I’m trying to be just as fair and honest as I can, and you’ll have to pay the total when I bring it to you.’

Her Mama smoothed her dress over her knees and took a quick, short breath. ‘Seems to me like the children’s ward would be a lot better than a private room. When Mick had penumonia--’

‘I said a private room.’

Mister Brannon held out his white, stumpy hands and balanced them like they was on scales. ‘Maybe in a day or two Baby can move into a double room with some other kid.’

Mrs. Wilson spoke hard-boiled. ‘You heard what I said. Long as your kid shot my Baby she certainly ought to have every advantage until she gets well.’

‘You’re in your rights,’ her Dad said. ‘God knows we don’t have anything now--but maybe I can scrape it up. I realize you’re not trying to take advantage of us and I appreciate it. We’ll do what we can.’

She wanted to stay and hear everything that they said, but Bubber was on her mind. When she thought of him sitting up in the dark, cold tree house thinking about Sing Sing she felt uneasy. She went out of the room and down the hall toward the back door. The wind was blowing and the yard was very dark except for the yellow square that came from the light in the kitchen. When she looked back she saw Portia sitting at the table with her long, thin hands up on her face, very still.

The yard was lonesome and the wind made quick, scary shadows and a mourning kind of sound in the darkness.

She stood under the oak tree. Then just as she started to reach for the first limb a terrible notion came over her.

It came to her all of a sudden that Bubber was gone. She called him and he did not answer. She climbed quick and quiet as a cat.

‘Say! Bubber!’ Without feeling in the box she knew he wasn’t there. To make sure she got into the box and felt in all the corners. The kid was gone. He must have started down the minute she left. He was running away for sure now, and with a smart kid like Bubber it was no telling where they’d catch him.

She scrambled down the tree and ran to the front porch. Mrs.

Wilson was leaving and they had all come out to the front steps with her.

‘Dad!’ she said. ‘We got to do something about Bubber. He’s run away. I’m sure he left our block. We all got to get out and hunt him.’

Nobody knew where to go or how to begin. Her Dad walked up and down the street, looking in all the alleys. Mister Brannon telephoned for a ten-cent taxi for Mrs. Wilson and then stayed to help with the hunt. Mister Singer sat on the banisters of the porch and he was the only person who kept calm. They all waited for Mick to plan out the best places to look for Bubber. But the town was so big and the little kid so smart that she couldn’t think what to do.

Maybe he had gone to Portia’s house over in Sugar Hill. She went back into the kitchen where Portia was sitting at the table with her hands up to her face.

‘I got this sudden notion he went down to your house. Help us hunt him.’

‘How come I didn’t think of that! I bet a nickel my little scared Bubber been staying in my home all the time.’

Mister Brannon had borrowed an automobile. He and Mister Singer and Mick’s Dad got into the car with her and Portia.

Nobody knew what Bubber was feeling except her. Nobody knew he had really run away like he was escaping to save his life.

Portia’s house was dark except for the checkered moonlight on the floor. As soon as they stepped inside they could tell there was nobody in the two rooms. Portia lighted the front lamp.

The rooms had a colored smell, and they were crowded with cut-out pictures on the walls and the lace table covers and lace pillows on the bed. Bubber was not there.

‘He been here,’ Portia suddenly said. ‘I can tell somebody been in here.’

Mister Singer found the pencil and piece of paper on the kitchen table. He read it quickly and then they all looked at it The writing was round and scraggly and the smart little kid hadn’t misspelled but one word. The note said: Dear Portia, I gone to Florada. Tell every body.

Yours truly, Bubber Kelly They stood around surprised and stumped. Her Dad looked out the doorway and picked his nose with his thumb in a worried way. They were all ready to pile in the car and ride toward the highway leading south.

‘Wait a minute,’ Mick said. ‘Even if Bubber is seven years old he’s got brains enough not to tell us where he’s going if he wants to run away. That about Florida is just a trick.’

‘A trick?’ her Dad said.

‘Yeah. There only two places Bubber knows very much about.

One is Florida and the other is Atlanta. Me and Bubber and Ralph have been on the Atlanta road many a time. He knows how to start there and that’s where he’s headed. He always talks about what he’s going to do when he gets a chance to go to Atlanta.’

They went out to the automobile again. She was ready to climb into the back seat when Portia pinched her on the elbow. ‘You know what Bubber done?’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Don’t you tell nobody else, but my Bubber done also taken my gold earrings off my dresser. I never thought my Bubber would have done such a thing to me.’

Mister Brannon started the automobile. They rode slow, looking up and down the streets for Bubber, headed toward the Atlanta road.

It was true that in Bubber there was a tough, mean streak. He was acting different today than he had ever acted before. Up until now he was always a quiet little kid who never really done anything mean. When anybody’s feelings were hurt it always made him ashamed and nervous.

Then how come he could do all the things he had done today? They drove very slow out the Atlanta road. They passed the last line of houses and came to the dark fields and woods. All along they had stopped to ask if anyone had seen Bubber. ‘Has a little barefooted kid in corduroy knickers been by this way?’

But even after they had gone about ten miles nobody had seen or noticed him. The wind came in cold and strong from the open windows and it was late at night.

They rode a little farther and then went back toward town. Her Dad and Mister Brannon wanted to look up all the children in the second grade, but she made them turn around and go back on the Atlanta road again. All the while she remembered the words she had said to Bubber. About Baby being dead and Sing Sing and Warden Lawes. About the small electric chairs that were just his size, and Hell. In the dark the words had sounded terrible.

They rode very slow for about half a mile out of town, and then suddenly she saw Bubber. The lights of the car showed him up in front of them very plain. It was funny. He was walking along the edge of the road and he had his thumb out trying to get a ride. Portia’s butcher knife was stuck in his belt, and on the wide, dark road he looked so small that it was like he was five years old instead of seven.

They stopped the automobile and he ran to get in. He couldn’t see who they were, and his face had the squint-eyed look it always had when he took aim with a marble. Her Dad held him by the collar. He hit with his fists and kicked. Then he had the butcher knife in his hand. Their Dad yanked it away from him just in time. He fought like a little tiger in a trap, but finally they got him into the car. Their Dad held him in his lap on the way home and Bubber sat very stiff, not leaning against anything.

They had to drag him into the house, and all the neighbors and the boarders were out to see the commotion. They dragged him into the front room and when he was there he backed off into a corner, holding his fists very tight and with his squinted eyes looking from one person to the other Like he was ready to fight the whole crowd.

He hadn’t said one word since they came into the house until he began to scream: ‘Mick done it! I didn’t do it Mick done it!’ There were never any kind of yells like the ones Bubber made. The veins in his neck stood out and his fists were hard as little rocks.

‘You can’t get me! Nobody can get me!’ he kept yelling.

Mick shook him by the shoulder. She told him the things she had said were stories. He finally knew what she was saying but he wouldn’t hush. It looked like nothing could stop that screaming.

‘I hate everybody! I hate everybody!’ They all just stood around. Mister Brannon rubbed his nose and looked down at the floor. Then finally he went out very quietly. Mister Singer was the only one who seemed to know what it was all about. Maybe this was because he didn’t hear that awful noise. His face was still calm, and whenever Bubber looked at him he seemed to get quieter. Mister Singer was different from any other man, and at times like this it would be better if other people would let him manage. He had more sense and he knew things that ordinary people couldn’t know. He just looked at Bubber, and after a while the kid quieted down enough so that their Dad could get him to bed.

In the bed he lay on his face and cried. He cried with long, big sobs that made him tremble all over. He cried for an hour and nobody in the three rooms could sleep. Bill moved to the living-room sofa and Mick got into bed with Bubber. He wouldn’t let her touch him or snug up to him. Then after another hour of crying and hiccoughing he went to sleep.

She was awake a long time. In the dark she put her arms around him and held him very close. She touched him all over and kissed him everywhere. He was so soft and little and there was this salty, boy smell about him. The love she felt was so hard that she had to squeeze him to her until her arms were tired. In her mind she thought about Bubber and music together. It was like she could never do anything good enough for him. She would never hit him or even tease him again. She slept all night with her arms around his head. Then in the morning when she woke up he was gone. But after that night there was not much of a chance for her to tease him any more--her or anybody else. After he shot Baby the kid was not ever like little Bubber again. He always kept his mouth shut and he didn’t fool around with anybody.

Most of the time he just sat in the back yard or in the coal house by himself. It got closer and closer toward Christmas time. She really wanted a piano, but naturally she didn’t say anything about that. She told everybody she wanted a Micky Mouse watch. When they asked Bubber what he wanted from Santa Claus he said he didn’t want anything. He hid his marbles and jack-knife and wouldn’t let anyone touch his story books.

After that night nobody called him Bubber any more. The big kids in the neighborhood started calling him Baby-Killer Kelly. But he didn’t speak much to any person and nothing seemed to bother him. The family called him by his real name--George. At first Mick couldn’t stop calling him Bubber and she didn’t want to stop. But it was funny how after about a week she just naturally called him George like the others did.

But he was a different kid--George--going around by himself always like a person much older and with nobody, not even her, knowing what was really in his mind.

She slept with him on Christmas Eve night. He lay in the dark without talking. ‘Quit acting so peculiar,’ she said to him. ‘Less talk about the wise men and the way the children in Holland put out their wooden shoes instead of hanging up their stockings.’

George wouldn’t answer. He went to sleep.

She got up at four o’clock in the morning and waked everybody in the family. Their Dad built a fire in the front room and then let them go into the Christmas tree and see what they got. George had an Indian suit and Ralph a rubber doll. The rest of the family just got clothes. She looked all through her stocking for the Mickey Mouse watch but it wasn’t there. Her presents were a pair of brown Oxford shoes and a box of cherry candy. While it was still dark she and George went out on the sidewalk and cracked nigger-toes and shot firecrackers and ate up the whole two-layer box of cherry candy. And by the time it was daylight they were sick to the stomach and tired out. She lay down on die sofa. She shut her eyes and went into the inside room.

EIGHT o’clock Doctor Copeland sat at his desk, studying a sheaf of papers by the bleak morning light from the window.

Beside him the tree, a thick-fringed cedar, rose up dark and green to the ceiling. Since the first year he began to practice he had given an annual party on Christmas Day, and now all was in readiness. Rows of benches and chairs lined the walls of the front rooms. Throughout the house there was the sweet spiced odor of newly baked cake and steaming coffee. In the office with him Portia sat on a bench against the wall, her hands cupped beneath her chin, her body bent almost double.

‘Father, you been scrouched over the desk since five o’clock.

You got no business to be up. You ought to stayed in bed until time for the to-do.’

Doctor Copeland moistened his thick lips with his tongue. So much was on his mind that he had no attention to give to Portia. Her presence fretted him.

At last he turned to her irritably. ‘Why do you sit there moping?’

‘I just got worries,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I worried about our Willie.’

‘William?’

‘You see he been writing me regular ever Sunday. The letter will get here on Monday or Tuesday. But last week he didn’t write. Course I not really anxious. Willie--he always so good-- natured and sweet I know he going to be all right. He been transferred from the prison to the chain gang and they going to work up somewhere north of Atlanta. Two weeks ago he wrote this here letter to say they going to attend a church service today, and he done asked me to send him his suit of clothes and his red tie.’

‘Is that all William said?’

‘He written that this Mr. B. F. Mason is at the prison, too. And that he run into Buster Johnson--he a boy Willie used to know. And also he done asked me to please send him his harp because he can’t be happy without he got his harp to play on. I done sent everthing. Also a checker set and a white-iced cake.

But I sure hope I hears from him in the next few days.’

Doctor Copeland’s eyes glowed with fever and he could not rest his hands. ‘Daughter, we shall have to discuss this later. It is getting late and I must finish here. You go back to the kitchen and see that all is ready.’

Portia stood up and tried to make her face bright and happy.

‘What you done decided about that five-dollar prize?’

‘As yet I have been unable to decide just what is the wisest course,’ he said carefully.

A certain friend of his, a Negro pharmacist, gave an award of five dollars every year to the high-school student who wrote the best essay on a given subject. The pharmacist always made Doctor Copeland sole judge of the papers and the winner was announced at the Christmas party. The subject of the composition this year was ‘My Ambition: How I Can Better the Position of the Negro Race in Society. ‘There was only one essay worthy of real consideration. Yet this paper was so childish and ill-advised that it would hardly be prudent to confer upon it the award. Doctor Copeland put on his glasses and re-read the essay with deep concentration.

This is my ambition. First I wish to attend Tuskegee College but I do not wish to be a man like Booker Washington or Doctor Carver. Then when I deem that my education is complete I wish to start off being a fine lawyer like the one who defended the Scottsboro Boys. I would only take cases for colored people against white people. Every day our people are made in every way and by every means to feel that they are inferior. This is not so. We are a Rising Race. And we cannot sweat beneath the white man’s burdens for long. We cannot always sow where others reap.

I want to be like Moses, who led the children of Israel from the land of the oppressors. I want to get up a Secret Organization of Colored Leaders and Scholars. All colored people will organize under the direction of these picked leaders and prepare for revolt. Other nations in the world who are interested in the plight of our race and who would like to see the United States divided would come to our aid. All colored people will organize and there will be a revolution, and at the close colored people will take up all the territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Potomac. I shall set up a mighty country under the control of the Organization of Colored Leaders and Scholars.

No white person will be allowed a passport--and if they get into the country they will have no legal rights.

I hate the whole white race and will work always so that the colored race can achieve revenge for all their sufferings. That is my ambition.

Doctor Copeland felt the fever warm in his veins. The ticking of the clock on his desk was loud and the sound jarred his nerves. How could he give the award to a boy with such wild notions as this? What should he decide? The other essays were without any firm content at all. The young people would not think. They wrote only about their ambitions and omitted the last part of the tide altogether. Only one point was of some significance. Nine out of the lot of twenty-five began with the sentence, ‘I do not want to be a servant.’ After that they wished to fly airplanes, or be prizefighters, or preachers or dancers. One girl’s sole ambition was to be kind to the poor.

The writer of the essay that troubled him was Lancy Davis. He had known the identity of the author before he turned the last sheet over and saw the signature. Already he had some trouble with Lancy. His older sister had gone out to work as a servant when she was eleven years old and she had been raped by her employer, a white man past middle age. Then a year or so later he had received an emergency call to attend Lancy.

Doctor Copeland went to the filing case in his bedroom where he kept notes on all of his patients. He took out the card marked ‘Mrs. Dan Davis and Family’ and glanced through the notations until he reached Lancy’s name. The date was four years ago. The entries on him were written with more care than the others and in ink: ‘thirteen years old--past puberty.

Unsuccessful attempt self-emasculation. Oversexed and hyperthyroid. Wept boisterously during two visits, though little pain. Voluble--very glad to see Lucy Davis--mother washerwoman. Intelligent talk through paranoiac.

Environment fair with one exception and well worth watching and all possible help. Keep contact. Fee: $1 (?)’

‘It is a difficult decision to make this year,’ he said to Portia.

‘But I suppose I will have to confer the award on Lancy Davis.’

‘If you done decide, then--come tell me about some of these here presents.’

The gifts to be distributed at the party were in the kitchen.

There were paper sacks of groceries and clothing, all marked with a red Christmas card. Anyone who cared to come was invited to the party, but those who meant to attend had stopped by the house and written (or had asked a friend to write) their names in a guest book kept on the table in the hall for that purpose. The sacks were piled on the floor. There were about forty of them, each one depending in size on the need of the receiver. Some gifts were only small packages of nuts or raisins and others were boxes almost too heavy for a man to lift The kitchen was crowded with good things. Doctor Copeland stood in the doorway and his nostrils quivered with pride.

I think you done right well this year. Folks certainly have been kindly.’

‘Pshaw!’ he said. This is not a hundredth part of what is needed.’

‘Now, there you go, Father! I know good and well you just as pleased as you can be. But you don’t want to show it.

You got to find something to grumble about. Here we haves about four pecks of peas, twenty sacks of meal about fifteen pounds of side meat, mullet, six dozen eggs, plenty grits, jars of tomatoes and peaches. Apples and two dozen oranges. Also garments. And two mattresses and four blankets. I call this something!’

‘A drop in the bucket.’

Portia pointed to a large box in the corner. These here--what you intend to do with them?’

The box contained nothing but junk--a headless doll, some duty lace, a rabbit skin. Doctor Copeland scrutinized each article. ‘Do not throw them away. There is use for everything.

These are the gifts from our guests who have nothing better to contribute. I will find some purpose for them later.’

‘Then suppose you look over these here boxes and sacks so I can commence to tie them up. There ain’t going to be room here in the kitchen. Time they all pile in for the refreshments.

I just going to put these here presents out on the back steps and in the yard.’

The morning sun had risen. The day would be bright and cold.

In the kitchen there were rich, sweet odors. A dishpan of coffee was on the stove and iced cakes filled a shelf in the cupboard.

‘And none of this comes from white people. All from colored.’

‘No,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘That is not wholly true. Mr.

Singer contributed a check for twelve dollars to be used for coal. And I have invited him to be present today.’

‘Holy Jesus!’ Portia said. ‘Twelve dollars!’

‘I felt that it was proper to ask him. He is not like other people of the Caucasian race.’

‘You right,’ Portia said. ‘But I keep thinking about my Willie. I sure do wish he could enjoy this here party today. And I sure do wish I could get a letter from him. It just prey on my mind.

But here! Us got to quit this here talking and get ready. It mighty near time for the party to come.’

Time enough remained. Doctor Copeland washed and clothed himself carefully. For a while he tried to rehearse what he would say when the people had all come. But expectation and restlessness would not let him concentrate. Then at ten o’clock the first guests arrived and within half an hour they were all assembled.

‘Joyful Christmas to you!’ said John Roberts, the postman. He moved happily about the crowded room, one shoulder held higher than the other, mopping his face with a white silk handkerchief.

‘Many happy returns of the day!’ The front of the house was thronged. Guests were blocked at the door and they formed groups on the front porch and in the yard. There was no pushing or rudeness; the turmoil was orderly. Friends called out to each other and strangers were introduced and clasped hands. Children and young people clotted together and moved back toward the kitchen. ‘Christmas gift!’ Doctor Copeland stood in the center of the front room by the tree. He was dizzy. He shook hands and answered salutations with confusion. Personal gifts, some tied elaborately with ribbons and others wrapped in newspapers, were thrust into his hands. He could find no place to put them. The air thickened and voices grew louder. Faces whirled about him so that he could recognize no one. His composure returned to him gradually. He found space to lay aside the presents in his arms. The dizziness lessened, the room cleared. He settled his spectacles and began to look around him.

‘Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!’ There was Marshall Nicolls, the pharmacist, in a long-tailed coat, conversing with his son-in-law who worked on a garbage truck. The preacher from the Most Holy Ascension Church had come. And two deacons from other churches. Highboy, wearing a loud checked suit, moved sociably through the crowd. Husky young dandies bowed to young women in long, bright-colored dresses. There were mothers with children and deliberate old men who spat into gaudy handkerchiefs. The room was warm and noisy.

Mr. Singer stood in the doorway. Many people stared at him.

Doctor Copeland could not remember if he had welcomed him or not. The mute stood by himself. His face resembled somewhat a picture of Spinoza. A Jewish face. It was good to see him.

The doors and the windows were open. Draughts blew through the room so that the fire roared. The noises quieted.

The seats were all filled and the young people sat in rows on the floor. The hall, the porch, even the yard were crowded with silent guests. The time had come for him to speak--and what was he to say? Panic tightened his throat. The room waited. At a sign from John Roberts all sounds were hushed.

‘My People,’ began Doctor Copeland blankly. There was a pause. Then suddenly the words came to him.

‘This is the nineteenth year that we have gathered together in this room to celebrate Christmas Day. When our people first heard of the birth of Jesus Christ it was a dark time. Our people were sold as slaves in this town on the courthouse square. Since then we have heard and told the story of His life more times than we could remember. So today our story will be a different one.

‘One hundred and twenty years ago another man was born in the country that is known as Germany--a country far across the Atlantic Ocean. This man understood as did Jesus. But his thoughts were not concerned with Heaven or the future of the dead. His mission was for the living. For the great masses of human beings who work and suffer and work until they die.

For people who take in washing and work as cooks, who pick cotton and work at the hot dye vats of the factories. His mission was for us, and the name of this man was Karl Marx.

‘Karl Marx was a wise man. He studied and worked and understood the world around him. He said that the world was divided into two classes, the poor and the rich. For every rich man there were a thousand poor people who worked for this rich man to make him richer. He did not divide the world into Negroes or white people or Chinese--to Karl Marx it seemed that being one of the millions of poor people or one of the few rich was more important to a man than the color of his skin.

The life mission of Karl Marx was to make all human beings equal and to divide the great wealth of the world so that there would be no poor or rich and each person would have his share. This is one of the commandments Karl Marx left to us: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."‘ A wrinkled, yellow palm waved timidly from the hall. Were he the Mark in the Bible?’

Doctor Copeland explained. He spelled the two names and cited dates. ‘Are there any more questions? I wish each one of you to feel free to start or enter into any discussion.’

‘I presume Mr. Marx was a Christian church man?’ asked the preacher.

‘He believed in the holiness of the human spirit’

‘Were he a white man?’

‘Yes. But he did not think of himself as a white man. He said, "I consider nothing human as alien to myself." He thought of himself as a brother to all people.’

Doctor Copeland paused a moment longer. The faces around him were waiting.

‘What is the value of any piece of property, of any merchandise we buy in a store? The value depends only on one thing--and that is the work it took to make or to raise this article. Why does a brick house cost more than a cabbage? Because the work of many men goes into the making of one brick house. There are the people who made the bricks and mortar and the people who cut down the trees to make the planks used for the floor. There are the men who made the building of the brick house possible. There are the men who carried the materials to the ground where the house was to be built. There are the men who made the wheelbarrows and trucks that carried the materials to this place. Then finally there are the workmen who built the house. A brick house involves the labor of many, many people--while any of us can raise a cabbage in his back yard. A brick house costs more than a cabbage because it takes more work to make. So when a man buys this brick house he is paying for the labor that went to make it. But who gets the money--the profit? Not the many men who did the work--but the bosses who control them. And if you study this further you will find that these bosses have bosses above them and those bosses have bosses higher up--so that the real people who control all this work, which makes any article worth money, are very few. Is this clear so far?’

‘Us understand!’ But did they? He started all over and retold what he had said.

This time there were questions.

‘But don’t clay for these here bricks cost money? And don’t it take money to rent land and raise crops on?’

‘That is a good point,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Land, clay, timber--those things are called natural resources. Man does not make these natural resources--man only develops them, only uses them for work. Therefore should any one person or group of persons own these things? How can a man own ground and space and sunlight and rain for crops? How can a man say "this is mine" about those things and refuse to let others share them? Therefore Marx says that these natural resources should belong to everyone, not divided into little pieces but used by all the people according to their ability to work. It is like this. Say a man died and left his mule to his four sons. The sons would not wish to cut up the mule to four parts and each take his share. They would own and work the mule together. That is the way Marx says all of the natural resources should be owned--not by one group of rich people but by all the workers of the world as a whole.

‘We in this room have no private properties. Perhaps one or two of us may own the homes we live in, or have a dollar or two set aside--but we own nothing that does not contribute directly toward keeping us alive. All that we own is our bodies. And we sell our bodies every day we live. We sell them when we go out in the morning to our jobs and when we labor all day. We are forced to sell at any price, at any time, for any purpose. We are forced to sell our bodies so that we can eat and live. And the price which is given us for this is only enough so that we will have the strength to labor longer for the profits of others. Today we are not put up on the platforms and sold at the courthouse square. But we are forced to sell our strength, our time, our souls during almost every hour that we live. We have been freed from one kind of slavery only to be delivered into another. Is this freedom? Are we yet free men?’ A deep voice called out from the front yard. ‘That the real truth! That how things is!’ .And we are not alone in this slavery. There are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. This we must remember. There are many of our people who hate the poor of the white race, and they hate us. The people in this town living by the river who work in the mills.

People who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves.

This hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it.

We must remember the words of Karl Marx and see the truth according to his teachings. The injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us. We must remember that we all make the things of this earth of value because of our labor.

These main truths from Karl Marx we must keep in our hearts always and not forget. ‘But my people! We in this room--we Negroes--have another mission that is for ourselves alone. Within us there is a strong, true purpose, and if we fail in this purpose we will be forever lost. Let us see, then, what is the nature of this special mission.’

Doctor Copeland loosened the collar of his shirt, for in his throat there was a choked feeling. The grievous love he felt within him was too much. He looked around him at the hushed guests. They waited. The groups of people in the yard and on the porch stood with the same quiet attention as did those in the room. A deaf old man leaned forward with his hand to his ear. A woman hushed a fretful baby with a pacifier. Mr.

Singer stood attentively in the doorway. Most of the young people sat on the floor. Among them was Lancy Davis. The boy’s lips were nervous and pale. He clasped his knees very tightly with his arms, and his young face was sullen. All the eyes in the room watched, and in them there was hunger for truth.

‘Today we are to confer the five-dollar award upon the high-school student who wrote the best essay on the topic, "My Ambition: How I can Better the Position of the Negro Race in Society." This year the award goes to Lancy Davis.’ Doctor Copeland took an envelope from his pocket. ‘There is no need for me to tell you that the value of this award is not wholly in the sum of money it represents--but the sacred trust and faith that goes with it.’

Lancy rose awkwardly to his feet. His sullen lips trembled. He bowed and accepted the award. ‘Do you wish me to read the essay I have written?’

‘No,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘But I wish you to come and talk with me sometime this week.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The room was quiet again.

‘I do not wish to be a servant!’ That is the desire I have read over and over in these essays. Servant? Only one in a thousand of us is allowed to be a servant. We do not work! We do not serve!’ The laughter in the room was uneasy.

‘Listen! One out of five of us labors to build roads, or to take care of the sanitation of this city, or works in a sawmill or on a farm. Another one out of the five is unable to get any work at all. But the other three out of this five--the greatest number of our people? Many of us cook for those who are incompetent to prepare the food that they themselves eat.

Many work a lifetime tending flower gardens for the pleasure of one or two people. Many of us polish slick waxed floors of fine houses. Or we drive automobiles for rich people who are too lazy to drive themselves. We spend our lives doing thousands of jobs that are of no real use to anybody. We labor and all of our labor is wasted. Is that service? No, that is slavery.

‘We labor, but our labor is wasted. We are not allowed to serve. You students here this morning represent the fortunate few of our race. Most of our people are not allowed to go to school at all. For each one of you there are dozens of young people who can hardly write their names. We are denied the dignity of study and wisdom.

‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. ‘All of us here know what it is to suffer for real need.

That is a great injustice. But there is one injustice bitterer even than that--to be denied the right to work according to one’s ability. To labor a lifetime uselessly. To be denied the chance to serve. It is far better for the profits of our purse to be taken from us than to be robbed of the riches of our minds and souls.

‘Some of you young people here this morning may feel the need to be teachers or nurses or leaders of your race. But most of you will be denied. You will have to sell yourselves for a useless purpose in order to keep alive. You will be thrust back and defeated. The young chemist picks cotton. The young writer is unable to learn to read. The teacher is held in useless slavery at some ironing board. We have no representatives in government. We have no vote. In all of this great country we are the most oppressed of all people. We cannot lift up our voices. Our tongues rot in our mouths from lack of use. Our hearts grow empty and lose strength for our purpose.

‘People of the Negro race! We bring with us all the riches of the human mind and soul. We offer the most precious of all gifts. And our offerings are held in scorn and contempt. Our gifts are trampled in the mud and made useless. We are put to labor more useless than the work of beasts. Negroes! We must arise and be whole again! We must be free!’ In the room there was a murmur. Hysteria mounted. Doctor Copeland choked and clenched his fists. He felt as though he had swelled up to the size of a giant. The love in him made his chest a dynamo, and he wanted to shout so that his voice could be heard throughout the town. He wanted to fall upon the floor and call out in a giant voice. The room was full of moans and shouts.

‘Save us!’

‘Mighty Lord! Lead us from this wilderness of death! ‘Hallelujah! Save us, Lord!’ He struggled for the control in him. He struggled and at last the discipline returned. He pushed down the shout in him and sought for the strong, true voice.

‘Attention!’ he called. ‘We will save ourselves. But not by prayers of mourning. Not by indolence or strong drink. Not by the pleasures of the body or by ignorance. Not by submission and humbleness. But by pride. By dignity. By becoming hard and strong. We must build strength for our real true purpose.’

He stopped abruptly and held himself very straight. ‘Each year at this time we illustrate in our small way the first commandment from Karl Marx. Every one of you at this gathering has brought in advance some gift. Many of you have denied yourselves comfort that the needs of others may be lessened. Each of you has given according to his best ability, without thought to the value of the gift he will receive in return. It is natural for us to share with each other. We have long realized that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

The words of Karl Marx have always been known in our hearts: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Doctor Copeland was silent a long time as though his words were complete. Then he spoke again: ‘Our mission is to walk with strength and dignity through the days of our humiliation. Our pride must be strong, for we know the value of the human mind and soul. We must teach our children. We must sacrifice so that they may earn the dignity of study and wisdom. For the time will come. The time will come when the riches in us will not be held in scorn and contempt. The time will come when we will be allowed to serve. When we will labor and our labor will not be wasted.

And our mission is to await this time with strength and faith.’

It was finished. Hands were clapped, feet were stamped upon the floor and en the hard winter ground outside. The odor of hot, strong coffee floated from the kitchen. John Roberts took charge of the presents, calling out the names written on the cards. Portia ladled the coffee from the dish-pan on the stove while Marshall Nicolls passed slices of cake.

Doctor Copeland moved about among the guests, a little crowd always surrounding him.

Someone nagged at his elbow: ‘He the one your Buddy named for?’ He answered yes. Lancy Davis followed him with questions; he answered yes to everything. The joy made him feel like a drunken man. To teach and exhort and explain to his people--and to have them understand. That was the best of all. To speak the truth and be attended.

‘Us certainly have had one fine time at this party.’

He stood in the vestibule saying goodbye. Over and over he shook hands. He leaned heavily against the wall and only his eyes moved, for he was tired.

‘I certainly do appreciate.’

Mr. Singer was the last to leave. He was a truly good man. He was a white man of intellect and true knowledge. In him there was none of the mean insolence. When all had departed he was the last to remain. He waited and seemed to expect some final word.

Doctor Copeland held his hand to his throat because his larynx was sore. ‘Teachers,’ he said huskily. ‘That is our greatest need. Leaders. Someone to unite and guide us.’

After the festivity the rooms had a bare, ruined look. The house was cold. Portia was washing the cups in the kitchen.

The silver snow on the Christmas tree had been tracked over the floors and two of the ornaments were broken.

He was tired, but the joy and the fever would not let him rest Beginning with the bedroom, he set to work to put the house in order. On the top of the filing case there was a loose card--the note on Lancy Davis. The words that he would say to him began to form in his mind, and he was restless because he could not speak them now. The boy’s sullen face was full of heart and he could not thrust it from his thoughts. He opened the top drawer of the file to replace the card, A, B, C--he thumbed through the letters nervously. Then his eye was fixed on his own name: Copeland, Benedict Mady.

In the folder were several lung X-rays and a short case history.

He held an X-ray up to the light. On the upper left lung there was a bright place like a calcified star. And lower down a large clouded spot that duplicated itself in the right lung farther up. Doctor Copeland quickly replaced the X-rays in the folder. Only the brief notes he had written on himself were still in his hand. The words stretched out large and scrawling so that he could hardly read them. ‘1920--calcif. of lymph glands--very pronounced thickening of hili. Lesions arrested--duties resumed. 1937--lesion reopened--X-ray shows--’ He could not read the notes. At first he could not make out the words, and then when he read them clearly they made no reason. At the finish there were three words: ‘Prognosis: Don’t know.’

The old black, violent feeling came in him again. He leaned down and wrenched open a drawer at the bottom of the case.

A jumbled pile of letters. Notes from the Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A yellowed letter from Daisy. A note from Hamilton asking for a dollar and a half.

What was he looking for? His hands rummaged in the drawer and then at last he arose stiffly.

Time wasted. The past hour gone.

Portia peeled potatoes at the kitchen table. She was slumped over and her face was dolorous.

‘Hold up your shoulders,’ he said angrily. ‘And cease moping.

You mope and drool around until I cannot bear to look on you.’

‘I were just thinking about Willie,’ she said. ‘Course the letter is only three days due. But he got no business to worry me like this. He not that kind of a boy. And I got this queer feeling.’

‘Have patience, Daughter.’

‘I reckon I have to.’

‘There are a few calls I must make, but I will be back shortly.’

‘O.K.’

‘All will be well,’ he said. Most of his joy was gone in the bright, cool noonday sun. The diseases of his patients lay scattered in his mind. An abscessed kidney. Spinal meningitis. Pott’s disease. He lifted the crank of the automobile from the back seat. Usually he hailed some passing Negro from the street to crank the car for him. His people were always glad to help and serve. But today he fitted the crank and turned it vigorously himself. He wiped the perspiration from his face with the sleeve of his overcoat and hurried to get beneath the wheel and on his way. How much that he had said today was understood? How much would be of any value? He recalled the words he had used, and they seemed to fade and lose their strength. The words left unsaid were heavier on his heart. They rolled up to his lips and fretted them. The faces of his suffering people moved in a swelling mass before his eyes. And as he steered the automobile slowly down the street his heart turned with this angry, restless love. J. HE town had not known a winter as cold as this one for years. Frost formed on the windowpanes and whitened the roofs of houses. The winter afternoons glowed with a hazy lemon light and shadows were a delicate blue. A thin coat of ice crusted the puddles in the streets, and it was said on the day after Christmas that only ten miles to the north there was a light fall of snow.

A change came over Singer. Often he went out for the long walks that had occupied him during the months when Antonapoulos was first gone. These walks extended for miles in every direction and covered the whole of the town. He rambled through the dense neighborhoods along the river that were more squalid than ever since the mills had been slack this winter. In many eyes there was a look of somber loneliness. Now that people were forced to be idle, a certain restlessness could be felt. There was a fervid outbreak of new beliefs. A young man who had worked at the dye vats in a mill claimed suddenly that a great holy power had come in him. He said it was his duty to deliver a new set of commandments from the Lord, The young man set up a tabernacle and hundreds of people came each night to roll on the ground and shake each other, for they believed that they were in the presence of something more than human. There was murder, too. A woman who could not make enough to eat believed that a foreman had cheated on her work tokens and she stabbed him in the throat. A family of Negroes moved into the end house on one of the most dismal streets, and this caused so much indignation that the house was burned and the black man beaten by his neighbors. But these were incidents. Nothing had really changed. The strike that was talked about never came off because they could not get together. All was the same as before. Even on the coldest nights the Sunny Dixie Show was open. The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.

Singer walked through the scattered odorous parts of town where the Negroes crowded together. There was more gaiety and violence here. Often the fine, sharp smell of gin lingered in the alleys. Warm, sleepy firelight colored the windows.

Meetings were held in the churches almost every night.

Comfortable little houses set off in plots of brown grass--Singer walked in these parts also. Here the children were huskier and more friendly to strangers. He roamed through the neighborhoods of the rich. There were houses, very grand and old, with white columns and intricate fences of wrought iron.

He walked past the big brick houses where automobiles honked in the driveways and where the plumes of smoke rolled lavishly from chimneys. And out to the very edges of the roads that led from the town to general stores where fanners came on Saturday nights and sat around the stove. He wandered often about the four main business blocks that were brightly lighted and then through the black, deserted alleys behind. There was no part of the town that Singer did not know. He watched the yellow squares of light reflect from a thousand windows. The winter nights were beautiful. The sky was a cold azure and the stars were very bright Often it happened now that he would be spoken to and stopped during these walks. All kinds of people became acquainted with him. If the person who spoke to him was a stranger, Singer presented his card so that his silence would be understood. He came to be known through all the town. He walked with his shoulders very straight and kept his hands always stuffed down into his pockets. His gray eyes seemed to take in everything around him, and in his face there was still the look of peace that is seen most often in those who are very wise or very sorrowful. He was always glad to stop with anyone wishing his company. For after all he was only walking and going nowhere.

Now it came about that various rumors started in the town concerning the mute. In the years before with Antonapoulos they had walked back and forth to work, but except for this they were always alone together in their rooms. No one had bothered about them then--and if they were observed it was the big Greek on whom attention was focused. The Singer of those years was forgotten.

So the rumors about the mute were rich and varied. The Jews said that he was a Jew. The merchants along the main street claimed he received a large legacy and was a very rich man. It was whispered in one browbeaten textile union that the mute was an organizer for the C.I.O. A lone Turk who had roamed into the town years ago and who languished with his family behind the little store where they sold linens claimed passionately to his wife that the mute was Turkish. He said that when he spoke his language the mute understood. And as he claimed this his voice grew warm and he forgot to squabble with his children and he was full of plans and activity. One old man from the country said that the mute had come from somewhere near his home and that the mute’s father had the finest tobacco crop in all the country. All these things were said about him.

Antonapoulos! Within Singer there was always the memory of his friend. At night when he closed his eyes the Greek’s face was there in the darkness--round and oily, with a wise and gentle smile. In his dreams they were always together.

It was more than a year now since his friend had gone away.

This year seemed neither long nor short. Rather it was removed from the ordinary sense of time--as when one is drunk or half-asleep. Behind each hour there was always his friend. And this buried life with Antonapoulos changed and developed as did the happenings around him. During the first few months he had thought most of the terrible weeks before Antonapoulos was taken away--of the trouble that followed his Illness, of the summons for arrest, and the misery in trying to control the whims of his friend. He thought of times in the past when he and Antonapoulos had been unhappy. There was one recollection, far in the past, that came back to him several times.

They never had no friends. Sometimes they would meet other mutes--there were three of them with whom they became acquainted during the ten years. But something always happened. One moved to another state the week after they met him. Another was married and had six children and did not talk with his hands. But it was their relation with the third of these acquaintances that Singer remembered when his friend was gone.

The mute’s name was Carl. He was a sallow young man who worked in one of the mills. His eyes were pale yellow and his teeth so brittle and transparent that they seemed pale and yellow also. In his blue overalls that hung limp over his skinny little body he was like a blue-and-yellow rag doll.

They invited him to dinner and arranged to meet him beforehand at the store where Antonapoulos worked. The Greek was still busy when they arrived. He was finishing a batch of caramel fudge in the cooking room at the back of the store. The fudge lay golden and glossy over the long marble-topped table. The air was warm and rich with sweet smells.

Antonapoulos seemed pleased to have Carl watch him as he glided the knife down the warm candy and cut it into squares.

He offered their new friend a corner of the fudge on the edge of his greased knife, and showed him the trick that he always performed for anyone when he wished to be liked. He pointed to a vat of syrup boiling on the stove and fanned his face and squinted his eyes to show how hot it was. Then he wet his hand in a pot of cold water, plunged it into the boiling syrup, and swiftly put it back into the water again. His eyes bulged and he rolled out his tongue as though he were in great agony.

He even wrung his hand and hopped on one foot so that the building shook. Then he smiled suddenly and held out his hand to show that it was a joke and hit Carl on the shoulder.

It was a pale winter evening, and their breath clouded in the cold air as they walked with their arms interlocked down the street Singer was in the middle and he left them on the sidewalk twice while he went into stores to shop. Carl and Antonapoulos carried the sacks of groceries, and Singer held to their arms tightly and smiled all the way home. Their rooms were cozy and he moved happily about. making conversation with Carl. After the meal the two of them talked while Antonapoulous watched with a slow smile. Often the big Greek would lumber to the closet and pour out drinks of gin. Carl sat by the window, only drinking when Antonapoulos pushed the glass into his face, and then taking solemn little sips. Singer could not ever remember his friend so cordial to a stranger before, and he thought ahead with pleasure to the time when Carl would visit them often.

Midnight had passed when the thing happened that ruined the festive party. Antonapoulos returned from one of his trips to the closet and his face had a glowering look. He sat on his bed and began to stare repeatedly at their new friend with expressions of offense and great disgust. Singer tried to make eager conversation to hide this strange behavior, but the Greek was persistent. Carl huddled in a chair, nursing his bony knees, fascinated and bewildered by the grimaces of the big Greek. His face was flushed and he swallowed timidly. Singer could ignore the situation no longer, so at last he asked Antonapoulos if his stomach pained him or if he perhaps felt bad and wished to go to sleep. Antonapoulos shook his head.

He pointed to Carl and began to make all the gestures of obscenity which he knew. The disgust on his face was terrible to see. Carl was small with fear. At last the big Greek ground his teeth and rose from his chair. Hurriedly Carl picked up his cap and left the room. Singer followed him down the stairs.

He did not know how to explain his friend to this stranger.

Carl stood hunched in the doorway downstairs, limp, with his peaked cap pulled down over his face. At last they shook hands and Carl went away.

Antonapoulos let him know that while they were not noticing, their guest had gone into the closet and drunk up all the gin.

No amount of persuasion could convince Antonapoulos that it was he himself who had finished the bottle. The big Greek sat up in bed and his round face was dismal and reproachful.

Large tears trickled slowly down to the neck of his undershirt and he could not be comforted. At last he went to sleep, but Singer was awake in the dark a long time. They never saw Carl again.

Then years later there was the time Antonapoulos took the rent money from the vase on the mantelpiece and spent it all on the slot machines. And the summer afternoon Antonapoulos went downstairs naked to get the paper. He suffered so from the summer heat. They bought an electric refrigerator on the installment plan, and Antonapoulos would suck the cubes of ice constantly and even let a few of them melt in bed with him as he slept. And the time Antonapoulos got drunk and threw a bowl of macaroni in his face.

Those ugly memories wove through his thoughts during the first months like bad threads through a carpet. And then they were gone. All the times that they had been unhappy were forgotten. For as the year went on his thoughts of his friend spiraled deeper until he dwelt only with the Antonapoulos whom he alone could know.

This was the friend to whom he told all that was in his heart.

This was the Antonapoulos who no one knew was wise but him. As the year passed his friend seemed to grow larger in his mind, and his face looked out in a very grave and subtle way from the darkness at night. The memories of his friend changed in his mind so that he remembered nothing that was wrong or foolish--only the wise and good.

He saw Antonapoulos sitting in a large chair before him. He sat tranquil and unmoving. His round face was inscrutable.

His mouth was wise and smiling. And his eyes were profound.

He watched the things that were said to him. And in his wisdom he understood.

This was the Antonapoulos who now was always in his thoughts. This was the friend to whom he wanted to tell things that had come about. For something had happened in this year.

He had been left in an alien land. Alone. He had opened his eyes and around him there was much he could not understand.

He was bewildered.

He watched the words shape on their lips.

We Negroes want a chance to be free at last. And freedom is only the right to contribute. We want to serve and to share, to labor and in turn consume that which is due to us. But you are the only white man I have ever encountered who realizes this terrible need of my people.

You see, Mister Singer? I got this music in me all the time. I got to be a real musician. Maybe I don’t know anything now, but I will when I’m twenty. See, Mister Singer? And then I mean to travel in a foreign country where there’s snow.

Let’s finish up the bottle. I want a small one. For we were thinking of freedom. That’s the word like a worm in my brain.

Yes? No? How much? How little? The word is a signal for piracy and theft and cunning. We’ll be free and the smartest will then be able to enslave the others. But! But there is another meaning to the word. Of all words this one is the most dangerous. We who know must be wary. The word makes us feel good--in fact the word is a great ideal. But it’s with this ideal that the spiders spin their ugliest webs for us.

The last one rubbed his nose. He did not come often and he did not say much. He asked questions.

The four people had been coming to his rooms now for more than seven months. They never came together--always alone.

And invariably he met them at the door with a cordial smile.

The want for Antonapoulos was always with him--just as it had been the first months after his friend had gone--and it was better to be with any person than to be too long alone. It was like the time years ago when he had made a pledge to Antonapoulos (and even written it on a paper and tacked it on the wall above his bed)--a pledge that he would give up cigarettes, beer, and meat for one month. The first days had been very bad. He could not rest or be still. He visited Antonapoulos so much at the fruit store that Charles Parker was unpleasant to him. When he had finished all the engraving on hand he would dawdle around the front of the store with the watchmaker and the salesgirl or wander out to some soda fountain to drink a Coca-Cola. In those days being near any stranger was better than thinking alone about the cigarettes and beer and meat that he wanted.

At first he had not understood the four people at all. They talked and they talked--and as the months went on they talked more and more. He became so used to their lips that he understood each word they said. And then after a while he knew what each one of them would say before he began, because the meaning was always the same.

His hands were a torment to him. They would not rest. They twitched in his sleep, and sometimes he awoke to find them shaping the words in his dreams before his face. He did not like to look at his hands or to think about them. They were slender and brown and very strong. In the years before he had always tended them with care. In the winter he used oil to prevent chapping, and he kept the cuticles pushed down and his nails always filed to the shape of his finger-tips. He had loved to wash and tend his hands. But now he only scrubbed them roughly with a brush two times a day and stuffed them back into his pockets.

When he walked up and down the floor of his room he would crack the joints of his fingers and jerk at them until they ached. Or he would strike the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. And then sometimes when he was alone and his thoughts were with his friend his hands would begin to shape the words before he knew about it. Then when he realized he was like a man caught talking aloud to himself. It was almost as though he had done some moral wrong. The shame and the sorrow mixed together and he doubled his hands and put them behind him. But they would not let him rest.

Singer stood in the street before the house where he and Antonapoulos had lived. The late afternoon was smoky and gray. In the west there were streaks of cold yellow and rose. A ragged winter sparrow flew in patterns against the smoky sky and at last came to light on a gable of the house. The street was deserted.

His eyes were fixed on a window on the right side of the second story. This was then--front room, and behind was the big kitchen where Antonapoulos had cooked all their meals.

Through the lighted window he watched a woman move back and forth across the room. She was large and vague against the light and she wore an apron. A man sat with the evening newspaper in his hand. A child with a slice of bread came to the window and pressed his nose against the pane. Singer saw the room just as he had left it--with the large bed for Antonapoulos and the iron cot for himself, the big overstuffed sofa and the camp chair. The broken sugar bowl used for an ash tray, the damp spot on the ceiling where the roof leaked, the laundry box in the corner.

On late afternoons like this there would be no light in the kitchen except the glow from the oil-burners of the big stove.

Antonapoulos always turned the wicks so that only a ragged fringe of gold and blue could be seen inside each burner. The room was warm and full of the good smells from the supper.

Antonapoulos tasted the dishes with his wooden spoon and they drank glasses of red wine. On the linoleum rug before the stove the flames from the burners made luminous reflections--five little golden lanterns. As the milky twilight grew darker these little lanterns were more intense, so that when at last the night had come they burned with vivid purity. Supper was always ready by that time and they would turn on the light and draw their chairs to the table.

Singer looked down at the dark front door. He thought of them going out together in the morning and coming home at night.

There was the broken place in the pavement where Antonapoulos had stumbled once and hurt his elbow. There was the mailbox where their bill from the light company came each month. He could feel the warm touch of his friend’s arm against his fingers.

The street was dark now. He looked up at the window once more and he saw the strange woman and the man and the child in a group together. The emptiness spread in him. All was gone. Antonapoulos was away; he was not here to remember.

The thoughts of his friend were somewhere else. Singer shut his eyes and tried to think of the asylum and the room that Antonapoulos was in tonight. He remembered the narrow white beds and the old men playing slapjack in the corner. He held his eyes shut tight, but that room would not become clear in his mind. The emptiness was very deep inside him, and after a while he glanced up at the window once more and started down the dark sidewalk where they had walked together so many times.

It was Saturday night. The main street was thick with people.

Shivering Negroes in overalls loitered before the windows of the ten-cent store. Families stood in line before the ticket box of the movie and young boys and girls stared at the posters on display outside. The traffic from the automobiles was so dangerous that he had to wait a long time before crossing the street.

He passed the fruit store. The fruits were beautiful inside the windows--bananas, oranges, alligator pears, bright little cumquats, and even a few pineapples. But Charles Parker waited on a customer inside. The face of Charles Parker was very ugly to him. Several times when Charles Parker was away he had entered the store and stood around a long while.

He had even gone to the kitchen in the back where Antonapoulos made the candies. But he never went into the store while Charles Parker was inside. They had both taken care to avoid each other since that day when Antonapoulos left on the bus. When they met in the street they always turned away without nodding. Once when he had wanted to send his friend a jar of his favorite tupelo honey he had ordered it from Charles Parker by mail so as not to be obliged to meet him.

Singer stood before the window and watched the cousin of his friend wait on a group of customers. Business was always good on Saturday night. Antonapoulos sometimes had to work as late as ten o’clock. The big automatic popcorn popper was near the door. A clerk shoved in a measure of kernels and the corn whirled inside the case like giant flakes of snow. The smell from the store was warm and familiar. Peanut hulls were trampled on the floor.

Singer passed on down the street. He had to weave his way carefully in the crowds to keep from being jostled. The streets were strung with red and green electric lights because of the holidays. People stood in laughing groups with their arms about each other. Young fathers nursed cold and crying babies on their shoulders. A Salvation Army girl in her red-and-blue bonnet tinkled a bell on the corner, and when she looked at Singer he felt obliged to drop a coin into the pot beside her.

There were beggars, both Negro and white, who held out caps or crusty hands. The neon advertisements cast an orange glow on the faces of the crowd.

He reached the corner where he and Antonapoulos had once seen a mad dog on an August afternoon. Then he passed the room above the Army and Navy Store where Antonapoulos had had his picture taken every pay-day. He carried many of the photographs in his pocket now. He turned west toward the river. Once they had taken a picnic lunch and crossed the bridge and eaten in a field on the other side.

Singer walked along the main street for about an hour. In all the crowd he seemed the only one alone. At last he took out his watch and turned toward the house where he lived.

Perhaps one of the people would come this evening to his room. He hoped so.

He mailed Antonapoulos a large box of presents for Christmas. Also he presented gifts to each of the four people and to Mrs. Kelly. For all of them together he had bought a radio and put it on the table by the window. Doctor Copeland did not notice the radio. Biff Brannon noticed it immediately and raised his eyebrows. Jake Blount kept it turned on all the time he was there, at the same station, and as he talked he seemed to be shouting above the music, for the veins stood out on his forehead. Mick Kelly did not understand when she saw the radio. Her face was very red and she asked him over and over if it was really his and whether she could listen. She worked with a dial for several minutes before she got it to the place that suited her. She sat leaning forward in her chair with her hands on her knees, her mouth open and a pulse beating very fast in her temple. She seemed to listen all over to whatever it was she heard. She sat there the whole afternoon, and when she grinned at him once her eyes were wet and she rubbed them with her fists. She asked him if she could come in and listen sometimes when he was at work and he nodded yes. So for the next few days whenever he opened the door he found her by the radio. Her hand raked through her short rumpled hair and there was a look in her face he had never seen before.

One night soon after Christmas all four of the people chanced to visit him at the same time. This had never happened before.

Singer moved about the room with smiles and refreshments and did his best in the way of politeness to make his guests comfortable. But something was wrong.

Doctor Copeland would not sit down. He stood in the doorway, hat in hand, and only bowed coldly to the others.

They looked at him as though they wondered why he was there. Jake Blount opened the beers he had brought with him and the foam spilled down on his shirtfront. Mick Kelly listened to the music from the radio. Biff Brannon sat on the bed, his knees crossed, his eyes scanning the group before him and then becoming narrow and fixed.

Singer was bewildered. Always each of them had so much to say. Yet now that they were together they were silent. When they came in he had expected an outburst of some kind. In a vague way he had expected this to be the end of something.

But in the room there was only a feeling of strain. His hands worked nervously as though they were pulling things unseen from the air and binding them together.

Jake Blount stood beside Doctor Copeland. ‘I know your face.

We run into each other once before--on the steps outside.’

Doctor Copeland moved his tongue precisely as though he clipped out his words with scissors. ‘I was not aware that we were acquainted,’ he said. Then his stiff body seemed to shrink. He stepped back until he was just outside the threshold of the room.

Biff Brannon smoked his cigarette composedly. The smoke lay in thin layers across the room. He turned to Mick and when he looked at her a blush reddened his face. He half-closed his eyes and in a moment his face was bloodless once more. ‘And how are you getting on with your business now?’

‘What business?’ Mick asked suspiciously.

‘Just the business of living,’ he said. ‘School--and so forth.’

‘O.K., I reckon,’ she said.

Each one of them looked at Singer as though in expectation.

He was puzzled. He offered refreshments and smiled.

Jake rubbed his lips with the palm of his hand. He left off trying to make conversation with Doctor Copeland and sat down on the bed beside Biff. ‘You know who it is that used to write those bloody warnings in red chalk on the fences and walls around the mills?’

‘No,’ Biff said. ‘What bloody warnings?’

‘Mostly from the Old Testament I been wondering about that for a long time.’

Each person addressed his words mainly to the mute. Their thoughts seemed to converge in him as the spokes of a wheel lead to the center hub.

‘The cold has been very unusual,’ Biff said finally. The other day I was looking through some old records and I found that in the year 1919 the thermometer got down to ten degrees Fahrenheit.

‘It was only sixteen degrees this morning, and that’s the coldest since the big freeze that year.’

‘There were icicles hanging off the roof of the coal house this morning,’ Mick said.

‘We didn’t take in enough money last week to meet the payroll,’ Jake said.

They discussed the weather some more. Each one seemed to be waiting for the others to go. Then on an impulse they all rose to leave at the same time. Doctor Copeland went first and the others followed him immediately. When they were gone Singer stood alone in the room, and as he did not understand the situation he wanted to forget it He decided to write to Antonapoulos that night The fact that Antonapoulos could not read did not prevent Singer from writing to him. He had always known that his friend was unable to make out the meaning of words on paper, but as the months went by he began to imagine that perhaps he had been mistaken, that perhaps Antonapoulos only kept his knowledge of letters a secret from everyone. Also, it was possible there might be a deaf-mute at the asylum who could read his letters and then explain them to his friend. He thought of several justifications for his letters, for he always felt a great need to write to his friend when he was bewildered or sad. Once written, however, these letters were never mailed. He cut out the comic strips from the morning and evening papers and sent them to his friend each Sunday. And every month he mailed a postal money order. But the long letters he wrote to Antonapoulos accumulated in his pockets until he would destroy them.

When the four people had gone, Singer slipped on his warm gray overcoat and his gray felt hat and left his room. He always wrote his letters at the store. Also, he had promised to deliver a certain piece of work the next morning, and he wanted to finish it now so that there would be no question of delay. The night was sharp and frosty. The moon was full and rimmed with a golden light. The rooftops were black against the starlit sky. As he walked he thought of ways to begin his letter, but he had already reached the store before the first sentence was clear in his mind. He let himself into the dark store with his key and switched on the front lights.

He worked at the very end of the store. A cloth curtain separated his place from the rest of the shop so that it was like a small private room. Besides his workbench and chair there was a heavy safe in the corner, a lavatory with a greenish mirror, and shelves full of boxes and worn-out clocks. Singer rolled up the top of his bench and removed from its felt case the silver platter he had promised to have ready. Although the store was cold he took off his coat and turned up the blue-striped cuffs of his shirt so that they would not get in his way.

For a long time he worked at the monogram in the center of the platter. With delicate, concentrated strokes he guided the scriber on the silver. As he worked his eyes had a curiously penetrating look of hunger. He was thinking of his letter to his friend Antonapoulos.

Midnight had passed before the work was finished. When he put the platter away his forehead was damp with excitement. He cleared his bench and began to write. He loved to shape words with a pen on paper and he formed the letters with as much care as if the paper had been a plate of silver.

My Only Friend: I see from our magazine that the Society meets this year at a convention in Macon. They will have speakers and a four-course banquet. I imagine it. Remember we always planned to attend one of the conventions but we never did. I wish now that we had. I wish we were going to this one and I have imagined how it would be. But of course I could never go without you. They will come from many states and they will all be full of words and long dreams from the heart. There is also to be a special service at one of the churches and some kind of a contest with a gold medal for the prize. I write that I imagine all this. I both do and do not. My hands have been still so long that it is difficult to remember how it is. And when I imagine the convention I think of all the guests being like you, my Friend.

I stood before our home the other day. Other people live in it now. Do you remember the big oak tree in front? The branches were cut back so as not to interfere with the telephone wires and the tree died. The limbs are rotten and there is a hollow place in the trunk. Also, the cat here at the store (the one you used to stroke and fondle) ate something poisonous and died. It was very sad.

Singer held the pen poised above the paper. He sat for a long while, erect and tense, without continuing the letter. Then he stood up and lighted himself a cigarette. The room was cold and the air had a sour stale odor--the mixed smells of kerosene and silver polish and tobacco. He put on his overcoat and muffler and began writing again with slow determination.

You remember the four people I told you about when I was there. I drew their pictures for you, the black man, the young girl, the one with the mustache, and the man who owns the New York Cafe. There are some things I should like to tell you about them but how to put them in words I am not sure.

They are all very busy people. In fact they are so busy that it will be hard for you to picture them. I do not mean that they work at their jobs all day and night but that they have much business in their minds always that does not let them rest.

They come up to my room and talk to me until I do not understand how a person can open and shut his or her mouth so much without being weary. (However, the New York Cafe owner is different--he is not just like the others. He has a very black beard so that he has to shave twice daily, and he owns one of these electric razors. He watches. The others all have something they hate. And they all have something they love more than eating or sleeping or wine or friendly company. That is why they are always so busy.) The one with the mustache I think is crazy. Sometimes he speaks his words very clear like my teacher long ago at the school. Other times he speaks such a language that I cannot follow. Sometimes he is dressed in a plain suit, and the next time he will be black with dirt and smelling bad and in the overalls he wears to work. He will shake his fist and say ugly drunken words that I would not wish you to know about. He thinks he and I have a secret together but I do not know what it is. And let me write you something hard to believe. He can drink three pints of Happy Days whiskey and still talk and walk on his feet and not wish for the bed. You will not believe this but it is true.

I rent my room from the girl’s mother for $16 per month. The girl used to dress in short trousers like a boy but now she wears a blue skirt and a blouse. She is not yet a young lady. I like her to come and see me. She comes all the time now that I have a radio for them. She likes music. I wish I knew what it is she hears. She knows I am deaf but she thinks I know about music.

The black man is sick with consumption but there is not a good hospital for him to go to here because he is black. He is a doctor and he works more than anyone I have ever seen. He does not talk like a black man at all. Other Negroes I find it hard to understand because their tongues do not move enough for the words. This black man frightens me sometimes. His eyes are hot and bright. He asked me to a party and I went. He has many books. However, he does not own any mystery books. He does not drink or eat meat or attend the movies.

Yah Freedom and pirates. Yah Capital and Democrats, says the ugly one with the mustache. Then he contradicts himself and says, Freedom is the greatest of all ideals. I just got to get a chance to write this music in me and be a musician. I got to have a chance says the girl. We are not allowed to serve, says the black Doctor. That is the Godlike need for my people. Aha, says the owner of the New York Cafe. He is a thoughtful one.

That is the way they talk when they come to my room. Those words in their heart do not let them rest, so they are always very busy. Then you would think when they are together they would be like those of the Society who meet at the convention in Macon this week. But that is not so. They all came to my room at the same time today. They sat like they were from different cities. They were even rude, and you know how I have always said that to be rude and not attend to the feelings of others is wrong. So it was like that. I do not understand, so I write it to you because I think you will understand. I have queer feelings. But I have written of this matter enough and I know you axe weary of it. I am also.

It has been five months and twenty-one days now. All of that time I have been alone without you. The only thing I can imagine is when I will be with you again. If I cannot come to you soon I do not know what Singer put his head down on the bench and rested. The smell and the feel of the slick wood against his cheek reminded him of his schooldays. His eyes closed and he felt sick. There was only the face of Antonapoulos in his mind, and his longing for his friend was so sharp that he held his breath. After some time Singer sat up and reached for his pen.

The gift I ordered for you did not come in time for the Christmas box. I expect it shortly. I believe you will like it and be amused. I think of us always and remember everything. I long for the food you used to make. At the New York Cafe it is much worse than it used to be. I found a cooked fly in my soup not long ago. It was mixed with the vegetables and the noodles like letters. But that is nothing. The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear. Soon I will come again. My vacation is not due for six months more but I think I can arrange it before then.

I think I will have to. I am not meant to be alone and without you who understand.

Always, JOHN SINGER. It was two o’clock in the morning before he was home again.

The big, crowded house was in darkness, but he felt his way carefully up three flights of stairs and did not stumble. He took from his pockets the cards he carried about with him, his watch, and his fountain pen. Then he folded his clothes neatly over the back of his chair. His gray-flannel pajamas were warm and soft. Almost as soon as he pulled the blankets to his chin he was asleep.

Out of the blackness of sleep a dream formed. There were dull yellow lanterns lighting up a dark flight of stone steps.

Antonapoulos kneeled at the top of these steps. He was naked and he fumbled with something that he held above his head and gazed at it as though in prayer. He himself knelt halfway down the steps. He was naked and cold and he could not take his eyes from Antonapoulos and the thing he held above him.

Behind him on the ground he felt the one with the mustache and the girl and the black man and the last one. They knelt naked and he felt their eyes on him. And behind them there were uncounted crowds of kneeling people in the darkness.

His own hands were huge windmills and he stared fascinated at the unknown thing that Antonapoulos held. The yellow lanterns swayed to and fro in the darkness and all else was motionless. Then suddenly there was a ferment. In the upheaval the steps collapsed and he felt himself falling downward. He awoke with a jerk. The early light whitened the window. He felt afraid.

Such a long time had passed that something might have happened to his friend. Because Antonapoulos did not write to him he would not know. Perhaps his friend had fallen and hurt himself. He felt such an urge to be with him once more that he would arrange it at any cost--and immediately.

In the post-office that morning he found a notice in his box that a package had come for him. It was the gift he had ordered for Christmas that did not arrive in time. The gift was a very fine one. He had bought it on the installment plan to be paid for over a period of two years. The gift was a moving-picture machine for private use, with a half-dozen of the Mickey Mouse and Popeye comedies that Antonapoulos enjoyed.

Singer was the last to reach the store that morning. He handed the jeweler for whom he worked a formal written request for leave on Friday and Saturday. And although there were four weddings on hand that week, the jeweler nodded that he could go.

He did not let anyone know of the trip beforehand, but on leaving he tacked a note to his door saying that he would be absent for several days because of business. He traveled at night, and the train reached the place of his destination just as the red winter dawn was breaking.

In the afternoon, a little before time for the visiting hour, he went out to the asylum. His arms were loaded with the parts of the moving-picture machine and the basket of fruit he carried his friend. He went immediately to the ward where he had visited Antonapoulos before.

The corridor, the door, the rows of beds were just as he remembered them. He stood at the threshold and looked eagerly for his friend. But he saw at once that though all the chairs were occupied, Antonapoulos was not there.

Singer put down his packages and wrote at the bottom of one of his cards, ‘Where is Spiros Antonapoulos?’ A nurse came into the room and he handed her the card. She did not understand. She shook her head and raised her shoulders. He went out into the corridor and handed the card to everyone he met. Nobody knew. There was such a panic in him that he began motioning with his hands. At last he met an intern in a white coat. He plucked at the intern’s elbow and gave him the card. The intern read it carefully and then guided him through several halls. They came to a small room where a young woman sat at a desk before some papers. She read the card and then looked through some files in a drawer.

Tears of nervousness and fear swam in Singer’s eyes. The young woman began deliberately to write on a pad of paper, and he could not restrain himself from twisting around to see immediately what was being written about his friend.

Mr. Antonapoulos has been transferred to the infirmary. He is ill with nephritis. I will have someone show you the way.

On the way through the corridors he stopped to pick up the packages he had left at the door of the ward. The basket of fruit had been stolen, but the other boxes were intact. He followed the intern out of the building and across a plot of grass to the infirmary.

Antonapoulos! When they reached the proper ward he saw him at the first glance. His bed was placed in the middle of the room and he was sitting propped with pillows. He wore a scarlet dressing-gown and green silk pajamas and a turquoise ring. His skin was a pale yellow color, his eyes very dreamy and dark. His black hair was touched at the temples with silver. He was knitting. His fat fingers worked with the long ivory needles very slowly. At first he did not see his friend.

Then when Singer stood before him he smiled serenely, without surprise, and held out his jeweled hand.

A feeling of shyness and restraint such as he had never known before came over Singer. He sat down by the bed and folded his hands on the edge of the counterpane. His eyes did not leave the face of his friend and he was deathly pale. The splendor of his friend’s raiment startled him. On various occasions he had sent him each article of the outfit, but he had not imagined how they would look when all combined.

Antonapoulos was more enormous than he had remembered.

The great pulpy folds of his abdomen showed beneath his silk pajamas. His head was immense against the white pillow. The placid composure of his face was so profound that he seemed hardly to be aware mat Singer was with him.

Singer raised Ms hands timidly and began to speak. His strong, skilled fingers shaped the signs with loving precision.

He spoke of the cold and of the long months alone. He mentioned old memories, the cat that had died, the store, the place where he lived. At each pause Antonapoulos nodded graciously. He spoke of the four people and the long visits to his room. The eyes of his friend were moist and dark, and in them he saw the little rectangled pictures of himself that he had watched a thousand times. The warm blood flowed back to his face and his hands quickened.

He spoke at length of the black man and the one with the jerking mustache and the girl. The designs of his hands shaped faster and faster. Antonapoulos nodded with slow gravity.

Eagerly Singer leaned closer and he breathed with long, deep breaths and in his eyes there were bright tears.

Then suddenly Antonapoulos made a slow circle in the air with his plump forefinger. His finger circled toward Singer and at last he poked his friend in the stomach. The big Greek’s smile grew very broad and he stuck out his fat, pink tongue.

Singer laughed and his hands shaped the words with wild speed. His shoulders shook with laughter and his head hung backward. Why he laughed he did not know. Antonapoulos rolled his eyes. Singer continued to laugh riotously until his breath was gone and his fingers trembled. He grasped the arm of his friend and tried to steady himself. His laughs came slow and painfully like hiccoughs.

Antonapoulos was the first to compose himself. His fat little feet had untucked the cover at the bottom of the bed. His smile faded and he kicked contemptuously at the blanket. Singer hastened to put things right, but Antonapoulos frowned and held up his finger regally to a nurse who was passing through the ward. When she had straightened the bed to his liking the big Greek inclined his head so deliberately that the gesture seemed one of benediction rather than a simple nod of thanks.

Then he turned gravely to his friend again.

As Singer talked he did not realize how the time had passed.

Only when a nurse brought Antonapoulos his supper on a tray did he realize that it was late. The lights in the ward were turned on and outside the windows it was almost dark. The other patients had trays of supper before them also. They had put down their work (some of them wove baskets, others did leatherwork or knitted) and they were eating listlessly.

Besides Antonapoulos they all seemed very sick and colorless.

Most of them needed a haircut and they wore seedy gray nightshirts slit down the back. They stared at the two mutes with wonder.

Antonapoulos lifted the cover from his dish and inspected the food carefully. There was fish and some vegetables. He picked up the fish and held it to the light in the palm of his hand for a thorough examination. Then he ate with relish. During supper he began to point out the various people in the room. He pointed to one man in the corner and made faces of disgust. The man snarled at him. He pointed to a young boy and smiled and nodded and waved his plump hand.

Singer was too happy to feel embarrassment. He picked up the packages from the floor and laid them on the bed to distract his friend. Antonapoulos took off the wrappings, but the machine did not interest him at all. He turned back to his supper.

Singer handed the nurse a note explaining about the movie.

She called an intern and then they brought in a doctor. As the three of them consulted they looked curiously at Singer. The news reached the patients and they propped up on their elbows excitedly. Only Antonapoulos was not disturbed.

Singer had practiced with the movie beforehand. He set up the screen so that it could be watched by all the patients. Then he worked with the projector and the film. The nurse took out the supper trays and the lights in the ward were turned off. A Mickey Mouse comedy flashed on the screen.

Singer watched his friend. At first Antonapoulos was startled.

He heaved himself up for a better view and would have risen from the bed if the nurse had not restrained him. Then he watched with a beaming smile. Singer could see the other patients calling out to each other and laughing. Nurses and orderlies came in from the hall and the whole ward was in commotion. When the Mickey Mouse was finished Singer put on a Popeye film. Then at the conclusion of this film he felt that the entertainment had lasted long enough for the first time. He switched on the light and the ward settled down again. As the intern put the machine under his friend’s bed he saw Antonapoulos slyly cut his eyes across the ward to be certain that each person realized that the machine was his.

Singer began to talk with his hands again. He knew that he would soon be asked to leave, but the thoughts he had stored in his mind were too big to be said in a short time. He talked with frantic haste. In the ward there was an old man whose head shook with palsy and who picked feebly at his eyebrows. He envied the old man because he lived with Antonapoulos day after day. Singer would have exchanged places with him joyfully.

His friend fumbled for something in his bosom. It was the little brass cross that he had always worn. The dirty string had been replaced by a red ribbon. Singer thought of the dream and he told that, also, to his friend. In his haste the signs sometimes became blurred and he had to shake his hands and begin all over. Antonapoulos watched him with his dark, drowsy eyes. Sitting motionless in his bright, rich garments he seemed like some wise king from a legend.

The intern in charge of the ward allowed Singer to stay for an hour past the visiting time. Then at last he held out his thin, hairy wrist and showed him his watch. The patients were settled for sleep. Singer’s hand faltered. He grasped his friend by the arm and looked intently into his eyes as he used to do each morning when they parted for work. Finally Singer backed himself out of the room. At the doorway his hands signed a broken farewell and then clenched into fists.

During the moonlit January nights Singer continued to walk about the streets of the town each evening when he was not engaged. The rumors about him grew bolder. An old Negro woman told hundreds of people that he knew the ways of spirits come back from the dead. A certain piece-worker claimed that he had worked with the mute at another mill somewhere else in the state--and the tales he told were unique. The rich thought that he was rich and the poor considered him a poor man like themselves. And as there was no way to disprove these rumors they grew marvelous and very real. Each man described the mute as he wished him to be.

WHY? The question flowed through Biff always, unnoticed, like the blood in his veins. He thought of people and of objects and of ideas and the question was in him. Midnight, the dark morning, noon. Hitler and the rumors of war. The price of loin of pork and the tax on. beer. Especially he meditated on the puzzle of the mute. Why, for instance, did Singer go away on the train and, when he was asked where he had been, pretend that he did not understand the question? And why did everyone persist in thinking the mute was exactly as they wanted him to be--when most likely it was all a very queer mistake? Singer sat at the middle table three times a day. He ate what was put before him--except cabbage and oysters. In the battling tumult of voices he alone was silent. He liked best little green soft butter beans and he stacked them in a neat pile on the prongs of his fork. And sopped their gravy with his biscuits.

Biff thought also of death. A curious incident occurred. One day while rummaging through the bathroom closet he found a bottle of Agua Florida that he had overlooked when taking Lucile the rest of Alice’s cosmetics. Meditatively he held the bottle of perfume in his hands. It was four months now since her death--and each month seemed as long and full of leisure as a year. He seldom thought of her.

Biff uncorked the bottle. He stood shirtless before the mirror and dabbled some of the perfume on his dark, hairy armpits.

The scent made him stiffen. He exchanged a deadly secret glance with himself in the mirror and stood motionless. He was stunned by the memories brought to him with the perfume, not because of their clarity, but because they gathered together the whole long span of years and were complete. Biff rubbed his nose and looked sideways at himself. The boundary of death. He felt in him each minute that he had lived with her. And now their life together was whole as only the past can be whole. Abruptly Biff turned away.

The bedroom was done over. His entirely now. Before it had been tacky and flossy and drab. There were always stockings and pink rayon knickers with holes in them hung on a string across the room to dry. The iron bed had been flaked and rusty, decked with soiled lace boudoir pillows. A bony mouser from downstairs would arch its back and rub mournfully against the slop jar.

All of this he had changed. He traded the iron bed for a studio couch. There was a thick red rug on the floor, and he had bought a beautiful cloth of Chinese blue to hang on the side of the wall where the cracks were worst. He had unsealed the fireplace and kept it laid with pine logs. Over the mantel was a small photograph of Baby and a colored picture of a little boy in velvet holding a ball in his hands. A glassed case in the corner held the curios he had collected--specimens of butterflies, a rare arrowhead, a curious rock shaped like a human profile. Blue-silk cushions were on the studio couch, and he had borrowed Lucile’s sewing-machine to make deep red curtains for the windows. He loved the room. It was both luxurious and sedate. On the table there was a little Japanese pagoda with glass pendants that tinkled with strange musical tones in a draught.

In this room nothing reminded him of her. But often he would uncork the bottle of Agua Florida and touch the stopper to the lobes of his ears or to his wrists. The smell mingled with his slow ruminations. The sense of the past grew in him.

Memories built themselves with almost architectural order. In a box where he stored souvenirs he came across old pictures taken before their marriage. Alice sitting in a field of daisies.

Alice with him in a canoe on the river. Also among the souvenirs there was a large bone hairpin that had belonged to his mother. As a little boy he had loved to watch her comb and knot her long black hair. He had thought that hairpins were curved as they were to copy the shape of a lady and he would sometimes play with them like dolls. At that time he had a cigar box full of scraps. He loved the feel and colors of beautiful cloth and he would sit with his scraps for hours under the kitchen table. But when he was six his mother took the scraps away from him. She was a tall, strong woman with a sense of duty like a man. She had loved him best. Even now he sometimes dreamed of her. And her worn gold wedding ring stayed on his finger always.

Along with the Agua Florida he found in the closet a bottle of lemon rinse Alice had always used for her hair. One day he tried it on himself. The lemon made his dark, white-streaked hair seem fluffy and thick. He liked it. He discarded the oil he had used to guard against baldness and rinsed with the lemon preparation regularly. Certain whims that he had ridiculed in Alice were now his own. Why? Every morning Louis, the colored boy downstairs, brought him a cup of coffee to drink in bed. Often he sat propped on the pillows for an hour before he got up and dressed. He smoked a cigar and watched the patterns the sunlight made on the wall. Deep hi meditation he ran his forefinger between his long, crooked toes. He remembered.

Then from noon until five in the morning he worked downstairs. And all day Sunday. The business was losing money. There were many slack hours. Still at meal-times the place was usually full and he saw hundreds of acquaintances every day as he stood guard behind the cash register.

‘What do you stand and think about all the time?’ Jake Blount asked him. ‘You look like a Jew in Germany.’

‘I am an eighth part Jew,’ Biff said. ‘My Mother’s grandfather was a Jew from Amsterdam. But all the rest of my folks that I know about were Scotch-Irish.’

It was Sunday morning. Customers lolled at the tables and there were the smell of tobacco and the rustle of newspaper.

Some men in a corner booth shot dice, but the game was a quiet one.

‘Where’s Singer?’ Biff asked. ‘Won’t you be going up to his place this morning?’

Blount’s face turned dark and sullen. He jerked his head forward. Had they quarreled--but how could a dummy quarrel? No, for this had happened before. Blount hung around sometimes and acted as though he were having an argument with himself. But pretty soon he would go--he always did--and the two of them would come in together, Blount talking.

‘You live a fine life. Just standing behind a cash register. Just standing with your hand open.’

Biff did not take offense. He leaned his weight on his elbows and narrowed his eyes. ‘Let’s me and you have a serious talk.

What is it you want anyway?’

Blount smacked his hands down on the counter. They were warm and meaty and rough. ‘Beer. And one of them little packages of cheese crackers with peanut butter in the inside.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Biff said. ‘But well come around to it later.’

The man was a puzzle. He was always changing. He still drank like a crazy fish, but liquor did not drag him down as it did some men. The rims of his eyes were often red, and he had a nervous trick of looking back startled over his shoulder. His head was heavy and huge on his thin neck. He was the sort of fellow that kids laughed at and dogs wanted to bite. Yet when he was laughed at it cut him to the quick--he got rough and loud like a sort of clown. And he was always suspecting that somebody was laughing. Biff shook his head thoughtfully. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘What makes you stick with that show? You can find something better than that. I could give you a part-time job here.’

‘Christamighty! I wouldn’t park myself behind that cash box if you was to give me the whole damn place, lock, stock, and barrel.’There he was. It was irritating. He could never have friends or even get along with people. Talk sense,’ Biff said. ‘Be serious.’ A customer had come up with his check and he made change. The place was still quiet. Blount was restless. Biff felt him drawing away. He wanted to hold him. He reached for two A-1 cigars on the shelf behind the counter and offered Blount a smoke. Warily his mind dismissed one question after another, and then finally he asked: ‘If you could choose the time in history you could have lived, what era would you choose? ‘ Blount licked his mustache with his broad, wet tongue. ‘If you had to choose between being a stiff and never asking another question, which would you take? ‘ ‘Sure enough,’ Biff insisted. ‘Think it over.’ He cocked his head to one side and peered down over his long nose. This was a matter he liked to hear others talk about. Ancient Greece was his. Walking in sandals on the edge of the blue Aegean. The loose robes girdled at the waist. Children. The marble baths and the contemplations in the temples. ‘Maybe with the Incas. In Peru.’ Biff’s eyes scanned over him, stripping him naked. He saw Blount burned a rich, red brown by the sun, his face smooth and hairless, with a bracelet of gold and precious stones on his forearm. When he closed his eyes the man was a good Inca. But when he looked at him again the picture fell away. It was the nervous mustache that did not belong to his face, the way he jerked his shoulder, the Adam’s apple on his thin neck, the bagginess of his trousers. And it was more than that. ‘Or maybe around 1775.’

‘That was a good time to be living,’ Biff agreed. Blount shuffled his feet self-consciously. His face was rough and unhappy. He was ready to leave. Biff was alert to detain him. ‘Tell me--why did you ever come to this town anyway? ‘ He knew immediately that the question had not been a politic one and he was disappointed with himself. Yet it was queer how the man could land up in a place like this.’ It’s the God’s truth I don’t know.’ They stood quietly for a moment, both leaning on the counter. The game of dice in the corner was finished. The first dinner order, a Long Island duck special, had been served to the fellow who managed the A. and P. store. The radio was turned halfway between a church sermon and a swing band. Blount leaned over suddenly and smelled Biff’s face. ‘Perfume? ‘ ‘Shaving lotion,’ Biff said composedly. He could not keep Blount longer. The fellow was ready to go. He would come in with Singer later. It was always like this. He wanted to draw Blount out completely so that he could understand certain questions concerning him. But Blount would never really talk--only to the mute. It was a most peculiar thing. ‘Thanks for the cigar,’ Blount said. ‘See you later.’

‘So long.’ Biff watched Blount walk to the door with his rolling, sailor-like gait. Then he took up the duties before him. He looked over the display in the window. The day’s menu had been pasted on the glass and a special dinner with all the trimmings was laid out to attract customers. It looked bad. Right nasty. The gravy from the duck had run into the cranberry sauce and a fly, was stuck in the dessert.

‘Hey, Louis!’ he called. ‘Take this stuff out of the window. And bring me that red pottery bowl and some fruit.’ He arranged the fruits with an eye for color and design. At last the decoration pleased him. He visited the kitchen and had a talk with the cook. He lifted the lids of the pots and sniffed the food inside, but without heart for the matter. Alice always had done this part. He disliked it. His nose sharpened when he saw the greasy sink with its scum of food bits at the bottom. He wrote down the menus and the orders for the next day. He was glad to leave the kitchen and take his stand by the cash register again. Lucile and Baby came for Sunday dinner. The little Md was not so good now. The bandage was still on her head and the doctor said it could not come off until next month. The binding of gauze in place of the yellow curls made her head look naked.

‘Say hello to Uncle Biff, Hon,’ Lucile prompted. Baby bridled fretfully.

‘Hello to Unca Biff Hon,’ she gassed. She put up a struggle when Lucile tried to take off her Sunday coat.

‘Now you just behave yourself,’ Lucile kept saying. ‘You got to take it off or you’ll catch pneumonia when we go out again.. Now you just behave yourself.’

Biff took the situation in charge. He soothed Baby with a ball of candy gum and eased the coat from her shoulders. Her dress had lost its set in the struggle with Lucile. He straightened it so that the yoke was in line across her chest He retied her sash and crushed the bow to just the right shape with his fingers. Then he patted Baby on her little behind. ‘We got some strawberry ice cream today,’ he said.

‘Bartholomew, you’d make a mighty good mother.

‘Thanks,’ Biff said. ’s a compliment’ We just been to Sunday School and church. Baby, say the verse from the Bible you learned for your Uncle Biff.’

The kid hung back and pouted. ‘Jesus wept,’ she said finally. The scorn that she put in the two words made it sound like a terrible thing.

‘Want to see Louis?’ Biff asked. ‘He’s back in the kitchen.’

‘I wanna see Willie. I wanna hear me play the harp.’

‘Now, Baby, you’re just trying yourself,’ Lucile said impatiently. ‘You know good and well that Willie’s not here. Willie was sent off to the penitentiary.’

‘But Louis,’ Biff said. ‘He can play the harp, too. Go tell him to get the ice cream ready and play you a tune.’

Baby went toward the kitchen, dragging one heel on the floor.

Lucile laid her hat on the counter. There were tears in her eyes. ‘You know I always said this: If a child is kept clean and well cared for and pretty then that child will usually be sweet and smart. But if a child’s dirty and ugly then you can’t expect anything much. What I’m trying to get at is that Baby is so shamed over losing her hair and that bandage on her head that it just seems like it makes her cut the buck all the time. She won’t practice her elocution--she won’t do a thing. She feels so bad I just can’t manage her.’

‘If you’d quit picking with her so much she’d be all right.’

At last he settled them in a booth by the window. Lucile had a special and there was a breast of chicken cut up fine, cream of wheat, and carrots for Baby. She played with her food and spilled milk on her little frock. He sat with them until the rush started. Then he had to be on his feet to keep things going smoothly.

People eating. The wide-open mouths with the food pushed in.

What was it? The line he had read not long ago. Life was only a matter of intake and alimentation and reproduction. The place was crowded. There was a swing band on the radio.

Then the two he was waiting for came in. Singer entered the door first, very straight and swank in his tailored Sunday suit.

Blount followed along just behind his elbow. There was something about the way they walked that struck him. They sat at their table, and Blount talked and ate with gusto while Singer watched politely. When the meal was finished they stopped by the cash register for a few minutes. Then as they went out he noticed again there was something about their walking together that made him pause and question himself.

What could it be? The suddenness with which the memory opened up deep down in his mind was a shock. The big deaf mute moron whom Singer used to walk with sometimes on the way to work. The sloppy Greek who made candy for Charles Parker. The Greek always walked ahead and Singer followed. He had never noticed them much because they never came into the place. But why had he not remembered this? Of all times he had wondered about the mute to neglect such an angle. See everything in the landscape except the three waltzing elephants. But did it matter after all? Biff narrowed his eyes. How Singer had been before was not important. The thing that mattered was the way Blount and Mick made of him a sort of home-made God. Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have. Yes. But how could such a strange thing come about? And why? A one-armed man came hi and Biff treated him to a whiskey on the house. But he did not feel like talking to anyone.

Sunday dinner was a family meal. Men who drank beer by themselves on weeknights brought their wives and little kids with them on Sunday. The highchair they kept in the back was often needed. It was two-thirty and though many tables were occupied the meal was almost over. Biff had been on his feet for the past four hours and was tired. He used to stand for fourteen or sixteen hours and not notice any effects at all. But now he had aged. Considerably. There was no doubt about it.

Or maybe matured was the word. Not aged--certainly not-yet. The waves of sound in the room swelled and subsided against his ears. Matured. His eyes smarted and it was as though some fever in him made everything too bright and sharp.

He called to one of the waitresses: ‘Take over for me will you, please? I’m going out.’

The street was empty because of Sunday. The sun shone bright and clear, without warmth. Biff held the collar of his coat close to his neck. Alone in the street he felt out of pocket.

The wind blew cold from the river. He should turn back and stay in the restaurant where he belonged. He had no business going to the place where he was headed. For the past four Sundays he had done this. He had walked in the neighborhood where he might see Mick. And there was something about it that was not quite right. Yes. Wrong. He walked slowly down the sidewalk opposite the house where she lived. Last Sunday she had been reading the funny papers on the front steps. But this time as he glanced swiftly toward the house he saw she was not there. But tilted the brim of his felt hat down over his eyes. Perhaps she would come into the place later. Often on Sunday after supper she came for a hot cocoa and stopped for a while at the table where Singer was sitting. On Sunday she wore a different outfit from the blue skirt and sweater she wore on other days. Her Sunday dress was wine-colored silk with a dingy lace collar. Once she had had on stockings--with runs in them. Always he wanted to set her up to something, to give to her. And not only a sundae or some sweet to eat--but something real. That was all he wanted for himself--to give to her. Biff’s mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name. On the way home Biff found a penny lying half concealed by rubbish in the gutter. Thriftily he picked it up, cleaned the coin with his handkerchief, and dropped it into the black pocket purse, he carried. It was four o’clock when he reached the restaurant. Business was stagnant. There was not a single customer in the place. Business picked up around five. The boy he had recently hired to work part time showed up early. The boy’s name was Harry Minowitz. He lived in the same neighborhood with Mick and Baby. Eleven applicants had answered the ad in the paper, but Harry seemed to be best bet. He was well developed for his age, and neat. Biff had noticed the boy’s teeth while talking to him during the interview. Teeth were always a good indication. His were large and very clean and white. Harry wore glasses, but that would not matter in the work. His mother made ten dollars a week sewing for a tailor down the street, and Harry was an only child.

‘Well,’ Biff said. ‘You’ve been with me a week, Harry. Think you’re going to like it?’

‘Sure, sir. Sure I like it.’ Biff turned the ring on his finger. ‘Let’s see. What time do you get off from school?’

‘Three o’clock, sir.’

‘Well, that gives you a couple of hours for study and recreation. Then here from six to ten. Does that leave you enough time for plenty of sleep? ‘ ‘Plenty. I don’t need near that much.’

‘You need about nine and a half hours at your age, son. Pure, wholesome sleep.’ He felt suddenly embarrassed. Maybe Harry would think it was none of his business. Which it wasn’t anyway. He started to turn aside and then thought of something.

‘You go to Vocational?’

Harry nodded and rubbed his glasses on his shirtsleeve.

‘Let’s see. I know a lot of girls and boys there. Alva Richards--I know his father. And Maggie Henry. And a kid named Mick Kelly--’ He felt as though his ears had caught afire. He knew himself to be a fool. He wanted to turn and walk away and yet he only stood there, smiling and mashing his nose with his thumb. ‘You know her?’ he asked faintly.

‘Sure, I live right next door to her. But in school I’m a senior while she’s a freshman.’

Biff stored this meager information neatly in his mind to be thought over later when he was alone. ‘Business will be quiet here for a while,’ he said hurriedly. Til leave it with you. By now you know how to handle things. Just watch any customers drinking beer and remember how many they’ve drunk so you won’t have to ask them and depend on what they say. Take your time making change and keep track of what goes on.’

Biff shut himself in his room downstairs. This was the place where he kept his files. The room had only one small window and looked out on the side alley, and the air was musty and cold. Huge stacks of newspapers rose up to the ceiling. A home-made filing case covered one wall. Near the door there was an old-fashioned rocking-chair and a small table laid with a pair of shears, a dictionary, and a mandolin. Because of the piles of newspaper it was impossible to take more than two steps in any direction. Biff rocked himself in the chair and languidly plucked the strings of the mandolin. His eyes closed and he began to sing in a doleful voice: I went to the animal fair.

The birds and the beasts were there, And the old baboon by the light of the moon Was combing his auburn hair.

He finished with a chord from the strings and the last sounds shivered to silence in the cold air.

To adopt a couple of little children. A boy and a girl. About three or four years old so they would always feel like he was their own father. Their Dad. Our Father. The little girl like Mick (or Baby?) at that age. Round cheeks and gray eyes and flaxen hair. And the clothes he would make for her--pink crepe de Chine frocks with dainty smocking at the yoke and sleeves. Silk socks and white buckskin shoes. And a little red-velvet coat and cap and muff for winter. The boy was dark and black-haired. The little boy walked behind him and copied the things he did. In the summer the three of them would go to a cottage on the Gulf and he would dress the children in their sun suits and guide them carefully into the green, shallow waves. And then they would bloom as he grew old. Our Father. And they would come to him with questions and he would answer them.

Why not? Biff took up his mandolin again. ‘Tum-ti-tim-ti-tee, ti-tee, the wedding of the painted doll’ The mandolin mocked the refrain. He sang through all the verses and wagged his foot to the time. Then he played ‘K-K-K-Katie,’ and ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song.’ These pieces were like the Agua Florida in the way they made him remember. Everything. Through the first year when he was happy and when she seemed happy even too. And when the bed came down with them twice in three months. And he didn’t know that all the time her brain was busy with how she could save a nickel or squeeze out an extra dime. And then him with Rio and the girls at her place. Gyp and Madeline and Lou. And then later when suddenly he lost it. When he could lie with a woman no longer. Motherogod! So that at first it seemed everything was gone.

Lucile always understood the whole setup. She knew the kind of woman Alice was. Maybe she knew about him, too. Lucile would urge them to get a divorce. And she did all a person could to try to straighten out their messes.

Biff winced suddenly. He jerked his hands from the strings of the mandolin so that a phrase of music was chopped off. He sat tense in his chair. Then suddenly he laughed quietly to himself. What had made him come across this? Ah, Lordy Lordy Lord! It was the day of his twenty-ninth birthday, and Lucile had asked him to drop by her apartment when he finished with an appointment at the dentist’s. He expected from this some little remembrance--a plate of cherry tarts or a good shirt. She met him at the door and blindfolded his eyes before he entered. Then she said she would be back in a second. In the silent room he listened to her footsteps and when she had reached the kitchen he broke wind. He stood in the room with his eyes blindfolded and pooted. Then all at once he knew with horror he was not alone. There was a titter and soon great rolling whoops of laughter deafened him. At that minute Lucile came back and undid his eyes. She held a caramel cake on a platter. The room was full of people. Leroy and that bunch and Alice, of course. He wanted to crawl up the wall. He stood there with his bare face hanging out, burning hot all over. They kidded him and the next hour was almost as bad as the death of his mother--the way he took it.

Later that night he drank a quart of whiskey. And for weeks after--Motherogod! Biff chuckled coldly. He plucked a few chords on his mandolin and started a rollicking cowboy song. His voice was a mellow tenor and he closed his eyes as he sang. The room was almost dark. The damp chill penetrated to his bones so that his legs ached with rheumatism. .

At last he put away his mandolin and rocked slowly in . the darkness. Death. Sometimes he could almost feel it in the room with him. He rocked to and fro in the chair. What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle.

Broken pictures lay like a scattered jigsaw puzzle in his head.

Alice soaping in the bathtub. Mussolini’s mug. Mick pulling the baby in a wagon. A roast turkey on display. Blount’s mouth. The face of Singer. He felt himself waiting. The room was completely dark. From the kitchen he could hear Louis singing.

Biff stood up and touched the arm of his chair to still its rocking. When he opened the door the hall outside was very warm and bright. He remembered that perhaps Mick would come. He straightened his clothes and smoothed back his hair.

A warmth and liveliness returned to him. The restaurant was in a hubbub. Beer rounds and Sunday supper had begun. He smiled genially to young Harry and settled himself behind the cash register. He took in the room with a glance like a lasso.

The place was crowded and humming with noise. The bowl of fruit in the window was a genteel, artistic display. He watched the door and continued to examine the room with a practiced eye. He was alert and intently waiting. Singer came finally and wrote with his silver pencil that he wanted only soup and whiskey as he had a cold. But Mick did not come.

SHE never even had a nickel to herself any more. They were that poor. Money was the main thing. All the time it was money, money, money. They had to pay through the nose for Baby Wilson’s private room and private nurse. But even that was just one bill. By the time one thing was paid for something else always would crop up. They owed around two hundred dollars that had to be paid right away. They lost the house. Their Dad got a hundred dollars out of the deal and let the bank take over the mortgage. Then he borrowed another fifty dollars and Mister Singer went on the note with him.

Afterward they had to worry about rent every month instead of taxes. They were mighty near as poor as factory folks. Only nobody could look down on them.

Bill had a job in a bottling plant and made ten dollars a week.

Hazel worked as a helper in a beauty parlor for eight dollars.

Etta sold tickets at a movie for five dollars. Each of them paid half of what they earned for their keep. Then the house had six boarders at five dollars a head. And Mister Singer, who paid his rent very prompt. With what their Dad picked up it all came to about two hundred dollars a month--and out of that they had to feed the six boarders pretty good and feed the family and pay rent for the whole house and keep up the payments on the furniture.

George and her didn’t get any lunch money now. She had to stop the music lessons. Portia saved the leftovers from the dinner for her and George to eat after school. All the time they had their meals in the kitchen. Whether Bill and Hazel and Etta sat with the boarders or ate in the kitchen depended on how much food there was. In the kitchen they had grits and grease and side meat and coffee for breakfast. For supper they had the same thing along with whatever could be spared from the dining-room. The big kids griped whenever they had to eat in the kitchen. And sometimes she and George were downright hungry for two or three days.

But this was in the outside room. It had nothing to do with music and foreign countries and the plans she made. The winter was cold. Frost was on the windowpanes. At night the fire in the living-room crackled very warm. All the family sat by the fire with the boarders, so she had the middle bedroom to herself. She wore two sweaters and a pair of Bill’s outgrown corduroy pants. Excitement kept her warm. She would bring out her private box from under the bed and sit on the floor to work.

In the big box there were the pictures she had painted at the government free art class. She had taken them out of Bill’s room. Also in the box she kept three mystery books her Dad had given her, a compact, a box of watch parts, a rhinestone necklace, a hammer, and some notebooks. One notebook was marked on the top with red crayon--PRIVATE. KEEP OUT. PRIVATE--and tied with a string.

She had worked on music in this notebook all the winter. She quit studying school lessons at night so she could have more time to spend on music. Mostly she had written just little tunes--songs without any words and without even any bass notes to them. They were very short. But even if the tunes were only half a page long she gave them names and drew her initials underneath them. Nothing in this book was a real piece or a composition. They were just songs in her mind she wanted to remember. She named them how they reminded her--’Africa’ and ‘A Big Fight and The Snowstorm.’

She couldn’t write the music just like it sounded in her mind.

She had to thin it down to only a few notes; otherwise she got too mixed up to go further. There was so much she didn’t know about how to write music. But maybe after she learned how to write these simple tunes fairly quick she could begin to put down the whole music in her mind.

In January she began a certain very wonderful piece called ‘This Thing I Want, I Know Not What’ It was a beautiful and marvelous song--very slow and soft. At first she had started to write a poem along with it, but she couldn’t think of ideas to fit the music. Also it was hard to get a word for the third line to rhyme with what. This new song made her feel sad and excited and happy all at once. Music beautiful as this was hard to work on. Any song was hard to write. Something she could hum in two minutes meant a whole week’s work before it was down in the notebook--after she had figured up the scale and the time and every note.

She had to concentrate hard and sing it many times. Her voice was always hoarse. Her Dad said this was because she had bawled so much when she was a baby. Her Dad would have to get up and walk with her every night when she was Ralph’s age. The only thing would hush her, he always said, was for him to beat the coal scuttle with a poker and sing ‘Dixie.’

She lay on her stomach on the cold floor and thought. Later on--when she was twenty--she would be a great world-famous composer. She would have a whole symphony orchestra and conduct all of her music herself. She would stand up on the platform in front of the big crowds of people. To conduct the orchestra she would wear either a real man’s evening suit or else a red dress spangled with rhinestones. The curtains of the stage would be red velvet and M.K. would be printed on them in gold. Mister Singer would be there, and afterward they would go out and eat fried chicken. He would admire her and count her as his very best friend. George would bring up big wreaths of flowers to the stage. It would be in New York City or else in a foreign country. Famous people would point at her. Carole Lombard and Arturo Toscanini and Admiral Byrd.

And she could play the Beethoven symphony any time she wanted to. It was a queer thing about this music she had heard last autumn. The symphony stayed inside her always and grew little by little. The reason was this: the whole symphony was in her mind. It had to be. She had heard every note, and somewhere in the back of her mind the whole of the music was still there just as it had been played. But she could do nothing to bring it all out again. Except wait and be ready for the times when suddenly a new part came to her. Wait for it to grow like leaves grow slowly on the branches of a spring oak tree.

In the inside room, along with music, there was Mister Singer.

Every afternoon as soon as she finished playing on the piano in the gym she walked down the main street past the store where he worked. From the front window she couldn’t see Mister Singer. He worked in the back, behind a curtain. But she looked at the store where he stayed every day and saw the people he knew. Then every night she waited on the front porch for him to come home. Sometimes she followed him upstairs. She sat on the bed and watched him put away his hat and undo the button on his collar and brush his hair. For some reason it was like they had a secret together. Or like they waited to tell each other things that had never been said before.

He was the only person in the inside room. A long time ago there had been others. She thought back and remembered how it was before he came. She remembered a girl way back in the sixth grade named Celeste. This girl had straight blonde hair and a turned-up nose and freckles. She wore a red-wool jumper with a white blouse. She walked pigeon-toed. Every day she brought an orange for little recess and a blue tin box of lunch for big recess. Other kids would gobble the food they had brought at little recess and then were hungry later--but not Celeste. She pulled off the crusts of her sandwiches and ate only the soft middle part. Always she had a stuffed hard boiled egg and she would hold it in her hand, mashing the yellow with her thumb so that the print of her finger was left there.

Celeste never talked to her and she never talked to Celeste.

Although that was what she wanted more than anything else.

At night she would lie awake and think about Celeste. She would plan that they were best friends and think about the time when Celeste could come home with her to eat supper and spend the night. But that never happened.

The way she felt about Celeste would never let her go up and make friends with her like she would any other person. After a year Celeste moved to another part of town and went to another school.

Then there was a boy called Buck. He was big and had pimples on his face. When she stood by him in line to march in at eight-thirty he smelled bad--like his britches needed airing. Buck did a nose dive at the principal once and was suspended. When he laughed he lifted his upper lip and shook all over. She thought about him like she had thought about Celeste. Then there was the lady who sold lottery tickets for a turkey raffle. And Miss Anglin, who taught the seventh grade.

And Carole Lombard in the movies. All of them.

But with Mister Singer there was a difference. The way she felt about him came on her slowly, and she could not think back and realize just how it happened. The other people had been ordinary, but Mister Singer was not The first day he rang the doorbell to ask about a room she had looked a long time into his face. She had opened the door and read over the card he handed her. Then she called her Mama and went back in the kitchen to tell Portia and Bubber about him. She followed him and her Mama up the stairs and watched him poke the mattress on the bed and roll up the shades to see if they worked. The day he moved she sat on the front porch banisters and watched him get out of the ten-cent taxi with his suitcase and his chessboard. Then later she listened to him thump around in his room and imagined about him. The rest came in a gradual way. So that now there was this secret feeling between them. She talked to him more than she had ever talked to a person before. And if he could have talked he would have told her many things. It was like he was some kind of a great teacher, only because he was a mute he did not teach. In the bed at night she planned about how she was an orphan and lived with Mister Singer--just the two of them in a foreign house where in the winter it would snow. Maybe in a little Switzerland town with the high glaciers and the mountains all around. Where rocks were on top of all the houses and the roofs were steep and pointed.

Or in France where the people carried home bread from the store without its being wrapped. Or in the foreign country of Norway by the gray winter ocean.

In the morning the first thing she would think of him. Along with music. When she put on her dress she wondered where she would see him that day. She used some of Etta’s perfume or a drop of vanilla so that if she met him in the hall she would smell good. She went to school late so she could see him come down the stairs on his way to work. And in the afternoon and night she never left the house if he was there.

Each new thing she learned about him was important. He kept his toothbrush and toothpaste in a glass on his table. So instead of leaving her toothbrush on the bathroom shelf she kept it in a glass, also. He didn’t like cabbage. Harry, who worked for Mister Brannon, mentioned that to her. Now she couldn’t eat cabbage either. When she learned new facts about him, or when she said something to him and he wrote a few words with his silver pencil, she had to be off by herself for a long time to think it over. When she was with him the main thought in her mind was to store up everything so that later she could live it over and remember.

But in the inside room with music and Mister Singer was not all. Many things happened in the outside room. She fell down the stairs and broke off one of her front teeth. Miss Minner gave her two bad cards in English. She lost a quarter in a vacant lot, and although she and George hunted for three days they never found it This happened: One afternoon she was studying for an English test out on the back steps. Harry began to chop wood over on his side of the fence and she hollered to him. He came and diagrammed a few sentences for her. His eyes were quick behind his horn rimmed glasses. After he explained the English to her he stood up and jerked his hands in and out the pockets of his lumberjack. Harry was always full of energy, nervous, and he had to be talking or doing something every minute. ‘You see, there’s just two things nowadays,’ he said. He liked to surprise people and sometimes she didn’t know how to answer him. ‘It’s the truth, there’s just two things ahead nowadays.’

‘What?’

‘Militant Democracy or Fascism.’

‘Don’t you like Republicans?’

‘Shucks,’ Harry said. ‘That’s not what I mean.’

He had explained all about the Fascists one afternoon. He told how the Nazis made little Jew children get down on their hands and knees and eat grass from the ground. He told about how he planned to assassinate Hitler. He had it all worked out thoroughly. He told about how there wasn’t any justice or freedom hi Fascism. He said the newspapers wrote deliberate lies and people didn’t know what was going on in the world.

The Nazis were terrible--everybody knew that. She plotted with him to kill Hitler. It would be better to have four or five people in the conspiracy so that if one missed him the others could bump him off just the same. And even if they died they would all be heroes. To be a hero was almost like being a great musician.

‘Either one or the other. And although I don’t believe in war I’m ready to fight for what I know is right’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I’d like to fight the Fascists. I could dress up like a boy and nobody could ever tell. Cut my hair off and all.’

It was a bright winter afternoon. The sky was blue-green and the branches of the oak trees in the back yard were black and bare against this color. The sun was warm. The day made her feel full of energy. Music was hi her mind. Just to be doing something she picked up a ten-penny nail and drove it into the steps with a few good wallops. Their Dad heard the sound of the hammer and came out in his bathrobe to stand around awhile. Under the tree there were two carpenter’s horses, and little Ralph was busy putting a rock on top of one and then carrying it over to the other one. Back and forth. He walked with his hands out to balance himself. He was bowlegged and his diapers dragged down to his knees. George was shooting marbles. Because he needed a haircut his face looked thin.

Some of his permanent teeth had already come--but they were small and blue like he had been eating blackberries. He drew a line for taw and lay on his stomach to take aim for the first hole. When their Dad went back to his watch work he carried Ralph with him. And after a while George went off into the alley by himself. Since he shot Baby he wouldn’t buddy with a single person.

‘I got to go,’ Harry said. ‘I got to be at work before six.’

‘You like it at the cafe? Do you get good things to eat free?’

‘Sure. And all kinds of folks come in the place. I like it better than any job I ever had. It pays more.’

‘I hate Mister Brannon,’ Mick said. It was true that even though he never said anything mean to her he always spoke in a rough, funny way. He must have known all along about the pack of chewing-gum she and George swiped that time. And then why would he ask her how her business was coming along--like he did up in Mister Singer’s room? Maybe he thought they took things regular. And they didn’t. They certainly did not. Only once a little water-color set from the ten-cent store. And a nickel pencil-sharpener.

‘I can’t stand Mister Brarmon.’

‘He’s all right,’ Harry said. ‘Sometimes he seems a right queer kind of person, but he’s not crabby. When you get to know him.’

‘One thing I’ve thought about,’ Mick said. ‘A boy has a better advantage like that than a girl. I mean a boy can usually get some part-time job that don’t take him out of school and leaves him time for other things. But there’s not jobs like that for girls. When a girl wants a job she has to quit school and work full time. I’d sure like to earn a couple of bucks a week like you do, but there’s just not any way.’

Harry sat on the steps and untied his shoestrings. He pulled at them until one broke. ‘A man comes to the cafe named Mr.Blount. Mr. Jake Blount. I like to listen to him. I learn a lot from the things he says when he drinks beer. He’s given me some new ideas.’

‘I know him good. He comes here every Sunday.’

Harry unlaced his shoe and pulled the broken string to even lengths so he could tie it in a bow again. ‘Listen’--he rubbed his glasses on his lumberjack in a nervous way--‘You needn’t mention to him what I said. I mean I doubt if he would remember me. He don’t talk to me. He just talks to Mr. Singer.

He might think it was funny if you--you know what I mean.’

‘O.K.’ She read between the words that he had a crush on Mister Blount and she knew how he felt. ‘I wouldn’t mention it.’

Dark came on. The moon, white like milk, showed in the blue sky and the air was cold. She could hear Ralph and George and Portia in the kitchen. The fire in the stove made the kitchen window a warm orange. There was the smell of smoke and supper.

‘You know this is something I never have told anybody,’ he said. ‘I hate to realize about it myself.’

‘What?’

‘You remember when you first began to read the newspapers and think about the things you read?’

‘Sure.’

‘I used to be a Fascist. I used to think I was. It was this way.

You know all the pictures of the people our age in Europe marching and singing songs and keeping step together. I used to think that was wonderful. All of them pledged to each other and with one leader. All of them with the same ideals and marching in step together. I didn’t worry much about what was happening to the Jewish minorities because I didn’t want to think about it. And because at the time I didn’t want to think like I was Jewish. You see, I didn’t know. I just looked at the pictures and read what it said underneath and didn’t understand. I never knew what an awful thing it was. I thought I was a Fascist. Of course later on I found out different.’

His voice was bitter against himself and kept changing from a man’s voice to a young boy’s.

‘Well, you didn’t realize then--’ she said.

‘It was a terrible transgression. A moral wrong.’

That was the way he was. Everything was either very right or very wrong--with no middle way. It was wrong for anyone under twenty to touch beer or wine or smoke a cigarette. It was a terrible sin for a person to cheat on a test, but not a sin to copy homework. It was a moral wrong for girls to wear lipstick or sun-backed dresses. It was a terrible sin to buy anything with a German or Japanese label, no matter if it cost only a nickel.

She remembered Harry back to the time when they were kids.

Once his eyes got crossed and stayed crossed for a year. He would sit out on his front steps with his hands between his knees and watch everything. Very quiet and cross-eyed. He skipped two grades in grammar school and when he was eleven he was ready for Vocational. But at Vocational when they read about the Jew in ‘Ivanhoe’ the other kids would look around at Harry and he would come home and cry. So his mother took him out of school. He stayed out for a whole year.

He grew taller and very fat. Every time she climbed the fence she would see him making himself something to eat in his kitchen. They both played around on the block, and sometimes they would wrestle. When she was a kid she liked to fight with boys--not real fights but just in play. She used a combination jujitsu and boxing. Sometimes he got her down and sometimes she got him. Harry never was very rough with anybody. When little kids ever broke any toy they would come to him and he always took the time to fix it. He could fix anything. The ladies on the block got him to fix their electric lights or sewing-machines when something went wrong. Then when he was thirteen he started back | at Vocational and began to study hard. He threw papers and worked on Saturdays and read. For a long time she didn’t see much of him--until after that party she gave. He was very changed.

‘Like this,’ Harry said. ‘It used to be I had some big . ambition for myself all the time. A great engineer or a great doctor or lawyer. But now I don’t have it that way. . All I can think about is what happens in the world now. About Fascism and the terrible things in Europe--and on the other hand Democracy. I mean I can’t think and work on what I mean to be in life because I think too much about this other. I dream about killing Hitler every night And I wake up in the dark very thirsty and scared of something--I don’t know what’ She looked at Harry’s face and a deep, serious feeling made her sad. His hair hung over his forehead. His upper lip was thin and tight, but the lower one was thick and it trembled. Harry didn’t look old enough to be fifteen. With the darkness a cold wind came. The wind sang up in the oak trees on the block and banged the blinds against the side of the house. Down the street Mrs. Wells was calling Sucker home.

The dark late afternoon made the sadness heavy inside her. I want a piano--I want to take music lessons, she said to herself. She looked at Harry and he was lacing his thin fingers together in different shapes. There was a warm boy smell about him.

What was it made her act like she suddenly did? Maybe it was remembering the times when they were younger. Maybe it was because the sadness made her feel queer. But anyway all of a sudden she gave Harry a push that nearly knocked him off the steps. ‘S.O.B. to your Grandmother,’ she hollered to him.

Then she ran. That was what kids used to say in the neighborhood when they picked a fight Harry stood up and looked surprised. He settled his glasses on his nose and watched her for a second. Then he ran back to the alley.

The cold air made her strong as Samson. When she laughed there was a short, quick echo. She butted Harry with her shoulder and he got a holt on her. They wrestled hard and laughed. She was the tallest but his hands were strong. He didn’t fight good enough and she got him on the ground. Then suddenly he stopped moving and she stopped too. His breathing was warm on her neck and he was very still. She felt his ribs against her knees and his hard breathing as she sat on him. They got up together. They did not laugh any more and the alley was very quiet. As they walked across the dark back yard for some reason she felt funny. There was nothing to feel queer about, but suddenly it had just happened. She gave him a little push and he pushed her back. Then she laughed again and felt all right.

‘So long,’ Harry said. He was too old to climb the fence, so he ran through the side alley to the front of his house.

‘Gosh it’s hot!’ she said. ‘I could smother in here.’

Portia was warming her supper in the stove. Ralph banged his spoon on his high-chair tray. George’s dirty little hand pushed up his grits with a piece of bread and his eyes were squinted in a faraway look. She helped herself to white meat and gravy and grits and a few raisins and mixed them up together on her plate. She ate three bites of them. She ate until all the grits were gone but still she wasn’t full.

She had thought about Mister Singer all the day, and as soon as supper was over she went upstairs. But when she reached the third floor she saw that his door was open and his room dark. This gave her an empty feeling.

Downstairs she couldn’t sit still and study for the English test.

It was like she was so strong she couldn’t sit on a chair in a room the same as other people. It was like she could knock down all the walls of the house and then march through the streets big as a giant.

Finally she got out her private box from under the bed. She lay on her stomach and looked over the notebook. There were about twenty songs now, but she didn’t feel satisfied with them. If she could write a symphony! For a whole orchestra--how did you write that? Sometimes several instruments played one note, so the staff would have to be very large. She drew five lines across a big sheet of test paper--the lines about an inch apart. When a note was for violin or ‘cello or flute she would write the name of the instrument to show. And when they all played the same note together she would draw a circle around them. At the top of the page she wrote SYMPHONY in large letters. And under that MICK KELLY. Then she couldn’t go any further.

If she could only have music lessons! If only she could have a real piano! A long time passed before she could get started. The tunes were in her mind but she couldn’t figure how to write them. It looked like this was the hardest play in the world. But she kept on figuring until Etta and Hazel came into the room and got into bed and said she had to turn the light off because it was eleven o’clock.

FOR six weeks Portia had waited to hear from William. Every evening she would come to the house and ask Doctor Copeland the same question: ‘You seen anybody who gotten a letter from Willie yet?’ And every night he was obliged to tell her that he had heard nothing.

At last she asked the question no more. She would come into the hall and look at him without a word. She drank. Her blouse was often half unbuttoned and her shoestrings loose.

February came. The weather turned milder, then hot. The sun glared down with hard brilliance. Birds sang in the bare trees and children played out of doors barefoot and naked to the waist. The nights were torrid as in midsummer. Then after a few days winter was upon the town again. The mild skies darkened. A chill rain fell and the air turned dank and bitterly cold. In the town the Negroes suffered badly. Supplies of fuel had been exhausted and there was a struggle everywhere for warmth. An epidemic of pneumonia raged through the wet, narrow streets, and for a week Doctor Copeland slept at odd hours, fully clothed. Still no word came from William. Portia had written four times and Doctor Copeland twice.

During most of the day and night he had no time to think. But occasionally he found a chance to rest for a moment at home.

He would drink a pot of coffee by the kitchen stove and a deep uneasiness would come in him. Five of his patients had died.

And one of these was Augustus Benedict Mady Lewis, the little deaf-mute. He had been asked to speak at the burial service, but as it was his rule not to attend funerals he was unable to accept this invitation. The five patients had not been lost because of any negligence on his part. The blame was in the long years of want which lay behind. The diets of cornbread and sowbelly and syrup, the crowding of four and five persons to a single room. The death of poverty. He brooded on this and drank coffee to stay awake. Often he held his hand to his chin, for recently a slight tremor in the nerves of his neck made his head nod unsteadily when he was tired.

Then during the fourth week of February Portia came to the house. It was only six o’clock in the morning and he was sitting by the fire in the kitchen, warming a pan of milk for breakfast. She was badly intoxicated. He smelled the keen, sweetish odor of gin and his nostrils widened with disgust. He did not look at her but busied himself with his breakfast. He crumpled some bread in a bowl and poured over it hot milk. He prepared coffee and laid the table.

Then when he was seated before his breakfast he looked at Portia sternly. ‘Have you had your morning meal?’

‘I not going to eat breakfast,’ she said.

‘You will need it. If you intend to get to work today;’

‘I not going to work.’

A dread came in him. He did not wish to question her further.

He kept his eyes on his bowl of milk and drank from a spoon that was unsteady in his hand. When he had finished he looked up at the wall above her head. ‘Are you tongue-tied?’

‘I going to tell you. You going to hear about it. Just as soon as I able to say it I going to tell you.’

Portia sat motionless in the chair, her eyes moving slowly from one corner of the wall to the other. Her arms hung down limp and her legs were twisted loosely about each other.

When he turned from her he had for a moment a perilous sense of ease and freedom, which was more acute because he knew that soon it was to be shattered. He mended the fire and warmed his hands. Then he rolled a cigarette. The kitchen was in a state of spotless order and cleanliness. The saucepans on the wall glowed with the light of the stove and behind each one there was a round, black shadow.

‘It about Willie.’

‘I know.’ He rolled the cigarette gingerly between his palms.

His eyes glanced recklessly about him, greedy for the last sweet pleasures.

‘Once I mentioned to you this here Buster Johnson were at the prison with Willie. Us knowed him before. He were sent home yestiddy.’

‘So?’

‘Buster been crippled for life.’

His head quavered. He pressed his hand to his chin to steady himself, but the obstinate trembling was difficult to control.

‘Last night these here friends come round to my house and say that Buster were home and had something to tell me about Willie. I run all the way and this here is what he said. ‘

‘Yes.’

‘There were three of them. Willie and Buster and this other boy. They were friends. Then this here trouble come up.’

Portia halted. She wet her finger with her tongue and then moistened her dry lips with her finger. ‘It were something to do with the way this here white guard picked on them all the time. They were out on roadwork one day and Buster he sassed back and then the other boy he try to run off in the woods. They taken all three of them. They taken all three of them to the camp and put them in this here ice-cold room.’

He said yes again. But his head quavered and the word sounded like a rattle in his throat.

‘It were about six weeks ago,’ Portia said. ‘You remember that cold spell then. They put Willie and them boys in this room like ice.’

Portia spoke in a low voice, and she neither paused between words nor did the grief in her face soften. It was like a low song. She spoke and he could not understand. The sounds were distinct in his ear but they had no shape or meaning. It was as though his head were the prow of a boat and the sounds were water that broke on him and then flowed past. He felt he had to look behind to find the words already said.

‘. . . and their feets swolled up and they lay there and struggle on the floor and holler out. And nobody come. They hollered there for three days and three nights and nobody come.’

‘I am deaf,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘I cannot understand.’

‘They put our Willie and them boys in this here ice-cold room.

There were a rope hanging down from the ceiling. They taken their shoes off and tied their bare feets to this rope. Willie and them boys lay there with their backs on the floor and their feets in the air. And their, feets swolled up and they struggle on the floor and holler out. It were ice-cold in the room and their feets froze. Their feets swolled up and they hollered for three nights and three days. And nobody come.’ Doctor Copeland pressed his head with his hands, but still the steady trembling would not stop. ‘I cannot hear what you say.’

‘Then at last they come to get them. They quickly taken Willie and them boys to the sick ward and their legs were all swolled and froze. Gangrene. They sawed off both our Willie’s feet.

Buster Johnson lost one foot and the other boy got well. But our Willie--he crippled for life now. Both his feet sawed off.’

The words were finished and Portia leaned over and struck her head upon the table. She did not cry or moan, but she struck her head again and again on the hard-scrubbed top of the table. The bowl and spoon rattled and he removed them to the sink. The words were scattered in his mind, but he did not try to assemble them. He scalded the bowl and spoon and washed out the dish-towel. He picked up something from the floor and put it somewhere.

‘Crippled?’ he asked. ‘William?’

Portia knocked her head on the table and the blows had a rhythm like the slow beat of a drum and his heart took up this rhythm also. Quietly the words came alive and fitted to the meaning and he understood.

‘When will they send him home?’

Portia leaned her drooping head on her arm. ‘Buster don’t know that. Soon afterward they separate all three of them in different places. They sent Buster to another camp. Since Willie only haves a few more months he think he liable to be home soon now.’

They drank coffee and sat for a long time, looking into each other’s eyes. His cup rattled against his teeth. She poured her coffee into a saucer and some of it dripped down on her lap.

‘William--’ Doctor Copeland said. As he pronounced the name his teeth bit deeply into his tongue and he moved his jaw with pain. They sat for a long while. Portia held his hand.

The bleak morning light made the windows gray. Outside it was still raining.

‘If I means to get to work I better go on now,’ Portia said.

He followed her through the hall and stopped at the hat-rack to put on his coat and shawl. The open door let in a gust of wet, cold air. Highboy sat out on the street curb with a wet newspaper over his head for protection. Along the sidewalk there was a fence. Portia leaned against this as she walked. Doctor Copeland followed a few paces after her and his hands, also, touched the boards of the fence to steady himself. Highboy trailed behind them.

He waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease.

In this he knew a certain strong and holy gladness. The persecuted laugh, and the black slave sings to his outraged soul beneath the whip. A song was in him now--although it was not music but only the feeling of a song. And the sodden heaviness of peace weighted down his limbs so that it was only with the strong, true purpose that he moved. Why did he go onward? Why did he not rest here upon the bottom of utmost humiliation and for a while take his content? But he went onward.

‘Uncle,’ said Mick. ‘You think some hot coffee would make you feel better?’

Doctor Copeland looked into her face but gave no sign that he heard. They had crossed the town and come at last to the alley behind the Kellys’ house. Portia had entered first and then he followed. Highboy remained on the steps outside. Mick and her two little brothers were already in the kitchen. Portia told of William. Doctor Copeland did not listen to the words but her voice had a rhythm--a start, a middle, and an end. Then when she was finished she began all over. Others came into the room to hear.

Doctor Copeland sat on a stool in the corner. His coat and shawl steamed over the back of a chair by the stove. He held his hat on his knees and his long, dark hands moved nervously around the worn brim. The yellow insides of his hands were so moist that occasionally he wiped them with a handkerchief.

His head trembled, and all of his muscles were stiff with the effort to make it be still. Mr. Singer came into the room. Doctor Copeland raised up his face to him. ‘Have you heard of this?’ he asked. Mr. Singer nodded. In his eyes there was no horror or pity or hate. Of all those who knew, his eyes alone did not express these reactions. For he alone understood this thing. Mick whispered to Portia, ‘What’s your father’s name?’

‘He named Benedict Mady Copeland.’ Mick leaned over close to Doctor Copeland and shouted in his face as though he were deaf. ‘Benedict, don’t you think some hot coffee would make you feel a little better? ‘ Doctor Copeland started. ‘Quit that hollering,’ Portia said. ‘He can hear well as you can.’

‘Oh,’ said Mick. She emptied the grounds from the pot and put the coffee on the stove to boil again. The mute still lingered in the doorway. Doctor Copeland still looked into his face. ‘You heard? ‘ ‘What’ll they do to those prison guards?’ Mick asked. ‘Honey, I just don’t know,’ Portia said. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘I’d do something. I’d sure do something about it.’

‘Nothing us could do would make no difference. Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut’

‘They ought to be treated just like they did Willie and them. Worse. I wish I could round up some people and kill those men myself.’

‘That ain’t no Christian way to talk,’ Portia said. I can just rest back and know they going to be chopped up with pitchforks and fried everlasting by Satan.’

‘Anyway Willie can still play his harp.’

‘With both feets sawed off that about all he can do.’ The house was full of noise and unrest. In the room above the kitchen someone was moving furniture about. The dining-room was crowded with boarders. Mrs. Kelly hurried back and forth from the breakfast table to the kitchen. Mr. Kelly wandered about in a baggy pair of trousers and a bathrobe. The young Kelly children ate greedily in the kitchen. Doors banged and voices could be heard in all parts of the house. Mick handed Doctor Copeland a cup of coffee mixed with watery milk. The milk gave the drink a gray-blue sheen. Some of the coffee had sloshed over into the saucer, so first he dried the saucer and the rim of the cup with his handkerchief. He had not wanted coffee at all.

‘I wish I could kill them,’ Mick said.

The house quieted. The people in the dining-room went out to work. Mick and George left for school and the baby was shut into one of the front rooms. Mrs. Kelly wrapped a towel around her head and took a broom with her upstairs.

The mute still stood in the doorway. Doctor Copeland gazed up into his face. ‘You know of this?’ he asked again. The words did not sound--they choked in his throat--but his eyes asked the question all the same. Then the mute was gone.

Doctor Copeland and Portia were alone. He sat for some time on the stool in the corner. At last he rose to go.

‘You sit back down, Father. Us going to stay together this morning. I going to fry some fish and have egg-bread and potatoes for the dinner. You stay on here, and then I means to serve you a good hot meal.’

‘You know I have calls.’

‘Less us just this one day. Please, Father. I feels like I going to really bust loose. Besides, I don’t want you messing around in the streets by yourself.’

He hesitated and felt the collar of his overcoat. It was very damp. ‘Daughter, I am sorry. You know I have visits.’

Portia held his shawl over the stove until the wool was hot.

She buttoned his coat and turned up the collar about his neck.

He cleared his throat and spat into one of the squares of paper that he carried with him in his pocket Then he burned the paper in the stove. On the way out he stopped and spoke to Highboy on the steps. He suggested that Highboy stay with Portia if he could arrange to get leave from work.

The air was piercing and cold. From the low, dark skies the drizzling rain fell steadily. The rain had seeped into the garbage cans and in the alley there was the rank odor of wet refuse. As he walked he balanced himself with the help of a fence and kept his dark eyes on the ground.

He made all the strictly necessary visits. Then he attended to office patients from noon until two o’clock. Afterward he sat at his desk with his fists clenched tight. But it was useless to try to cogitate on this thing. He wished never again to see a human face. Yet at the same time he could not sit alone in the empty room. He put on his overcoat and went out again into the wet, cold street. In his pocket were several prescriptions to be left at the pharmacy.

But he did not wish to speak with Marshall Nicolls. He went into the store and laid the prescriptions upon the counter. The pharmacist turned from the powders he was measuring and held out both his hands. His thick lips worked soundlessly for a moment before he gained his poise.

‘Doctor,’ he said formally. ‘You must be aware that I and all our colleagues and the members of my lodge and church--we have your sorrow uppermost in our minds and wish to extend to you our deepest sympathy.’

Doctor Copeland turned shortly and left without a word. That was too little. Something more was needed. The strong, true purpose, the will to justice. He walked stiffly, his arms held close to his sides, toward the main street. He cogitated without success. He could think of no white person of power in all the town who was both brave and just. He thought of every lawyer, every judge, every public official with whose name he was familiar--but the thought of each one of these white men was bitter in his heart. At last he decided on the judge of the Superior Court. When he reached the courthouse he did not hesitate but entered quickly, determined to see the judge that afternoon.

The wide front hall was empty except for a few idlers who lounged in the doorways leading to the offices on either side.

He did not know where he could find the judge’s office, so he wandered uncertainly through the building, looking at the placards on the doors. At last he came to a narrow passage.

Halfway through this corridor three white men stood talking together and blocked the way. He drew close to the wall to pass, but one of them turned to stop him.

‘What you want?’

‘Will you please tell me where the judge’s office is located?’

The white man jerked his thumb toward the end of the passage. Doctor Copeland recognized him as a deputy sheriff.

They had seen each other dozens of times but the deputy did not remember him. All white people looked similar to Negroes but Negroes took care to differentiate between them. On the other hand, all Negroes looked similar to white men but white men did not usually bother to fix the face of a Negro in their minds. So the white man said, What you want, Reverend?’

The familiar joking title nettled him. I am not a minister,’ he said, ‘I am a physician, a medical doctor. My name is Benedict Mady Copeland and I wish to see the judge immediately on urgent business.’

The deputy was like other white men in that a clearly enunciated speech maddened him. ‘Is that so?’ he mocked. He winked at his friends. Then I am the deputy sheriff and my name is Mister Wilson and I tell you the judge is busy. Come back some other day.’

‘It is imperative that I see the judge,’ Doctor Copeland said. ‘I will wait.’

There was a bench at the entrance of the passage and he sat down. The three white men continued to talk, but he knew that the sheriff watched him. He was determined not to leave.

More than half an hour passed. Several white men went freely back and forth through the corridor. He knew that the deputy was watching him and he sat rigid, his hands pressed between his knees. His sense of prudence told him to go away and return later in the afternoon when the sheriff was not there.

All of his life he had been circumspect in his dealings with such people. But now something in him would not let him withdraw.

‘Come here, you!’ the deputy said finally.

His head trembled, and when he arose he was not steady on his feet. ‘Yes?’

What you say you wanted to see the judge about?’

‘I did not say,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘I merely said that my business with him was urgent.’

‘You can’t stand up straight. You been drinking liquor, haven’t you? I smell it on your breath.’

‘That is a lie,’ said Doctor Copeland slowly. I have not--‘ The sheriff struck him on the face. He fell against the wall. Two white men grasped him by the arm and dragged him down the steps to the main floor. He did not resist. ‘That’s the trouble with this country,’ the sheriff said. These damn biggity niggers like him.’ He spoke no word and let them do with him as they would. He waited for the terrible anger and felt it arise in him. Rage made him weak, so that he stumbled. They put him into the wagon with two men as guards. They took him to the station and then to the jail. It was only when they entered the jail that the strength of his rage came to him. He broke loose suddenly from their grasp. In a corner he was surrounded. They struck him on the head and shoulders with their clubs. A glorious strength was in him and he heard himself laughing aloud as he fought He sobbed and laughed at the same time. He kicked wildly with his feet. He fought with his fists and even struck at them with his head. Then he was clutched fast so that he could not move. They dragged him foot by foot through the hall of the jail. The door to a cell was opened. Someone behind kicked him in the groin and he fell to his knees on the floor.

In the cramped cubicle there were five other prisoners--three Negroes and two white men. One of the white men was very old and drunk. He sat on the floor and scratched himself. The other white prisoner was a boy not more than fifteen years of age. The three Negroes were young. As Doctor Copeland lay on the bunk looking up into their faces he recognized one of them.

‘How come you here?’ the young man asked. ‘Ain’t you Doctor Copeland?’

He said yes.

‘My name Dary White. You taken out my sister’s tonsils last year.’

The icy cell was permeated with a rotten odor. A pail brimming with urine was in a corner. Cockroaches crawled upon the walls. He closed his eyes and immediately he must have slept, for when he looked up again the small barred window was black and a bright light burned in the hall. Four empty tin plates were on the floor. His dinner of cabbage and cornbread was beside him.

He sat on the bunk and sneezed violently several times. When he breathed the phlegm rattled in his chest. After a while the young white boy began to sneeze also. Doctor Copeland ran out of squares of paper and had to use sheets from a notebook in his pocket. The white boy leaned over the pail in the corner or simply let the water run from his nose onto the front of his shirt. His eyes were dilated, his clear cheeks flushed. He huddled on the edge of a bunk and groaned.

Soon they were led out to the lavatory, and on their return they prepared for sleep. There were six men to occupy four bunks. The old man lay snoring on the floor. Dary and another boy squeezed into a bunk together.

The hours were long. The light in the hall burned his eyes and the odor in the cell made every breath a discomfort. He could not keep warm. His teeth chattered and he shook with a hard chill. He sat up with the dirty blanket wrapped around him and swayed to and fro. Twice he reached over to cover the white boy, who muttered and threw out his arms in sleep. He swayed, his head in his hands, and from his throat there came a singing moan. He could not think of William. Nor could he even cogitate upon the strong, true purpose and draw strength from that. He could only feel the misery in him.

Then the tide of his fever turned. A warmth spread through him. He lay back, and it seemed he sank down into a place warm and red and full of comfort.

The next morning the sun came out. The strange Southern winter was at its end. Doctor Copeland was released. A little group waited outside the jail for him. Mr. Singer was there.

Portia and Highboy and Marshall Nicolls were present also.

Their faces were confused and he could not see them clearly.

The sun was very bright.

‘Father, don’t you know that ain’t no way to help our Willie? Messing around at a white folks’ courthouse? Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut and wait.’

Her loud voice echoed wearily in his ears. They climbed into a ten-cent taxicab, and then he was home and his face pressed into the fresh white pillow.

MICK could not sleep all night. Etta was sick, so she had to sleep in the living-room. The sofa was too narrow and short. She had nightmares about Willie. Nearly a month had gone by since Portia had told about what they had done to him--but still she couldn’t forget it. Twice in the night she had these bad dreams and woke up on the floor. A bump came out on her forehead. Then at six o’clock she heard Bill go to the kitchen and fix his breakfast. It was daylight, but the shades were down so that the room was half-dark. She felt queer waking up in the living-room. She didn’t like it. The sheet was twisted around her, half on the sofa and half on the floor. The pillow was in the middle of the room. She got up and opened the door to the hall. Nobody was on the stairs. She ran in her nightgown to the back room.

‘Move over, George.’ K The kid lay in the very center of the bed. The night had been warm and he was naked as a jay bird. His fists were shut tight, and even in sleep his eyes were squinted like he was thinking about something very hard to figure out. His mouth was open and there was a little wet spot on the pillow. She pushed him.

‘Wait--’ he said in his sleep.

‘Move over on your side.’

‘Wait--Lemme just finish this here dream--this here--’ She hauled him over where he belonged and lay down close to him. When she opened her eyes again it was late, because the sun shone in through the back window. George was gone.

From the yard she heard kids’ voices and the sound of water running. Etta and Hazel were talking in the middle room. As she dressed a sudden notion came to her. She listened at the door but it was hard to hear what they said. She jerked the door open quick to surprise them.

They were reading a movie magazine. Etta was still in bed.

She had her hand halfway over the picture of an actor. ‘From here up don’t you think he favors that boy who used to date with--’

‘How you feel this morning, Etta?’ Mick asked. She looked down under the bed and her private box was still in the exact place where she had left it ‘A lot you care,’ Etta said. ‘You needn’t try to pick a fight’ Etta’s face was peaked. There was a terrible pain in her stomach and her ovary was diseased. It had something to do with being unwell. The doctor said they would have to cut out her ovary right away. But their Dad said they would have to wait. There wasn’t any money.

‘How do you expect me to act, anyway?’ Mick said. ‘I ask you a polite question and then you start to nag at me. I feel like I ought to be sorry for you because you’re sick, but you won’t let me be decent. Therefore I naturally get mad.’ She pushed back the bangs of her hair and looked close into the mirror. ‘Boy! See this bump I got! I bet my head’s broke. Twice I fell out last night and it seemed to me like I hit that table by the sofa. I can’t sleep in the living-room. That sofa cramps me so much I can’t stay in it’

‘Hush that talking so loud,’Hazel said.

Mick knelt down on the floor and pulled out the big box. She looked carefully at the string that was tied around it. ‘Say, have either of you fooled with this?’

‘Shoot!’ Etta said. ‘What would we want to mess with your junk for?’

‘You just better not. I’d kill anybody that tried to mess with my private things.’

‘Listen to that,’ Hazel said. ‘Mick Kelly, I think you’re the most selfish person I’ve ever known. You don’t care a thing in the world about anybody but--’

‘Aw, poot!’ She slammed the door. She hated both of them.

That was a terrible thing to think, but it was true.

Her Dad was in the kitchen with Portia. He had on his bathrobe and was drinking a cup of coffee. The whites of his eyes were red and his cup rattled against his saucer. He walked round and round the kitchen table.

‘What time is it? Has Mister Singer gone yet?’

‘He been gone, Hon,’ Portia said. ‘It near about ten o’clock.’

‘Ten o’clock! Golly! I never have slept that late before.’

‘What you keep in that big hatbox you tote around with you?’

Mick reached into the stove and brought out half a dozen biscuits. ‘Ask me no questions and Til tell you no lies. A bad end comes to a person who pries. If there’s a little extra milk I think Til just have it poured over some crumbled bread,’ her Dad said. ‘Grave yard soup. Maybe that will help settle my stomach.’ Mick split open the biscuits and put slices of fried white meat inside them. She sat down on the back steps to eat her breakfast. The morning was warm and bright. Spare-ribs and Sucker were playing with George in the back yard. Sucker wore his sun suit and the other two kids had taken off all their clothes except their shorts. They were scooting each other with the hose. The stream of water sparkled bright in the sun.

The wind blew out sprays of it like mist and in this mist there were the colors of the rainbow. A line of clothes flapped in the wind--white sheets, Ralph’s blue dress, a red blouse and nightgowns--wet and fresh and blowing out in different shapes. The day was almost like summer-time. Fuzzy little yellowjackets buzzed around the honeysuckle on the alley fence.

‘Watch me hold it up over my head!’ George hollered. ‘Watch how the water runs down.’

She was too full of energy to sit still. George had filled a meal sack with dirt and hung it to a limb of the tree for a punching bag. She began to hit this. Puck! Pock! She hit it in time to the song that had been in her mind when she woke up. George had mixed a sharp rock in the dirt and it bruised her knuckles.

‘Aoow! You skeeted the water right in my ear. It’s busted my eardrum. I can’t even hear.’

‘Gimme here. Let me skeet some.’

Sprays of the water blew into her face, and once the kids turned the hose on her legs. She was afraid her box would get wet, so she carried it with her through the alley to the front porch. Harry was sitting on his steps reading the newspaper.

She opened her box and got out the notebook. But it was hard to settle her mind on the song she wanted to write down.

Harry was looking over in her direction and she could not think.

She and Harry had talked about so many things lately. Nearly every day they walked home from school together. They talked about God. Sometimes she would wake up in the night and shiver over what they had said. Harry was a Pantheist.

That was a religion, the same as Baptist or Catholic or Jew.

Harry believed that after you were dead and buried you changed to plants and fire and dirt and clouds and water. It took thousands of years and then finally you were a part of all the world. He said he thought that was better than being one single angel. Anyhow it was better than nothing.

Harry threw the newspaper into his hall and then came over.

‘It’s hot like summer,’ he said. ‘And only March.’

‘Yeah. I wish we could go swimming.’

‘We would if there was any place.’

There’s not any place. Except that country club pool.’

‘I sure would like to do something--to get out and go somewhere.’

‘Me too,’ she said, ‘Wait! I know one place. It’s out in the country about fifteen miles. It’s a deep, wide creek in the woods. The Girl Scouts have a camp there in the summertime. Mrs. Wells took me and George and Pete and Sucker swimming there one time last year.’

If you want to I can get bicycles and we can go tomorrow. I have a holiday one Sunday a month.’

‘Well ride out and take a picnic dinner,’ Mick said.

‘O.K. I’ll borrow the bikes.’

It was time for him to go to work. She watched him walk down the street. He swung his arms. Halfway down the block there was a bay tree with low branches. Harry took a running jump, caught a limb, and chinned himself. A happy feeling came in her because it was true they were real good friends.

Also he was handsome. Tomorrow she would borrow Hazel’s blue necklace and wear the silk dress. And for dinner they would take jelly sandwiches and Nehi. Maybe Harry would bring something queer, because they ate orthodox Jew. She watched him until he turned the corner. It was true that he had grown to be a very good-looking fellow.

Harry in the country was different from Harry sitting on the back steps reading the newspapers and thinking about Hitler.

They left early in the morning. The wheels he borrowed were the kind for boys--with a bar between the legs. They strapped the lunches and bathing-suits to the fenders and were gone before nine o’clock. The morning was hot and sunny. Within an hour they were far out of town on a red clay road. The fields were bright and green and the sharp smell of pine trees was in the air. Harry talked in a very excited way. The warm wind blew into their faces. Her mouth was very dry and she was hungry. ‘See that house up on the hill there? Less us stop and get some water.’

‘No, we better wait. Well water gives you typhoid.’

‘I already had typhoid. I had pneumonia and a broken leg and a infected foot.’

‘I remember.’

‘Yeah,’ Mick said. ‘Me and Bill stayed in the front room when we had typhoid fever and Pete Wells would run past on the sidewalk holding his nose and looking up at the window. Bill was very embarrassed. All my hair came out so I was bald-headed.’

‘I bet we’re at least ten miles from town. We’ve been riding an hour and a half--fast riding, too.’

‘I sure am thirsty,’ Mick said. ‘And hungry. What you got in that sack for lunch?’

‘Cold liver pudding and chicken salad sandwiches and pie.’

That’s a good picnic dinner. ‘She was ashamed of what she had brought.’ I got two hard-boiled eggs--already stuffed--with separate little packages of salt and pepper. And sandwiches--blackberry jelly with butter. Everything wrapped in oil paper.

And paper napkins.’

‘I didn’t intend for you to bring anything,’ Harry said. ‘My Mother fixed lunch for both of us. I asked you out here and all. We’ll come to a store soon and get cold drinks.’

They rode half an hour longer before they finally came to the filling-station store. Harry propped up the bicycles and she went in ahead of him. After the bright glare the store seemed dark. The shelves were stacked with slabs of white meat, cans of oil, and sacks of meal. Flies buzzed over a big, sticky jar of loose candy on the counter.

‘What kind of drinks you got?’ Harry asked. The storeman started to name them over. Mick opened the ice box and looked inside. Her hands felt good in the cold water. ‘I want a chocolate Nehi. You got any of them? ‘ ‘Ditto,’ Harry said. ‘Make it two.’

‘No, wait a minute. Here’s some ice-cold beer. I want a bottle of beer if you can treat as high as that’ Harry ordered one for himself, also. He thought it was a sin for anybody under twenty to drink beer--but maybe he just suddenly wanted to be a sport. After the first swallow he made a bitter face. They sat on the steps in front of the store.

Mick’s legs were so tired that the muscles in them jumped.

She wiped the neck of the bottle with her hand and took a long, cold pull. Across the road there was a big empty field of grass, and beyond that a fringe of pine woods. The trees were every color of green--from a bright yellow-green to a dark color that was almost black. The sky was hot blue.

‘I like beer,’ she said. ‘I used to sop bread down in the drops our Dad left. I like to lick salt out my hand while I drink. This is the second bottle to myself I’ve ever had.’

The first swallow was sour. But the rest tastes good.’

The storeman said it was twelve miles from town. They had four more miles to go. Harry paid him and they were out in the hot sun again. Harry was talking loud and he kept laughing without any reason.

‘Gosh, the beer along with this hot sun makes me dizzy. But I sure do feel good,’ he said.

‘I can’t wait to get in swimming.’

There was sand in the road and they had to throw all their weight on the pedals to keep from bogging. Harry’s shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He still kept talking. The road changed to red clay and the sand was behind them. There was a slow colored song in her mind--one Portia’s brother used to play on his harp. She pedaled in time to it.

Then finally they reached the place she had been looking for.

‘This is it! See that sign that says PRIVATE? We got to climb the bob-wire fence and then take that path there--see!’ The woods were very quiet. Slick pine needles covered the ground. Within a few minutes they had reached the creek. The water was brown and swift. Cool. There was no sound except from the water and a breeze singing high up in the pine trees.

It was like the deep, quiet woods made them timid, and they walked softly along the bank beside the creek.

‘Don’t it look pretty.’

Harry laughed. ‘What makes you whisper? Listen here!’ He clapped his hand over his mouth and gave a long Indian whoop that echoed back at them. ‘Come on. Let’s jump in the water and cool off.’

‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘O.K. Then we’ll eat first. We’ll eat half the lunch now and half later on when we come out’ She unwrapped the jelly sandwiches. When they were finished Harry balled the papers neatly and stuffed them into a hollow tree stump. Then he took his shorts and went down the path.

She shucked off her clothes behind a bush and struggled into Hazel’s bathing-suit The suit was too small and cut her between the legs.

‘You ready?’ Harry hollered.

She heard a splash in the water and when she reached the bank Harry was already swimming. ‘Don’t dive yet until I find out if there are any stumps or shallow places,’ he said. She just looked at his head bobbing in the water. She had never intended to dive, anyway. She couldn’t even swim. She had been in swimming only a few times in her life--and then she always wore water-wings or stayed out of parts that were over her head. But it would be sissy to tell Harry. She was embarrassed. All of a sudden she told a tale: ‘I don’t dive any more. I used to dive, high dive, all the time. But once I busted my head open, so I can’t dive any more.’ She thought for a minute. ‘It was a double jack-knife dive I was doing. And when I came up there was blood all in the water.

But I didn’t think anything about it and just began to do swimming tricks. These people were hollering at me. Then I found out where all this blood in the water was coming from.

And I never have swam good since.’

Harry scrambled up the bank. ‘Gosh! I never heard about that.’

She meant to add on to the tale to make it sound more reasonable, but instead she just looked at Harry. His skin was light brown and the water made it shining. There were hairs on his chest and legs. In the tight trunks he seemed very naked. Without his glasses his face was wider and more handsome. His eyes were wet and blue. He was looking at her and it was like suddenly they got embarrassed.

The water’s about ten feet deep except over on the other bank, and there it’s shallow.’

‘Less us get going. I bet that cold water feels good.’

She wasn’t scared. She felt the same as if she had got caught at the top of a very high tree and there was nothing to do but just climb down the best way she could--a dead-calm feeling. She edged off the bank and was in ice-cold water. She held to a root until it broke in her hands and then she began to swim.

Once she choked and went under, but she kept going and didn’t lose any face. She swam and reached the other side of the bank where she could touch bottom. Then she felt good.

She smacked the water with her fists and called out crazy words to make echoes.

Watch here!’ Harry shimmied up a tall, thin little tree. The trunk was limber and when he reached the top it swayed down with him. He dropped into the water.

‘Me too! Watch me do it!’

‘That’s a sapling.’

She was as good a climber as anybody on the block. She copied exactly what he had done and hit the water with a hard smack. She could swim, too. Now she could swim O.K.

They played follow the leader and ran up and down the bank and jumped in the cold brown water. They hollered and jumped and climbed. They played around for maybe two hours. Then they were standing on the bank and they both looked at each other and there didn’t seem to be anything new to do. Suddenly she said: ‘Have you ever swam naked?’

The woods was very quiet and for a minute he did not answer.

He was cold. His titties had turned hard and purple. His lips were purple and his teeth chattered. ‘I-I don’t think so.’

This excitement was in her, and she said something she didn’t mean to say. ‘I would if you would. I dare you to.’

Harry slicked back the dark, wet bangs of his hair. ‘O.K.’

They both took off their bathing-suits. Harry had his back to her. He stumbled and his ears were red. Then they turned toward each other. Maybe it was half an hour they stood there-maybe not more man a minute. Harry pulled a leaf from a tree and tore it to pieces. ‘We better get dressed.’

All through the picnic dinner neither of them spoke. They spread the dinner on the ground. Harry divided everything in half. There was the hot, sleepy feeling of a summer afternoon.

In the deep woods they could hear no sound except the slow flowing of the water and the songbirds. Harry held his stuffed egg and mashed the yellow with his thumb. What did that make her remember? She heard herself breathe.

Then he looked up over her shoulder. ‘Listen here. I think you’re so pretty, Mick. I never did think so before. I don’t mean I thought you were very ugly--I just mean that--’ She threw a pine cone in the water. ‘Maybe we better start back if we want to be home before dark.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s lie down. Just for a minute.’

He brought handfuls of pine needles and leaves and gray moss. She sucked her knee and watched him. Her fists were tight and it was like she was tense all over.

‘Now we can sleep and be fresh for the trip home.’

They lay on the soft bed and looked up at the dark-green pine clumps against the sky. A bird sang a sad, clear song she had never heard before. One high note like an oboe--and then it sank down five tones and called again. The song was sad as a question without words.

‘I love that bird,’ Harry said. ‘I think it’s a vireo.’

‘I wish we was at the ocean. On the beach and watching the ships far out on the water. You went to the beach one summer--exactly what is it like?’

His voice was rough and low. Well--there are the waves.

Sometimes blue and sometimes green, and in the bright sun they look glassy. And on the sand you can pick up these little shells. Like the kind we brought back in a cigar box. And over the water are these white gulls. We were at the Gulf of Mexico--these cool bay breezes blew all the time and there it’s never baking hot like it is here. Always--’

‘Snow,’ Mick said. ‘That’s what I want to see. Cold, white drifts of snow like in pictures. Blizzards. White, cold snow that keeps falling soft and falls on and on and on through all the winter. Snow like in Alaska.’

They both turned at the same time. They were close against each other. She felt him trembling and her fists were tight enough to crack. ‘Oh, God,’ he kept saying over and over. It was like her head was broke off from her body and thrown away. And her eyes looked up straight into the blinding sun while she counted something in her mind. And then this was the way. This was how it was. They pushed the wheels slowly along the road. Harry’s head hung down and his shoulders were bent. Their shadows were long and black on the dusty road, for it was late afternoon. ‘Listen here,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

‘We got to understand this. We got to. Do you--any?’

‘I don’t know. I reckon not.’

‘Listen here. We got to do something. Let’s sit down.’ They dropped the bicycles and sat by a ditch beside the road. They sat far apart from each other. The late sun burned down on their heads and there were brown, crumbly ant beds all around them. ‘We got to understand this,’ Harry said. He cried. He sat very still and the tears rolled down Ms white face. She could not think about the thing that made him cry. An ant stung her on the ankle and she picked it up in her fingers and looked at it very close. ‘It’s this way,’ he said. I never had even kissed a girl before.’

‘Me neither. I never kissed any boy. Out of the family. ‘That’s all I used to think about--was to kiss this certain girl.

I used to plan about it during school and dream about it at night. And then once she gave me a date. And I could tell she meant for me to kiss her. And I just looked at her in the dark and I couldn’t That was all I had thought about--to kiss her--and when the time came I couldn’t.’

She dug a hole in the ground with her finger and buried the dead ant.

It was all my fault. Adultery is a terrible sin any way you look at it. And you were two years younger than me and just a kid.’

‘No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t any kid. But now I wish I was, though.’

‘Listen here. If you think we ought to we can get married--secretly or any other way.’

Mick shook her head. ‘I didn’t like that. I never will marry with any boy.’

‘I never will marry either. I know that And I’m not just saying so--it’s true.’

His face scared her. His nose quivered and his bottom lip was mottled and bloody where he had bitten it. His eyes were bright and wet and scowling. His face was whiter than any face she could remember. She turned her head from him.

Things would be better if only he would just quit talking. Her eyes looked slowly around her--at the streaked red-and-white clay of the ditch, at a broken whiskey bottle, at a pine tree across from them with a sign advertising for a man for county sheriff. She wanted to sit quiet for a long time and not think and not say a word.

‘I’m leaving town. I’m a good mechanic and I can get a job some other place. If I stayed home Mother could read this in my eyes.’

Tell me. Can you look at me and see the difference?’

Harry watched her face a long time and nodded that he could.

Then he said: ‘There’s just one more thing. In a month or two I’ll send you my address and you write and tell me for sure whether you’re all right.’

‘How you mean?’ she asked slowly.

He explained to her. ‘All you need to write is "O.K." and then TO know.’

They were walking home again, pushing the wheels. Their shadows stretched out giant-sized on the road. Harry was bent over like an old beggar and kept wiping his nose on his sleeve.

For a minute there was a bright, golden glow over everything before the sun sank down behind the trees and their shadows were gone on the road before them. She felt very old, and it was like something was heavy inside her. She was a grown person now, whether she wanted to be or not.

They had walked the sixteen miles and were in the dark alley at home. She could see the yellow light from their kitchen.

Harry’s house was dark--his mother had not come home. She worked for a tailor in a shop on a side street.

Sometimes even on Sunday. When you looked through the window you could see her bending over the machine in the back or pushing a long needle through the heavy pieces of goods. She never looked up while you watched her. And at night she cooked these orthodox dishes for Harry and her.

‘Listen here--’ he said.

She waited in the dark, but he did not finish. They shook hands with each other and Harry walked up the dark alley between the houses. When he reached the sidewalk he turned and looked back over his shoulder. A light shone on his face and it was white and hard. Then he was gone.

‘This here is a riddle,’ George said.

‘I listening.’

Two Indians was walking on a trail. The one in front was the son of the one behind but the one behind was not his father.

What kin was they?’

‘Less see. His stepfather.’

George grinned at Portia with his little square, blue teeth.

‘His uncle, then.’

‘You can’t guess. It was his mother. The trick is that you don’t think about a Indian being a lady.’

She stood outside the room and watched them. The doorway framed the kitchen like a picture. Inside it was homey and clean. Only the light by the sink was turned on and there were shadows in the room. Bill and Hazel played black-jack at the table with matches for money. Hazel felt the braids of her hair with her plump, pink fingers while Bill sucked in his cheeks and dealt the cards in a very serious way. At the sink Portia was drying the dishes with a clean checked towel. She looked thin and her skin was golden yellow, her greased black hair slicked neat. Ralph sat quietly on the floor and George.was trying a little harness on him made out of old Christmas tinsel.

This here is another riddle, Portia. If the hand of a clock points to half-past two--’ She went into the room. It was like she had expected them to move back when they saw her and stand around in a circle and look. But they just glanced at her. She sat down at the table and waited.

‘Here you come traipsing in after everbody done finished supper. Seem to me like I never will get off from work.’

Nobody noticed her. She ate a big plateful of cabbage and salmon and finished off with junket. It was her Mama she was thinking about. The door opened and her Mama came in and told Portia that Miss Brown had said she found a bedbug in her room. To get out the gasoline.

‘Quit frowning like that, Mick. You’re coming to the age where you ought to fix up and try to look the best you can.

And hold on--don’t barge out like that when I speak with you--I mean you to give Ralph a good sponge bath before he goes to bed. Clean his nose and ears good.’

Ralph’s soft hair was sticky with oatmeal. She wiped it with a dishrag and rinsed his face and hands at the sink. Bill and Hazel finished their game. Bill’s long fingernails scraped on the table as he took up the matches. George carried Ralph off to bed. She and Portia were alone in the kitchen.

‘Listen! Look at me. Do you notice anything different?’

‘Sure I notice, Hon.’

Portia put on her red hat and changed her shoes. Well--?’

‘Just you take a little grease and rub it on your face. Your nose already done peeled very bad. They say grease is the best thing for bad sunburn.’

She stood by herself in the dark back yard, breaking off pieces of bark from the oak tree with her fingernails. It was almost worse this way. Maybe she would feel better if they could look at her and tell. If they knew.

Her Dad called her from the back steps. ‘Mick! Oh, Mick!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The telephone.’ George crowded up close and tried to listen in, but she pushed him away. Mrs. Minowitz talked very loud and excited. ‘My Harry should be home by now. You know where he is? ’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘He said you two would ride out on bicycles. Where should he be now? You know where he is?’

‘No, ma’am,’ Mick said again.

Now that the days were hot again the Sunny Dixie Show was always crowded. The March wind quieted. Trees were thick with their foliage of ocherous green. The sky was a cloudless blue and the rays of the sun grew stronger. The air was sultry.

Jake Blount hated this weather. He thought dizzily of the long, burning summer months ahead. He did not feel well. Recently a headache had begun to trouble him constantly. He had gained weight so that his stomach developed a little pouch. He had to leave the top button of his trousers undone. He knew that this was alcoholic fat, but he kept on drinking. Liquor helped the ache in his head. He had only to take one small glass to make it better. Nowadays one glass was the same to him as a quart. It was not the liquor of the moment that gave him the kick--but the reaction of the first swallow to all the alcohol which had saturated his blood during these last months. A spoonful of beer would help the throbbing in his head, but a quart of whiskey could not make him drunk.

He cut out liquor entirely. For several days he drank only water and Orange Crush. The pain was like a crawling worm in his head. He worked wearily during the long afternoons and evenings. He could not sleep and it was agony to try to read.

The damp, sour stink in his room infuriated him. He lay restless in the bed and when at last he fell asleep daylight had come.

A dream haunted him. It had first come to him four months ago. He would awake with terror--but the strange point was that never could he remember the contents of this dream. Only the feeling remained when his eyes were opened. Each time his fears at awakening were so identical that he did not doubt but what these dreams were the same. He was used to dreams, the grotesque nightmares of drink that led him down into a madman’s region of disorder, but always the morning light scattered the effects of these wild dreams and he forgot them.

This blank, stealthy dream was of a different nature. He awoke and could remember nothing. But there was a sense of menace that lingered in him long after. Then he awoke one morning with the old fear but with a faint remembrance of the darkness behind him. He had been walking among a crowd of people and in his arms he carried something. That was all he could be sure about. Had he stolen? Had he been trying to save some possession? Was he being hunted by all these people around him? He did not think so. The more he studied this simple dream the less he could understand. Then for some time afterward the dream did not return.

He met the writer of signs whose chalked message he had seen the past November. From the first day of their meeting the old man clung to him like an evil genius. His name was Simms and he preached on the sidewalks. The winter cold had kept him indoors, but in the spring he was out on the streets all day.

His white hair was soft and ragged on his neck and he carried around with him a woman’s big silk pocketbook full of chalk and Jesus ads. His eyes were bright and crazy. Simms tried to convert him.

‘Child of adversity, I smell the sinful stink of beer on thy breath. And you smoke cigarettes. If the Lord had wanted us to smoke cigarettes He would have said so in His Book. The mark of Satan is on thy brow. I see it. Repent. Let me show you the light.’ Jake rolled up his eyes and made a slow pious sign in the air.

Then he opened his oil-stained hand. ‘I reveal this only to you,’ he said in a low stage voice. Simms looked down at the scar in his palm. Jake leaned closer and whispered: ‘And there’s the other sign. The sign you know. For I was born with them.’

Simms backed against the fence. With a womanish gesture he lifted a lock of silver hair from his forehead and smoothed it back on his head. Nervously his tongue licked the corners of his mouth. Jake laughed.

‘Blasphemer!’ Simms screamed. ‘God will get you. You and all your crew. God remembers the scoffers. He watches after me. God watches everybody but He watches me the most. Like He did Moses. God tells me things in the night. God will get you.’ He took Simms down to a corner store for Coca-Colas and peanut-butter crackers. Simms began to work on him again. When he left for the show Simms ran along behind him. ‘Come to this corner tonight at seven o’clock. Jesus has a message just for you.’ The first days of April were windy and warm. White clouds trailed across the blue sky. In the wind there was the smell of the river and also the fresher smell of fields beyond the town. The show was crowded every day from four in the afternoon until midnight. The crowd was a tough one. With the new spring he felt an undertone of trouble. One night he was working on the machinery of the swings when suddenly he was roused from thought by the sounds of angry voices. Quickly he pushed through the crowd until he saw a white girl fighting with a colored girl by the ticket booth of the flying-jinny. He wrenched them apart, but still they struggled to get at each other. The crowd took sides and there was a bedlam of noise. The white girl was a hunchback. She held something tight in her hand. ‘I seen you,’ the colored girl yelled. ‘I ghy beat that hunch off your back, too.’

‘Hush your mouth, you black nigger! ‘ ‘Low-down factory tag. I done paid my money and I ghy ride. White man, you make her give me back my ticket.’

‘Black nigger slut! ‘ Jake looked from one to the other. The crowd pressed close. There were mumbled opinions on every side. ‘I seen Lurie drop her ticket and I watched this here white lady pick it up. That the truth,’ a colored boy said. ‘No nigger going to put her hands on no white girl while--. ‘You quit that pushing me. I ready to hit back even if your skin do be white.’ Roughly Jake pushed into the thick of the crowd. ‘All right! ‘ he yelled. ‘Move on--break it up. Every damn one of you.’ There was something about the size of his fists that made the people drift sullenly away. Jake turned back to the two girls.

‘This here the way it is,’ said the colored girl. I bet I one of the few peoples here who done saved over fifty cents till Friday night. I done ironed double this week. I done paid a good nickel for that ticket she holding. And now I means to ride. Jake settled the trouble quickly. He let the hunchback keep the disputed ticket and issued another one to the colored girl. For the rest of that evening there were no more quarrels. But Jake moved alertly through the crowd. He was troubled and uneasy.

In addition to himself there were five other employees at the show--two men to operate the swings and take tickets and three girls to manage the booths. This did not count Patterson.

The show-owner spent most of his time playing cards with himself in his trailer. His eyes were dull, with the pupils shrunken, and the skin of his neck hung in yellow, pulpy folds.

During the past few months Jake had had two raises in pay. At midnight it was his job to report to Patterson and hand over the takings of the evening. Sometimes Patterson did not notice him until he had been in the trailer for several minutes; he would be staring at the cards, sunk in a stupor. The air of the trailer was heavy with the stinks of food and reefers. Patterson held his hand over his stomach as though protecting it from something. He always checked over the accounts very thoroughly.

Jake and the two operators had a squabble. These men were both former doffers at one of the mills. At first he had tried to talk to them and help them to see the truth. Once he invited them to a pool room for a drink. But they were so dumb he couldn’t help them. Soon after this he overheard the conversation between them that caused the trouble. It was an early Sunday morning, almost two o’clock, and he had been checking the accounts with Patterson. When he stepped out of the trailer the grounds seemed empty. The moon was bright.

He was thinking of Singer and the free day ahead. Then as he passed by the swings he heard someone speak his name. The two operators had finished work and were smoking together. Jake listened.

‘If there’s anything I hate worse than a nigger it’s a Red.’

‘He tickles me. I don’t pay him no mind. The way he struts around. I never seen such a sawed-off runt. How tall is he, you reckon?’

‘Around five foot But he thinks he got to tell everybody so much. He oughta be in jail. That’s where. The Red Bolshivik.’

‘He just tickles me. I can’t look at him without laughing.’

‘He needn’t act biggity with me.’

Jake watched them follow the path toward Weavers Lane. His first thought was to rush out and confront them, but a certain shrinking held him back. For several days he fumed in silence.

Then one night after work he followed the two men for several blocks and as they turned a corner he cut in front of them.

‘I heard you,’ he said breathlessly. ‘It so happened I heard every word you said last Saturday night. Sure I’m a Red. At least I reckon I am. But what are you?’ They stood beneath a street light. The two men stepped back from him. The neighborhood was deserted. ‘You pasty-faced, shrunk-gutted, ricket-ridden little rats! I could reach out and choke your stringy necks--one to each hand. Runt or no, I could lay you on this sidewalk where they’d have to scrape you up with shovels.’

The two men looked at each other, cowed, and tried to walk on. But Jake would not let them pass. He kept step with them, walking backward, a furious sneer on his face.

‘All I got to say is this: In the future I suggest you come to me whenever you feel the need to make remarks about my height, weight, accent, demeanor, or ideology. And that last is not what I take a leak with either--case you don’t know. We will discuss it together.’

Afterward Jake treated the two men with angry contempt.

Behind his back they jeered at him. One afternoon he found that the engine of the swings had been deliberately damaged and he had to work three hours overtime to fix it. Always he felt someone was laughing at him. Each time he heard the girls talking together he drew himself up straight and laughed carelessly aloud to himself as though thinking of some private joke. The warm southwest winds from the Gulf of Mexico were heavy with the smells of spring. The days grew longer and the sun was bright. The lazy warmth depressed him. He began to drink again. As soon as work was done he went home and lay down on his bed. Sometimes he stayed there, fully clothed and inert, for twelve or thirteen hours. The restlessness that had caused him to sob and bite his nails only a few months before seemed to have gone. And yet beneath his inertia Jake felt the old tension. Of all the places he had been this was the loneliest town of all. Or it would be without Singer. Only he and Singer understood the truth. He knew and could not get the don’t-knows to see. It was like trying to fight darkness or heat or a stink in the air. He stared morosely out of his window. A stunted, smoked-blackened tree at the corner had put out new leaves of a bilious green. The sky was always a deep, hard blue. The mosquitoes from a fetid stream that ran through this part of the town buzzed in the room.

He caught the itch. He mixed some sulphur and hog fat and greased his body every morning. He clawed himself raw and it seemed that the itching would never be soothed. One night he broke loose. He had been sitting alone for many hours. He had mixed gin and whiskey and was very drunk. It was almost morning. He leaned out of the window and looked at the dark silent street. He thought of all the people around him.

Sleeping. The don’t-knows. Suddenly he bawled out in a loud voice: ‘This is the truth! You bastards don’t know anything. You don’t know. You don’t know!’

The street awoke angrily. Lamps were lighted and sleepy curses were called to him. The men who lived in the house rattled furiously on his door. The girls from a cat-house across the street stuck their heads out of the windows.

‘You dumb dumb dumb dumb bastards. You dumb dumb dumb dumb--’

‘Shuddup! Shuddup! The fellows in the hall were pushing against the door: .You drunk bull! You’ll be a sight dumber when we get thu with you.’

‘How many out there?’ Jake roared. He banged an empty bottle on the windowsill. ‘Come on, everybody. Come one, come all. I’ll settle you three at a time.’

‘That’s right, Honey,’ a whore called.

The door was giving way. Jake jumped from the window and ran through a side alley. ‘Hee-haw! Hee-haw!’ he yelled drunkenly. He was barefooted and shirtless. An hour later he stumbled into Singer’s room. He sprawled on the floor and laughed himself to sleep.

On an April morning he found the body of a man who had been murdered. A young Negro. Jake found him in a ditch about thirty yards from the showgrounds. The Negro’s throat had been slashed so that the head was rolled back at a crazy angle. The sun shone hot on his open, glassy eyes and flies hovered over the dried blood that covered his chest. The dead man held a red-and-yellow cane with a tassel like the ones sold at the hamburger booth at the show. Jake stared gloomily down at the body for some time. Then he called the police. No clues were found. Two days later the family of the dead man claimed his body at the morgue.

At the Sunny Dixie there were frequent fights and quarrels.

Sometimes two friends would come to the show arm in arm, laughing and drinking--and before they left they would be struggling together in a panting rage. Jake was always alert.

Beneath the gaudy gaiety of the show, the bright lights, and the lazy laughter, he felt something sullen and dangerous.

Through these dazed, disjointed weeks Simms nagged his footsteps constantly. The old man liked to come with a soapbox and a Bible and take a stand in the middle of the crowd to preach. He talked of the second coming of Christ. He said that the Day of Judgment would be October 2, 1951. He would point out certain drunks and scream at them in his raw, worn voice. Excitement made his mouth fill with water so that his words had a wet, gurgling sound. Once he had slipped in and set up his stand no arguments could make him budge. He made Jake a present of a Gideon Bible, and told him to pray on his knees for one hour each night and to hurl away every glass of beer or cigarette that was offered him.

They quarreled over walls and fences. Jake had begun to carry chalk in his pockets, also. He wrote brief sentences.

He tried to word them so that a passerby would stop and ponder over the meaning. So that a man would wonder. So that a man would think. Also, he wrote short pamphlets and distributed them in the streets.

If it had not been for Singer, Jake knew that he would have left the town. Only on Sunday, when he was with his friend, did he feel at peace. Sometimes they would go for a walk together or play chess--but more often they spent the day quietly in Singer’s room. If he wished to talk Singer was always attentive. If he sat morosely through the day the mute understood his feelings and was not surprised. It seemed to him that only Singer could help him now.

Then one Sunday when he climbed the stairs he saw that Singer’s door was open. The room was empty. He sat alone for more than two hours. At last he heard Singer’s footsteps on the stairs.

‘I was wondering about you. Where you been?’ Singer smiled. He brushed off his hat with a handkerchief and put it away. Then deliberately he took his silver pencil from his pocket and leaned over the mantelpiece to write a note.

‘What you mean?’ Jake asked when he read what the mute had written. ‘Whose legs are cut off?’

Singer took back the note and wrote a few additional sentences.

‘Huh!’ Jake said. That don’t surprise me.’

He brooded over the piece of paper and then crumpled it in his hand. The listlessness of the past month was gone and he was tense and uneasy. ‘Huh!’ he said again.

Singer put on a pot of coffee and got out his chessboard. Jake tore the note to pieces and rolled the fragments between his sweating palms. ‘But something can be done about this,’ he said after a while. ‘You know it? ‘ Singer nodded uncertainly. ‘I want to see the boy and hear the whole story. When can you take me around there? ‘ Singer deliberated. Then he wrote on a pad of paper, ‘Tonight.’ Jake held his hand to his mouth and began to walk restlessly around the room. ‘We can do something.’

JAKE and Singer waited on the front porch. When they pushed the doorbell there was no sound of a ring in the darkened house. Jake knocked impatiently and pressed his nose against the screen door. Beside him Singer stood wooden and smiling, with two spots of color on his cheeks, for they had drunk a bottle of gin together. The evening was quiet and dark. Jake watched a yellow light shaft softly through the hall. And Portia opened the door for them.

‘I certainly trust you not been waiting long. So many folks been coming that us thought it wise to untach the bell. You gentlemens just let me take you hats--Father been mighty sick.’

Jake tiptoed heavily behind Singer down the bare, narrow hall.

At the threshold of the kitchen he stopped short The room was crowded and hot. A fire burned in the small wood stove and the windows were closed tight. Smoke mingled with a certain Negro smell. The glow from the stove was the only light in the room. The dark voices he had heard back in the hall were silent.

‘These here are two white gentlemens come to inquire about Father,’ Portia said. ‘I think maybe he be able to see you but I better go on in first and prepare him.’

Jake fingered his thick lower lip. On the end of his nose there was a latticed impression from the front screen door. ‘That’s not it,’ he said. ‘I come to talk with your brother.’

The Negroes in the room were standing. Singer motioned to them to be seated again. Two grizzled old men sat down on a bench by the stove. A loose-limbed mulatto lounged against the window. On a camp cot in a corner was a boy without legs whose trousers were folded and pinned beneath his stumpy thighs. ‘Good evening,’ Jake said awkwardly. ‘Your name Copeland? ‘ The boy put his hands over the stumps of his legs and shrank back close to the wall. ‘My name Willie.’

‘Honey, don’t you worry none,’ said Portia. ‘This here is Mr. Singer that you heard Father speak about. And this other white gentleman is Mr. Blount and he a very close friend of Mr. Singer. They just kindly come to inquire about us in our trouble.’ She turned to Jake and motioned to the three other people in the room. This other boy leaning on the window is my brother too. Named Buddy. And these here over by the stove is two dear friends of my Father. Named Mr. Marshall Nicolls and Mr. John Roberts. I think it a good idea to understand who all is in a room with you. ‘Thanks,’ Jake said. He turned to Willie again. ‘I just want you to tell me about it so I can get it straight in my mind.’

‘This the way it is,’ Willie said. ‘I feel like my feets is still hurting. I got this here terrible misery down in my toes. Yet the hurt in my feets is down where my feets should be if they were on my l-l-legs. And not where my feets is now. It a hard thing to understand. My feets hurt me so bad all the time and I don’t know where they is. They never given them back to me. They s-somewhere more than a hundred m-miles from here.’

‘I mean about how it all happened,’ Jake said. Uneasily Willie looked up at his sister. ‘I don’t remember very good.’

‘Course you remember, Honey. You done already told us over and over.’

‘Well--’ The boy’s voice was timid and sullen. Us were all out on the road and this here Buster say something to the guard. The w-white man taken a stick to him. Then this other boy he tries to run off. And I follow him. It all come about so quick I don’t remember good just how it were. Then they taken us back to the camp and--‘ ‘I know the rest,’ Jake said. ‘But give me the names and addresses of the other two boys. And tell me the names of the guards.’

‘Listen here, white man. It seem to me like you meaning to get me into trouble.’

‘Trouble!’ Jake said rudely. ‘What in the name of Christ do you think you’re in now?’

‘Less us quiet down,’ Portia said nervously. ‘This here the way it is, Mr. Blount. They done let Willie off at the camp before his time were served. But they done also impressed it on him not to--I believe you understand what us means. Naturally Willie he scared. Naturally us means to be careful--’cause that the best thing us can do. We already got enough trouble as is.’

‘What happened to the guards? ‘ Them w-white men were fired. That what they told me.’

‘And where are your friends now? ‘ ‘What friends? ‘ .Why, the other two boys.’

They n-not my friends,’ Willie said. ‘Us all has had a big falling out’

‘How you mean?’

Portia pulled her earrings so that the lobes of her ears stretched out like rubber. ‘This here what Willie means. You see, during them three days when they hurt so bad they commenced to quarrel. Willie don’t ever want to see any of them again. That one thing Father and Willie done argued about already. This here Buster--’

‘Buster got a wooden leg,’ said the boy by the window. I seen him on the street today.’

This here Buster don’t have no folks and it were Father’s idea to have him move on in with us. Father want to round up all the boys together. How he reckons us can feed them I sure don’t know.’

That ain’t a good idea. And besides us was never very good friends anyway.’ Willie felt the stumps of his legs with his dark, strong hands. ‘I just wish I knowed where my f-f-feets are. That the main thing worries me. The doctor never given them back to me. I sure do wish I knowed where they are.’

Jake looked around him with dazed, gin-clouded eyes.

Everything seemed unclear and strange. The heat in the kitchen dizzied him so that voices echoed in his ears. The smoke choked him. The light hanging from the ceiling was turned on but, as the bulb was wrapped in newspaper to dim its strength, most of the light came from between the chinks of the hot stove. There was a red glow on all the dark faces around him. He felt uneasy and alone. Singer had left the room to visit Portia’s father. Jake wanted him to come back so that they could leave. He walked awkwardly across the floor and sat down on the bench between Marshall Nicolls and John Roberts. ‘Where is Portia’s father?’ he asked. ‘Doctor Copeland is in the front room, sir,’ said Roberts. ‘Is he a doctor?’

‘Yes, sir. He is a medical doctor.’ There was a scuffle on the steps outside and the back door opened. A warm, fresh breeze lightened the heavy air. First a tall boy dressed hi a linen suit and gilded shoes entered the room with a sack in his arms. Behind him came a young boy of about seventeen. ‘Hey, Highboy. Hey there, Lancy,’ Willie said. ‘What you all brought me? ‘ Highboy bowed elaborately to Jake and placed on the table two fruit jars of wine. Lancy put beside them a plate covered with a fresh white napkin. This here wine is a present from the Society,’ Highboy said. ‘And Lancy’s mother sent some peach puffs.’

‘How is the Doctor, Miss Portia?’ Lancy asked. .Honey, he been mighty sick these days. What worries me is he so strong. It a bad sign when a person sick as he is suddenly come to be so strong.’ Portia turned to Jake. ‘Don’t you think it a bad sign, Mr. Blount?’

Jake stared at her dazedly. ‘I don’t know.’

Lancy glanced sullenly at Jake and pulled down the cuffs of his outgrown shirt. ‘Give the Doctor my family’s regards.’

‘Us certainly do appreciate this,’ Portia said. ‘Father was speaking of you just the other day. He haves a book he wants to give you. Wait just one minute while I get it and rinse out this plate to return to your Mother. This were certainly a kindly thing for her to do.’

Marshall Nicolls leaned toward Jake and seemed about to speak to him. The old man wore a pair of pin-striped trousers and a morning coat with a flower in the buttonhole. He cleared his throat and said: ‘Pardon me, sir--but unavoidably we overheard a part of your conversation with William regarding the trouble he is now in. Inevitably we have considered what is the best course to take.’

‘You one of his relatives or the preacher in his church?’

‘No, I am a pharmacist. And John Roberts on your left is employed in the postal department of the government.’

‘A postman,’ repeated John Roberts.

‘With your permission--’ Marshall Nicolls took a yellow silk handkerchief from his pocket and gingerly blew his nose. ‘Naturally we have discussed this matter extensively.’

And without doubt as members of the colored race here in this free country of America we are anxious to do our part toward extending amicable relationships.’

We wish always to do the right thing,’ said John Roberts.

‘And it behooves us to strive with care and not endanger this amicable relationship already established. Then by gradual means a better condition will come about.’

Jake turned from one to the other. ‘I don’t seem to follow you.’

The heat was suffocating him. He wanted to get out. A film seemed to have settled over his eyeballs so that all the faces around him were blurred.

Across the room Willie was playing his harp. Buddy and Highboy were listening. The music was dark and sad. When the song was finished Willie polished his harp on the front of his shirt. ‘I so hungry and thirsty the slobber in my mouth done wet out the tune. I certainly will be glad to taste some of that boogie-woogie. To have something good to drink is the only thing m-made me forget this misery. If I just knowed where my f-feets are now and could drink a glass of gin ever night I wouldn’t mind so much.’

‘Don’t fret, Hon. You going to have something,’ Portia said.

‘Mr. Blount, would you care to take a peach puff and a glass of wine?’

‘Thanks,’ Jake said. ‘That would be good.’

Quickly Portia laid a cloth on the table and set down one plate and a fork. She poured a large tumblerful of the wine. ‘You just make yourself comfortable here. And if you don’t mind I going to serve the others.’ The fruit jars were passed from mouth to mouth. Before Highboy passed a jar to Willie he borrowed Portia’s lipstick and drew a red line to set the boundary of the drink. There were gurgling noises and laughter. Jake finished his puff and carried his glass back with him to his place between the two old men. The home-made wine was rich and strong as brandy. Willie started a low dolorous tune on his harp. Portia snapped her fingers and shuffled around the room. Jake turned to Marshall Nicolls. ‘You say Portia’s father is a doctor?’

‘Yes, sir. Yes, indeed. A skilled doctor.’

‘What’s the matter with him? ‘ The two Negroes glanced warily at each other. ‘He were in an accident,’ said John Roberts. ‘What kind of an accident? ‘ ‘A bad one. A deplorable one.’ Marshall Nicolls folded and unfolded his silk handkerchief. ‘As we were remarking a while ago, it is important not to impair these amicable relations but to promote them in all ways earnestly possible. We members of the colored race must strive in all ways to uplift our citizens. The Doctor in yonder has strived in every way. But sometimes it has seemed to me like he had not recognized fully enough certain elements of the different races and the situation.’ Impatiently Jake gulped down the last swallows of his wine. ‘Christ’ sake, man, speak out plain, because I can’t understand a thing you say.’ Marshall Nicolls and John Roberts exchanged a hurt look. Across the room Willie still sat playing music. His lips crawled over the square holes of the harmonica like fat, puckered caterpillars. His shoulders were broad and strong. The stumps of his thighs jerked in time to the music. Highboy danced while Buddy and Portia clapped out the rhythm. Jake stood up, and once on his feet he realized that he was drunk. He staggered and then glanced vindictively around him, but no one seemed to have noticed. ‘Where’s Singer?’ he asked Portia thickly.

The music stopped. ‘Why, Mr. Blount, I thought you knowed he was gone. While you were sitting at the table with your peach puff he come to the doorway and held out his watch to show it were time for him to go. You looked straight at him and shaken your head. I thought you knowed that.’

‘Maybe I was thinking about something else.’ He turned to Willie and said angrily to him: ‘I never did even get to tell you what I come here for, I didn’t come to ask you to do anything.

All I wanted--all I wanted was this. You and the other boys were to testify what happened and I was to explain why. Why is the only important thing--not what. I would have pushed you all around in a wagon and you would have told your story and afterward I would have explained why. And maybe it might have meant something.

Maybe it--’ He felt they were laughing at him. Confusion caused him to forget what he had meant to say. The room was full of dark, strange faces and the air was too thick to breathe. He saw a door and staggered across to it. He was in a dark closet smelling of medicine. Then his hand was turning another doorknob.

He stood on the threshold of a small white room furnished only with an iron bed, a cabinet, and two chairs. On the bed lay the terrible Negro he had met on the stairs at Singer’s house. His face was very black against the white, stiff pillows.

The dark eyes were hot with hatred but the heavy, bluish lips were composed. His face was motionless as a black mask except for the slow, wide flutters of his nostrils with each breath.

‘Get out,’ the Negro said.

‘Wait--’ Jake said helplessly. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘This is my house.’

Jake could not draw his eyes away from the Negro’s terrible face. ‘But why?’

‘You are a white man and a stranger.’

Jake did not leave. He walked with cumbersome caution to one of the straight white chairs and seated himself. The Negro moved his hands on the counterpane. His black eyes glittered with fever. Jake watched him. They waited. In the room there was a feeling tense as conspiracy or as the deadly quiet before an explosion.

It was long past midnight. The warm, dark air of the spring morning swirled the blue layers of smoke in the room. On the floor were crumpled balls of paper and a half-empty bottle of gin. Scattered ashes were gray on the counterpane. Doctor Copeland pressed his head tensely into the pillow. He had removed his dressing-gown and the sleeves of his white cotton nightshirt were rolled to the elbow. Jake leaned forward in his chair. His tie was loosened and the collar of his shirt had wilted with sweat Through the hours there had grown between them a long, exhausting dialogue. And now a pause had come.

‘So the time is ready for--’ Jake began. But Doctor Copeland interrupted him. ‘Now it is perhaps necessary that we--’ he murmured huskily. They halted. Each looked into the eyes of the other and waited. ‘I beg your pardon,’ Doctor Copeland said.

‘Sorry,’ said Jake. ‘Go on.’

‘No, you continue.’

‘Well--’ Jake said. ‘I won’t say what I started to say.

Instead we’ll have one last word about the South. The strangled South. The wasted South, The slavish South.’

‘And the Negro people.’

To steady himself Jake swallowed a long, burning draught from the bottle on the floor beside him. Then deliberately he walked to the cabinet and picked up a small, cheap globe of the world that served as a paperweight. Slowly he turned the sphere in his hands. ‘All I can say is this: The world is full of meanness and evil. Huh! Three fourths of this globe is in a state of war or oppression. The liars and fiends are united and the men who know are isolated and without defense. But! But if you was to ask me to point out the most uncivilized area on the face of this globe I would point here--’

‘Watch sharp,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘You’re out in the ocean.’

Jake turned the globe again and pressed his blunt, grimy thumb on a carefully selected spot. ‘Here. These thirteen states. I know what I’m talking about. I read books and I go around. I been in every damn one of these thirteen states. I’ve worked in every one. And the reason I think like I do is this: We live in the richest country in the world. There’s plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want. And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle--the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start? There are corporations worth billions of dollars--and hundreds of thousands of people who don’t get to eat. And here in these thirteen states the exploitation of human beings is so that--that it’s a thing you got to take in with your own eyes. In my life I seen things that would make a man go crazy.

At least one third of all Southerners live and die no better off than the lowest peasant in any European Fascist state. The average wage of a worker on a tenant farm is only seventy-three dollars per year. And mind you, that’s the average! The wages of sharecroppers run from thirty-five to ninety dollars per person. And thirty-five dollars a year means just about ten cents for a full day’s work. Everywhere there’s pellagra and hookworm and anemia. And just plain, pure starvation. But!’ Jake nibbled his lips with the knuckles of his dirty fist. Sweat stood out on his forehead. ‘But!’ he repeated.

Those are only the evils you can see and touch. The other things are worse. I’m talking about the way that the truth has been hidden from the people. The things they have been told so they can’t see the truth. The poisonous lies. So they aren’t allowed to know.’

‘And the Negro,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘To understand what is happening to us you have to--’ Jake interrupted him savagely. ‘Who owns the South? Corporations in the North own three fourths of all the South.

They say the old cow grazes all over--in the south, the west, the north, and the east. But she’s milked in just one place. Her old teats swing over just one spot when she’s full. She grazes everywhere and is milked in New York. Take our cotton mills, our pulp mills, our harness factories, our mattress factories.

The North owns them. And what happens?’ Jake’s mustache quivered angrily. ‘Here’s an example. Locale, a mill village according to the great paternal system of American industry.

Absentee ownership. In the village is one huge brick mill and maybe four or five hundred shanties. The houses aren’t fit for human beings to live in. Moreover, the houses were built to be nothing but slums in the first place. These shanties are nothing but two or maybe three rooms and a privy--built with far less forethought than barns to house cattle. Built with far less attention to needs than sties for pigs. For under this system pigs are valuable and men are not. You can’t make pork chops and sausage out of skinny little mill kids. You can’t sell but half the people these days. But a pig--’

‘Hold on!’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘You are getting off on a tangent. And besides, you are giving no attention to the very separate question of the Negro. I cannot get a word in edgeways. We have been over all this before, bat it is impossible to see the full situation without including us Negroes.’

‘Back to our mill village,’ Jake said. ‘A young linthead begins working at the fine wage of eight or ten dollars a weeks at such times as he can get himself employed. He marries. After the first child the woman must work in the mill also. Their combined wages come to say eighteen dollars a week when they both got work. Huh! They pay a fourth of this for the shack the mill provides them. They buy food and clothes at a company-owned or dominated store. The store overcharges on every item. With three or four younguns they are held down the same as if they had on chains. That is the whole principle of serfdom. Yet here in America we call ourselves free. And the funny thing is that this has been drilled into the heads of sharecroppers and lintheads and all the rest so hard that they really believe it. But it’s taken a hell of a lot of lies to keep them from knowing.’

‘There is only one way out--’ said Doctor Copeland.

‘Two ways. And only two ways. Once there was a time when this country was expanding. Every man thought he had a chance. Huh! But that period has gone--and gone for good.

Less than a hundred corporations have swallowed all but a few leavings. These industries have already sucked the blood and softened the bones of the people. The old days of expansion are gone. The whole system of capitalistic democracy is rotten and corrupt. There remains only two roads ahead. One: Fascism. Two: reform of the most revolutionary and permanent kind.’

‘And the Negro. Do not forget the Negro. So far as I and my people are concerned the South is Fascist now and always has been.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The Nazis rob the Jews of their legal, economic, and cultural life. Here the Negro has always been deprived of these. And if wholesale and dramatic robbery of money and goods has not taken place here as in Germany, it is simply because the Negro has never been allowed to accrue wealth in the first place.’

‘That’s the system,’ Jake said.

‘The Jew and the Negro,’ said Doctor Copeland bitterly. The history of my people will be commensurate with the interminable history of the Jew--only bloodier and more violent. Like a certain species of sea gull. If you capture one of the birds and tie a red string of twine around his leg the rest of the flock will peck him to death.’

Doctor Copeland took off his spectacles and rebound a wire around a broken hinge. Then he polished the lenses on his nightshirt. His hand shook with agitation. ‘Mr. Singer is a Jew.’

‘No, you’re wrong there.’

‘But I am positive that he is. The name, Singer. I recognized his race the first time I saw him. From his eyes. Besides, he told me so.’

‘Why, he couldn’t have,’ Jake insisted. ‘He’s pure Anglo-Saxon if I ever saw it. Irish and Anglo-Saxon.’

‘But--’

‘I’m certain. Absolutely.’

‘Very well,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘We will not quarrel.’ Outside the dark air had cooled so that there was a chill in the room. It was almost dawn. The early morning sky was deep, silky blue and the moon had turned from silver to white. All was still. The only sound was the clear, lonely song of a spring bird in the darkness outside. Though a faint breeze blew in from the window the air in the room was sour and close. There was a feeling both of tenseness and exhaustion.

Doctor Copeland leaned forward from the pillow. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands clutched the counterpane. The neck of his nightshirt had slipped down over his bony shoulder. Jake’s heels were balanced on the rungs of his chair and his giant hands folded between his knees in a waiting and childlike attitude. Deep black circles were beneath his eyes, his hair was unkempt. They looked at each other and waited.

As the silence grew longer the tenseness between them became more strained.

At last Doctor Copeland cleared his throat and said: ‘I am certain you did not come here for nothing. I am sure we have not discussed these subjects all through the night to no purpose. We have talked of everything now except the most vital subject of all--the way out. What must be done.’

They still watched each other and waited. In the face of each there was expectation. Doctor Copeland sat bolt upright against the pillows. Jake rested his chin in his hand and leaned forward. The pause continued. And then hesitantly they began to speak at the same time. ‘Excuse me,’ Jake said. ‘Go ahead.’

‘No, you. You started first.’

‘Go on.’

‘Pshaw!’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Continue.’ Jake stared at him with clouded, mystical eyes. It’s this way. This is how I see it. The only solution is for the people to know. Once they know the truth they can be oppressed no longer. Once just half of them know the whole fight is won.’

‘Yes, once they understand the workings of this society. But how do you propose to tell them? ‘ ‘Listen,’ Jake said. ‘Think about chain letters. If one person sends a letter to ten people and then each of the ten people sends letters to ten more--you get it?’ He faltered. ‘Not that I write letters, but the idea is the same. I just go around telling. And if in one town I can show the truth to just ten of the don’t knows, then I feel like some good has been done. See? ‘ Doctor Copeland looked at Jake in surprise. Then he snorted. ‘Do not be childish! You cannot just go about talking. Chain letters indeed! Knows and don’t-knows! ‘ Jake’s lips trembled and his brow lowered with quick anger. ‘O.K. What have you got to offer? ‘ ‘I will say first that I used to feel somewhat as you do on this question. But I have learned what a mistake that attitude is. For half a century I thought it wise to be patient.’

‘I didn’t say be patient.’

‘In the face of brutality I was prudent. Before injustice I held my peace. I sacrificed the things in hand for the good of the hypothetical whole. I believed in the tongue instead of the fist. As an armor against oppression I taught patience and faith in the human soul. I know now how wrong I was. I have been a traitor to myself and to my people. All that is rot. Now is the time to act and to act quickly. Fight cunning with cunning and might with might’

‘But how?’ Jake asked. ‘How? ’

‘Why, by getting out and doing things. By calling crowds of people together and getting them to demonstrate.’

‘Huh! That last phrase gives you away--"getting them to demonstrate." What good will it do if you get them to demonstrate against a thing if they don’t know. You’re trying to stuff the hog by way of his ass.’

‘Such vulgar expressions annoy me,’ Doctor Copeland said prudishly. ‘For Christ’ sake! I don’t care if they annoy you or not’ Doctor Copeland held up his hand. ‘Let us not get so overheated,’ he said. ‘Let us attempt to see eye to eye with each other.’

‘Suits me. I don’t want to fight with you.’ They were silent. Doctor Copeland moved his eyes from one corner of the ceiling to the other. Several times he wet his lips to speak and each time the word remained half-formed and silent in his mouth. Then at last he said: ‘My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone.’

‘But--’

‘But, nothing,’ said Doctor Copeland didactically. ‘The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.’

‘I see what you’re getting at.’ Doctor Copeland pulled the neck of his nightshirt up over his bony shoulder and held it gathered tight to his throat. ‘You believe in the struggle of my people for their human rights?’

The Doctor’s agitation and his mild and husky question made Jake’s eyes brim suddenly with tears. A quick, swollen rush of love caused him to grasp the black, bony hand on the counterpane and hold it fast. ‘Sure,’ he said.

‘The extremity of our need?’

‘Yes.’

‘The lack of justice? The bitter inequality?’

Doctor Copeland coughed and spat into one of the squares of paper which he kept beneath his pillow. ‘I have a program. It is a very simple, concentrated plan. I mean to focus on only one objective. In August of this year I plan to lead more than one thousand Negroes in this county on a march. A march to Washington. All of us together in one solid body. If you will look in the cabinet yonder you will see a stack of letters which I have written this week and will deliver personally.’ Doctor Copeland slid his nervous hands up and down the sides of the narrow bed.

‘You remember what I said to you a short while ago? You will recall that my only advice to you was: Do not attempt to stand alone.’

‘I get it,’ Jake said.

But once you enter this it must be all. First and foremost.

Your work now and forever. You must give of your whole self without stint, without hope of personal return, without rest or hope of rest.’

‘For the rights of the Negro in the South.’

‘In the South and here in this very county. And it must be either all or nothing. Either yes or no.’

Doctor Copeland leaned back on the pillow. Only his eyes seemed alive. They burned in his face like red coals. The fever made his cheekbones a ghastly purple. Jake scowled and pressed his knuckles to his soft, wide, trembling mouth. Color rushed to his face. Outside the first pale light of morning had come. The electric bulb suspended from the ceiling burned with ugly sharpness in the dawn.

Jake rose to his feet and stood stiffly at the foot of the bed. He said flatly: ‘No. That’s not the right angle at all. I’m dead sure it’s not. In the first place, you’d never get out of town. They’d break it up by saying it’s a menace to public health--or some such trumped-up reason. They’d arrest you and nothing would come of it. But even if by some miracle you got to Washington it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Why, the whole notion is crazy.’

The sharp rattle of phlegm sounded in Doctor Copeland’s throat. His voice was harsh. ‘As you are so quick to sneer and condemn, what do you have to offer instead?’

‘I didn’t sneer,’ Jake said. ‘I only remarked that your plan is crazy. I come here tonight with an idea much better than that. I wanted your son, Willie, and the other two boys to let me push them around in a wagon. They were to tell what happened to them and afterward I was to tell why. In other words, I was to give a talk on the dialectics of capitalism--and show up all of its lies. I would explain so that everyone would understand why those boys’ legs were cut off. And make everyone who saw them know.’

‘Pshaw! Double pshaw!’ said Doctor Copeland furiously. I do not believe you have good sense. If I were a man who felt it worth my while to laugh I would surely laugh at that.

Never have I had the opportunity to hear of such nonsense first hand.’

They stared at each other in bitter disappointment and anger.

There was the rattle of a wagon in the street outside. Jake swallowed and bit his lips. ‘Huh!’ he said finally. ‘You’re the only one who’s crazy. You got everything exactly backward.

The only way to solve the Negro problem under capitalism is to geld every one of the fifteen million black men in these states.’

‘So that is the kind of idea you harbor beneath your ranting about justice.’

‘I didn’t say it should be done. I only said you couldn’t see the forest for the trees.’ Jake spoke with slow and painful care.

‘The work has to start at the bottom. The old traditions smashed and the new ones created. To forge a whole new pattern for the world. To make man a social creature for the first time, living in an orderly and controlled society where he is not forced to be unjust in order to survive. A social tradition in which--’ Doctor Copeland clapped ironically. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘But the cotton must be picked before the cloth is made. You and your crackpot do-nothing theories can--’

‘Hush! Who cares whether you and your thousand Negroes straggle up to that stinking cesspool of a place called Washington? What difference does it make? What do a few people matter--a few thousand people, black, white, good or bad? When the whole of our society is built on a foundation of black lies.’

‘Everything!’ Doctor Copeland panted. ‘Everything! Everything! ‘Nothing!’

‘The soul of the meanest and most evil of us on this earth is worth more in the sight of justice than--’

‘Oh, the Hell with it!’ Jake said. ‘Balls!’

‘Blasphemer!’ screamed Doctor Copeland. ‘Foul blasphemer!’ Jake shook the iron bars of the bed. The vein in his forehead swelled to the point of bursting and his face was dark with rage. ‘Short-sighted bigot!’

‘White--’ Doctor Copeland’s voice failed him. He struggled and no sound would come. At last he was able to bring forth a choked whisper: ‘Fiend.’

The bright yellow morning was at the window. Doctor Copeland’s head fell back on the pillow. His neck twisted at a broken angle, a fleck of bloody foam on his lips. Jake looked at him once before, sobbing with violence, he rushed headlong from the room.

Now she could not stay in the inside room. She had to be around somebody all the time. Doing something every minute. And if she was by herself she counted or figured with numbers. She counted all the roses on the living-room wall-paper. She figured out the cubic area of the whole house. She counted every blade of grass in the back yard and every leaf on a certain bush. Because if she did not have her mind on numbers this terrible afraidness came in her. She would be walking home from school on these May afternoons and suddenly she would have to think of something quick. A good thing--very good. Maybe she would think about a phrase of hurrying jazz music. Or that a bowl of jello would be in the refrigerator when she got home. Or plan to smoke a cigarette behind the coal house. Maybe she would try to think a long way ahead to the time when she would go north and see snow, or even travel somewhere in a foreign land. But these thoughts about good things wouldn’t last. The jello was gone in five minutes and the cigarette smoked. Then what was there after that? And the numbers mixed themselves up in her brain. And the snow and the foreign land were a long, long time away. Then what was there? Just Mister Singer. She wanted to follow him everywhere. In the morning she would watch him go down the front steps to work and then follow along a half a block behind him. Every afternoon as soon as school was over she hung around at the corner near the store where he worked. At four o’clock he went out to drink a Coca-Cola. She watched him cross the street and go into the drugstore and finally come out again.

She followed him home from work and sometimes even when he took walks. She always followed a long way behind him. And he did not know.

She would go up to see him in his room. First she scrubbed her face and hands and put some vanilla on the front of her dress. She only went to visit him twice a week now, because she didn’t want him to get tired of her. Most always he would be sitting over the queer, pretty chess game when she opened the door. And then she was with him.

‘Mister Singer, have you ever lived in a place where it snowed in the winter-time?’

He tilted his chair back against the wall and nodded.

‘In some different country than this one--in a foreign place?’

He nodded yes again and wrote on his pad with his silver pencil. Once he had traveled to Ontario, Canada--across the river from Detroit Canada was so far up north that the white snow drifted up to the roofs of the houses. That was where the Quints were and the St. Lawrence River. The people ran up and down the streets speaking French to each other. And far up in the north there were deep forests and white ice igloos.

The arctic region with the beautiful northern lights.

‘When you was in Canada did you go out and get any fresh snow and eat it with cream and sugar? Once I read where it was mighty good to eat that way.’

He turned his head to one side because he didn’t understand.

She couldn’t ask the question again because suddenly it sounded silly. She only looked at him and waited. A big, black shadow of his head was on the wall behind him. The electric fan cooled the thick, hot air. All was quiet. It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.

‘I was just asking you about Canada--but it didn’t amount to anything, Mister Singer.’

Downstairs in the home rooms there was plenty of trouble.

Etta was still so sick that she couldn’t sleep crowded three in a bed. The shades were drawn and the dark room smelled bad with a sick smell. Etta’s job was gone, and that meant eight dollars less a week besides the doctor’s bill.

Then one day when Ralph was walking around in the kitchen he burned himself on the hot kitchen stove. The bandages made his hands itch and somebody had to watch him all the time else he would bust the blisters. On George’s birthday they had bought him a little red bike with a bell and a basket on the handlebars. Everybody had chipped in to give it to him. But when Etta lost her job they couldn’t pay, and after two installments were past due the store sent a man out to take the wheel away. George just watched the man roll the bike off the porch, and when he passed George kicked the back fender and then went into the coal house and shut the door.

It was money, money, money all the time. They owed to the grocery and they owed the last payment on some furniture.

And now since they had lost the house they owed money there too. The six rooms in the house were always taken, but nobody ever paid the rent on time.

For a while their Dad went over every day to hunt another job.

He couldn’t do carpenter work any more because it made him jittery to be more than ten feet off the ground. He applied for many jobs but nobody would hire him. Then at last he got this notion.

‘It’s advertising, Mick,’ he said. I’ve come to the conclusion that’s all in the world the matter with my watch-repairing business right now. I got to sell myself. I got to get out and let people know I can fix watches, and fix them good and cheap.

You just mark my words. Fm going to build up this business so I’ll be able to make a good living for this family the rest of my life. Just by advertising.’

He brought home a dozen sheets of tin and some red paint. For the next week he was very busy. It seemed to him like this was a hell of a good idea. The signs were all over the floor of the front room. He got down on his hands and knees and took great care over the printing of each letter. As he worked he whistled and wagged his head. He hadn’t been so cheerful and glad in months. Every now and then he would have to dress in his good suit and go around the corner for a glass of beer to calm himself. On the signs at first he had: Wilbur Kelly Watch Repairing Very Cheap and Expert. ‘Mick, I want them to hit you right bang in the eye. To stand out wherever you see them.’

She helped him and he gave her three nickels. The signs were O.K. at first. Then he worked on them so much that they were ruined. He wanted to add more and more things--in the corners and at the top and bottom. Before he had finished the signs were plastered all over with ‘Very Cheap’ and ‘Come At Once’ and ‘You Give Me Any Watch And I Make It Run.’

‘You tried to write so much in the signs that nobody will read anything,’ she told him.

He brought home some more tin and left the designing up to her. She painted them very plain, with great big block letters and a picture of a clock. Soon he had a whole stack of them. A fellow he knew rode him out in the country where he could nail them to trees and fenceposts. At both ends of the block he put up a sign with a black hand pointing toward the house.

And over the front door there was another sign.

The day after this advertising was finished he waited in the front room dressed in a clean shirt and a tie. Nothing happened. The jeweler who gave him overflow work to do at half price sent in a couple of clocks. That was all. He took it hard. He didn’t go out to look for other jobs any more, but every minute he had to be busy around the house. He took down the doors and oiled the hinges--whether they needed it or not. He mixed the margarine for Portia and scrubbed the floors upstairs. He worked out a contraption where the water from the ice box could be drained through the kitchen window. He carved some beautiful alphabet blocks for Ralph and invented a little needle-threader. Over the few watches that he had to work on he took great pains.

Mick still followed Mister Singer. But she didn’t want to. It was like there was something wrong about her following after him without his knowing. Two or three days she played hooky from school. She walked behind him when he went to work and hung around on the corner near his store all day. When he ate his dinner at Mister Brannon’s she went into the cafe and spent a nickel for a sack of peanuts.

Then at night she followed him on these dark, long walks. She stayed on the opposite side of the street from him and about a block behind. When he stopped, she stopped also--and when he walked fast she ran to keep up with him. So long as she could see him and be near him she was right happy. But sometimes this queer feeling would come to her and she knew that she was doing wrong. So she tried hard to keep busy at home.

She and her Dad were alike in the way that now they always had to be fooling with something. She kept up with all that went on in the house and the neighborhood. Spare-rib’s big sister won fifty dollars at a movie bank night. Baby Wilson had the bandage off her head now, but her hair was cut short like a boy’s. She couldn’t dance in the soiree this year, and when her mother took her to see it Baby began to yell and cut up during one of the dances. They had to drag her out of the Opera House. And on the sidewalk Mrs. Wilson had to whip her to make her behave. And Mrs. Wilson cried, too. George hated Baby. He would hold his nose and stop up his ears when she passed by the house. Pete Wells ran away from home and was gone three weeks. He came back barefooted and very hungry. He bragged about how he had gone all the way to New Orleans.

Because of Etta, Mick still slept in the living-room. The short sofa cramped her so much that she had to make up sleep in study hall at school. Every other night Bill swapped with her and she slept with George. Then a lucky break came for them.

A fellow who had a room upstairs moved away. When after a week had gone by and nobody answered the ad in the paper, their Mama told Bill he could move up to the vacant room.

Bill was very pleased to have a place entirely by himself away from the family. She moved in with George. He slept like a little warm kitty and breathed very quiet.

She knew the night-time again. But not the same as in the last summer when she walked in the dark by herself and listened to the music and made plans. She knew the night a different way now. In bed she lay awake. A queer afraidness came to her. It was like the ceiling was slowly pressing down toward her face. How would it be if the house fell apart? Once their Dad had said the whole place ought to be condemned. Did he mean that maybe some night when they were asleep the walls would crack and the house collapse? Bury them under all the plaster and broken glass and smashed furniture? So that they could not move or breathe? She lay awake and her muscles were stiff. In the night there was creaking. Was that somebody walking--somebody else awake besides her--Mister Singer? She never thought about Harry. She had made up her mind to forget him and she did forget him. He wrote that he had a job with a garage in Birmingham. She answered with a card saying ‘O.K.’ as they had planned. He sent his mother three dollars every week. It seemed like a very long time had passed since they went to the woods together.

During the day she was busy in the outside room. But at night she was by herself in the dark and figuring was not enough. She wanted somebody. She tried to keep George awake. ‘It sure is fun to stay awake and talk in the dark. Less us talk awhile together.’ He made a sleepy answer. ‘See the stars out the window. If s a hard thing to realize that every single one of those little stars is a planet as large as the earth.’

‘How do they know that?’

‘They just do. They got ways of measuring. That’s science.’

‘I don’t believe in it’ She tried to egg him on to an argument so that he would get mad and stay awake. He just let her talk and didn’t seem to pay attention. After a while he said: ‘Look, Mick! You see that branch of the tree? Don’t it look like a pilgrim forefather lying down with a gun in his hand? ‘ ‘It sure does. That’s exactly what it’s like. And see over there on the bureau. Don’t that bottle look like a funny man with a hat on? ‘ .Naw,’ George said. ‘It don’t look a bit like one to me.’

She took a drink from a glass of water on the floor. ‘Less me and you play a game--the name game. You can be It if you want to. Whichever you like. You can choose.’ He put his little fists up to his face and breathed in a quiet, even way because he was falling asleep. ‘Wait, George!’ she said. ‘This’ll be fun. I’m somebody beginning with an M. Guess who I am.’ George sighed and his voice was tired. ‘Are you Harpo Marx? ‘ ‘No, I’m not even in the movies.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sure you do. My name begins with the letter M and I live in Italy. You ought to guess this.’ George turned over on his side and curled up in a ball.

He did not answer. ‘My name begins with an M but sometimes I’m called a f name beginning with D. In Italy. You can guess.’ The room was quiet and dark and George was asleep. She pinched him and twisted his ear. He groaned but did not awake. She fitted in close to him and pressed her face against his hot little naked shoulder. He would sleep all through the night while she was figuring with decimals. Was Mister Singer awake in his room upstairs? Did the ceiling creak because he was walking quietly up and down, drinking a cold orange crush and studying the chess men laid out on the table? Had ever he felt a terrible afraidness like this one? No. He had never done anything wrong. He had never done wrong and his heart was quiet in the nighttime. Yet at the same time he would understand. If only she could tell him about this, then it would be better. She thought of how she would begin to tell him. Mister Singer--I know this girl not any older than I am--Mister Singer, I don’t know whether you understand a thing like this or not--Mister Singer. Mister Singer. She said his name over and over. She loved him better than anyone in the family, better even than George or her Dad. It was a different love. It was not like anything she had ever felt in her life before. In the mornings she and George would dress together and talk. Sometimes she wanted very much to be close to George. He had grown taller and was pale and peaked. His soft, reddish hair lay raggedly over the tops of his little ears. His sharp eyes were always squinted so that his face had a strained look. His permanent teeth were coming in, but they were blue and far apart like his baby teeth had . been. Often his jaw was crooked because he had a habit of feeling out the sore new teeth with his tongue. ‘Listen here, George,’ she said. ‘Do you love me? ‘ ‘Sure. I love you O.K.’ It was a hot, sunny morning during the last week of school. George was dressed and he lay on the floor doing his number work. His dirty little fingers squeezed the pencil tight and he kept breaking the lead point. When he was finished she held him by the shoulders and looked hard into his face. ‘I mean a lot. A whole lot.’

‘Lemme go. Sure I love you. Ain’t you my sister?’

‘I know. But suppose I wasn’t your sister. Would you love me then?’

George backed away. He had run out of shirts and wore a dirty pullover sweater. His wrists were thin and blue-veined. The sleeves of the sweater had stretched so that they hung loose and made his hands look very small.

‘If you wasn’t my sister then I might not know you. So I couldn’t love you.’

‘But if you did know me and I wasn’t your sister.’

‘But how do you know I would? You can’t prove it. ‘.Well, just take it for granted and pretend.’

‘I reckon I would like you all right. But I still say you can’t prove-- ‘ ‘Prove! You got that word on the brain. Prove and trick. Everything is either a trick or it’s got to be proved. I can’t stand you, George Kelly. I hate you.’

‘O.K. Then I don’t like you none either.’ He crawled down under the bed for something. ‘What you want under there? You better leave my things alone. If I ever caught you meddling in my private box I’d bust your head against the side of the wall. I would. I’d stomp on your brains.’ George came out from under the bed with his spelling book. His dirty little paw reached in a hole in the mattress where he hid his marbles. Nothing could faze that kid. He took his time about choosing three brown agates to take with him. ‘Aw, shucks, Mick,’ he answered her. George was too little and too tough. There wasn’t any sense in loving him. He knew even less about things than she did. School was out and she had passed every subject--some with A plus and some by the skin of her teeth. The days were long and hot. Finally she was able to work hard at music again. She began to write down pieces for the violin and piano. She wrote songs. Always music was in her mind. She listened to Mister Singer’s radio and wandered around the house thinking about the programs she had heard.

‘What ails Mick?’ Portia asked. ‘What kind of cat is it got her tongue? She walk around and don’t say a word. She not even greedy like she used to be. She getting to be a regular lady these days.’

It was as though in some way she was waiting--but what she waited for she did not know. The sun burned down glaring and white-hot in the streets. During the day she either worked hard at music or messed with kids. And waited. Sometimes she would look all around her quick and this panic would come in her. Then in late June there was a sudden happening so important that it changed everything.

That night they were all out on the porch. The twilight was blurred and soft. Supper was almost ready and the smell of cabbage floated to them from the open hall. All of them were together except Hazel, who had not come home from work, and Etta, who still lay sick in bed. Their Dad leaned back in a chair with his sock-feet on the banisters. Bill was on the steps with the kids. Their Mama sat on the swing fanning herself with the newspaper. Across the street a girl new in the neighborhood skated up and down the sidewalk on one roller skate. The lights on the block were just beginning to be turned on, and far away a man was calling someone.

Then Hazel come home. Her high heels clopped up the steps and she leaned back lazily on the banisters. In the half-dark her fat, soft hands were very white as she felt the back of her braided hair. ‘I sure do wish Etta was able to work,’ she said. ‘I found out about this job today.’

‘What kind of a job?’ asked their Dad. ‘Anything I could do, or just for girls?’

‘Just for a girl. A clerk down at Woolworth’s is going to get married next week.’

‘The ten-cent store--’ Mick said.

‘You interested?’

The question took her by surprise. She had just been thinking about a sack of wintergreen candy she had bought there the day before. She felt hot and tense. She rubbed her bangs up from her forehead and counted the first few stars.

Their Dad flipped his cigarette down to the sidewalk. .No,’ he said. ‘We don’t want Mick to take on too much responsibility at her age. Let her get her growth out. Her growth through with, anyway.’

‘I agree with you,’ Hazel said. ‘I really do think it would be a mistake for Mick to have to work regular. I don’t think it would be right.’

Bill put Ralph down from his lap and shuffled his feet on the steps. ‘Nobody ought to work until they’re around sixteen.

Mick should have two more years and finish at Vocational--if we can make it.’

‘Even if we have to give up the house and move down in mill town,’ their Mama said. ‘I rather keep Mick at home for a while.’

For a minute she had been scared they would try to corner her into taking the job. She would have said she would run away from home. But the way they took the attitude they did touched her. She felt excited. They were all talking about her--and in a kindly way. She was ashamed for the first scared feeling that had come to her. Of a sudden she loved all of the family and a tightness came in her throat.

‘About how much money is in it?’ she asked.

Ten dollars.’

Ten dollars a week?’

‘Sure,’ Hazel said. ‘Did you think it would be only ten a month?’

‘Portia don’t make but about that much.’

‘Oh, colored people--’ Hazel said.

Mick rubbed the top of her head with her fist That’s a whole lot of money. A good deal.’

‘It’s not to be grinned at,’ Bill said. ‘That’s what I make.’

Mick’s tongue was dry. She moved it around in her mouth to gather up spit enough to talk. Ten dollars a week would buy about fifteen fried chickens. Or five pairs of shoes or five dresses. Or installments on a radio.’ She thought about a piano, but she did not mention that aloud. ‘It would tide us over,’ their Mama said. ‘But at the same time I rather keep Mick at home for a while. Now, when Etta--’

‘Wait!’ She felt hot and reckless. ‘I want to take the job. I can hold it down. I know I can.’

‘Listen to little Mick,’ Bill said.

Their Dad picked his teeth with a matchstick and took his feet down from the banisters. ‘Now, let’s not rush into anything. I rather Mick take her time and think this out. We can get along somehow without her working. I mean to increase my watch work by sixty per cent soon as--’

‘I forgot,’ Hazel said. ‘I think there’s a Christmas bonus every year.’

Mick frowned. ‘But I wouldn’t be working then. I’d be in school. I just want to work during vacation and then go back to school.’

‘Sure,’ Hazel said quickly.

‘But tomorrow I’ll go down with you and take the job if I can get it’ It was as though a great worry and tightness left the family. In the dark they began to laugh and talk. Their Dad did a trick for George with a matchstick and a handkerchief. Then he gave the kid fifty cents to go down to the corner store for Coca-Colas to be drunk after supper. The smell of cabbage was stronger in the hall and pork chops were frying. Portia called.

The boarders already waited at the table. Mick had supper in the dining-room. The cabbage leaves were limp and yellow on her plate and she couldn’t eat. When she reached for the bread she knocked a pitcher of iced tea over the table.

Then later she waited on the front porch by herself for Mister Singer to come home. In a desperate way she wanted to see him. The excitement of the hour before had died down and she was sick to the stomach. She was going to work in a ten-cent store and she did not want to work there. It was like she had been trapped into something. The job wouldn’t be just for the summer--but for a long time, as long as she could see ahead.

Once they were used to the money coming in it would be impossible to do without again. That was the way things were.

She stood in the dark and held tight to the banisters. A long time passed and Mister Singer still did not come. At eleven o’clock she went out to see if she could find him. But suddenly she got frightened in the dark and ran back home.

Then in the morning she bathed and dressed very careful.

Hazel and Etta loaned her the clothes to wear and primped her to look nice. She wore Hazel’s green silk dress and a green hat and high-heeled pumps with silk stockings. They fixed her face with rouge and lipstick and plucked her eyebrows. She looked at least sixteen years old when they were finished.

It was too late to back down now. She was really grown and ready to earn her keep. Yet if she would go to her Dad and tell him how she felt he would tell her to wait a year. And Hazel and Etta and Bill and their Mama, even now, would say that she didn’t have to go. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lose face like that. She went up to see Mister Singer. The words came all in a rush: ‘Listen--I believe I got this job. What do you think? Do you think it’s a good idea? Do you think it’s O.K. to drop out of school and work now? You think it’s good?’

At first he did not understand. His gray eyes half-closed and he stood with his hands deep down in his pockets. There was the old feeling that they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. The thing she had to say now was not much. But what he had to tell her would be right--and if he said the job sounded O.K. then she would feel better about it. She repeated the words slowly and waited.

‘You think it’s good?’

Mister Singer considered. Then he nodded yes.

She got the job. The manager took her and Hazel back to a little office and talked with them. Afterward she couldn’t remember how the manager looked or anything that had been said. But she was hired, and on the way out of the place she bought ten cents’ worth of Chocolate and a little modeling clay set for George. On June the fifth she was to start work. She stood for a long while before the window of Mister Singer’s jewelry store. Then she hung around on the corner.

THE time had come for Singer to go to Antonapoulos again.

The journey was a long one. For, although the distance between them was something less than two hundred miles, the train meandered to points far out of the way and stopped for long hours at certain stations during the night. Singer would leave the town in the afternoon and travel all through the night and until the early morning of the next day. As usual, he was ready far in advance. He planned to have a full week with his friend this visit. His clothes had been sent to the cleaner’s, his hat blocked, and his bags were in readiness. The gifts he would carry were wrapped in colored tissue paper--and in addition there was a deluxe basket of fruits done up in cellophane and a crate of late-shipped strawberries. On the morning before his departure Singer cleaned his room. In his ice box he found a bit of left-over goose liver and took it out to the alley for the neighborhood cat. On his door he tacked the same sign he had posted there before, stating that he would be absent for several days on business. During all these preparations he moved about leisurely with two vivid spots of color on his cheekbones. His face was very solemn.

Then at last the hour for departure was at hand. He stood on the platform, burdened with his suitcases and gifts, and watched the train roll in on the station tracks. He found himself a seat in the day coach and hoisted his luggage on the rack above his head. The car was crowded, for the most part with mothers and children. The green plush seats had a grimy smell. The windows of the car were dirty and rice thrown at some recent bridal pair lay scattered on the floor. Singer smiled cordially to his fellow travelers and leaned back in his seat. He closed his eyes. The lashes made a dark, curved fringe above the hollows of his cheeks. His right hand moved nervously inside his pocket For a while his thoughts lingered in the town he was leaving behind him. He saw Mick and Doctor Copeland and Jake Blount and Biff Brannon. The faces crowded in on him out of the darkness so that he felt smothered. He thought of the quarrel between Blount and the Negro. The nature of this quarrel was hopelessly confused in his mind--but each of them had on several occasions broken out into a bitter tirade against the other, the absent one. He had agreed with each of them in turn, though what it was they wanted him to sanction he did not know. And Mick--her face was urgent and she said a good deal that he did not understand in the least. And then Biff Brannon at the New York Cafe. Brannon with his dark, iron-like jaw and his watchful eyes. And strangers who followed him about the streets and buttonholed him for unexplainable reasons. The Turk at the linen shop who flung his hands up in his face and babbled with his tongue to make words the shape of which Singer had never imagined before.

A certain mill foreman and an old black woman. A businessman on the main street and an urchin who solicited soldiers for a whorehouse near the river. Singer wriggled his shoulders uneasily. The train rocked with a smooth, easy motion. His head nodded to rest on his shoulder and for a short while he slept.

When he opened his eyes again the town was far behind him. The town was forgotten. Outside the dirty window there was the brilliant midsummer countryside. The sun slanted in strong, bronze-colored rays over the green fields of the new cotton. There were acres of tobacco, the plants heavy and green like some monstrous jungle weed. The orchards of peaches with the lush fruit weighting down the dwarfed trees. There were miles of pastures and tens of miles of wasted, washed-out land abandoned to the hardier weeds. The train cut through deep green pine forests where the ground was covered with the slick brown needles and the tops of the trees stretched up virgin and tall into the sky. And farther, a long way south of the town, the cypress swamps--with the gnarled roots of the trees writhing down into the brackish waters, where the gray, tattered moss trailed from the branches, where tropical water flowers blossomed in dankness and gloom. Then out again into the open beneath the sun and the indigo-blue sky.

Singer sat solemn and timid, his face turned fully toward the window.

The great sweeps of space and the hard, elemental coloring almost blinded him. This kaleidoscopic variety of scene, this abundance of growth and color, seemed somehow connected with his friend’. His thoughts were with Antonapoulos. The bliss of their reunion almost stifled him. His nose was pinched and he breathed with quick, short breaths through his slightly open mouth.

Antonapoulos would be glad to see him. He would enjoy the fresh fruits and the presents. By now he would be out of the sick ward and able to go on an excursion to the movies, and afterward to the hotel where they had eaten dinner on the first visit. Singer had written many letters to Antonapoulos, but he had not posted them. He surrendered himself wholly to thoughts of his friend.

The half-year since he had last been with him seemed neither a long nor a short span of time. Behind each waking moment there had always been his friend. And this submerged communion with Antonapoulos had grown and changed as though they were together in the flesh. Sometimes he thought of Antonapoulos with awe and self-abasement, sometimes with pride--always with love unchecked by criticism, freed of will. When he dreamed at night the face of his friend was always before him, massive and gentle. And in his waking thoughts they were eternally united.

The summer evening came slowly. The sun sank down behind a ragged line of trees in the distance and the sky paled. The twilight was languid and soft. There was a white full moon, and low purple clouds lay over the horizon. The earth, the trees, the unpainted rural dwellings darkened slowly. At intervals mild summer lightning quivered in the air. Singer watched all of this intently until at last the night had come, and his own face was reflected in the glass before him.

Children staggered up and down the aisle of the car with dripping paper cups of water. An old man in overalls who had the seat before Singer drank whiskey from time to time from a Coca-Cola bottle. Between swallows he plugged the bottle carefully with a wad of paper. A little girl on the right combed her hair with a sticky red lollipop. Shoeboxes were opened and trays of supper were brought in from the dining-car.

Singer did not eat. He leaned back in his seat and kept desultory account of all that went on around him. At last the car settled down. Children lay on the broad plush seats and slept, while men and women doubled up with their pillows and rested as best they could.

Singer did not sleep. He pressed his face close against the glass and strained to see into the night. The darkness was heavy and velvety. Sometimes there was a patch of moonlight or the flicker of a lantern from the window of some house along the way. From the moon he saw that the train had turned from its southward course and was headed toward the east.

The eagerness he felt was so keen that his nose was too pinched to breathe through and his cheeks were scarlet. He sat there, his face pressed close against the cold, sooty glass of the window, through most of the long night journey.

The train was more than an hour late, and the fresh, bright summer morning was well under way when they arrived.

Singer went immediately to the hotel, a very good hotel where he had made reservations in advance. He unpacked his bags and arranged the presents he would take to Antonapoulos on the bed. From the menu the bellboy brought him he selected a luxurious breakfast--broiled bluefish, hominy, French toast, and hot black coffee. After breakfast he rested before the electric fan in his underwear. At noon he began to dress. He bathed and shaved and laid out fresh linen and his best seersucker suit At three o’clock the hospital was open for visiting hours. It was Tuesday and the eighteenth of July.

At the asylum he sought Antonapoulos first in the sick ward where he had been confined before. But at the doorway of the room he saw immediately that his friend was not there. Next he found his way through the corridors to the office where he had been taken the time before. He had his question already written on one of the cards he carried about with him. The person behind the desk was not the same as the one who had been there before. He was a young man, almost a boy, with a half-formed, immature face and a lank mop of hair. Singer handed him the card and stood quietly, his arms heaped with packages, his weight resting on his heels.

The young man shook his head. He leaned over the desk and scribbled loosely on a pad of paper. Singer read what he had written and the spots of color drained from his cheekbones instantly. He looked at the note a long time, his eyes cut sideways and his head bowed. For it was written there that Antonapoulos was dead.

On the way back to the hotel he was careful not to crush the fruit he had brought with him. He took the packages up to his room and then wandered down to the lobby. Behind a potted palm tree there was a slot machine. He inserted a nickel but when he tried to pull the lever he found that the machine was jammed. Over this incident he made a great to-do. He cornered the clerk and furiously demonstrated what had happened. His face was deathly pale and he was so beside himself that tears rolled down the ridges of his nose. He flailed his hands and even stamped once with his long, narrow, elegantly shoed foot on the plush carpet. Nor was he satisfied when his coin was refunded, but insisted on checking out immediately. He packed his bag and was obliged to work energetically to make it close again. For in addition to the articles he had brought with him he carried away three towels, two cakes of soap, a pen and a bottle of ink, a roll of toilet paper, and a Holy Bible. He paid his bill and walked to the railway station to put his belongings in custody. The train did not leave until nine in the evening and he had the empty afternoon before him.

This town was smaller than the one in which he lived. The business streets intersected to form the shape of a cross. The stores had a countrified look; there were harnesses and sacks of feed in half of the display windows. Singer walked listlessly along the sidewalks. His throat felt swollen and he wanted to swallow but was unable to do so. To relieve this strangled feeling he bought a drink in one of the drugstores.

He idled in the barber shop and purchased a few trifles at the ten-cent store. He looked no one full in the face and his head drooped down to one side like a sick animal’s.

The afternoon was almost ended when a strange thing happened to Singer. He had been walking slowly and irregularly along the curb of the street. The sky was overcast and the air humid. Singer did not raise his head, but as he passed the town pool room he caught a sidewise glance of something that disturbed him. He passed the pool room and then stopped in the middle of the street. Listlessly he retraced his steps and stood before the open door of the place. There were three mutes inside and they were talking with their hands together. All three of them were coatless. They wore bowler hats and bright ties. Each of them held a glass of beer in his left hand. There was a certain brotherly resemblance between them.

Singer went inside. For a moment he had trouble taking his hand from his pocket. Then clumsily he formed a word of greeting. He was clapped on the shoulder. A cold drink was ordered. They surrounded him and the fingers of their hands shot out like pistons as they questioned him.

He told his own name and the name of the town where he lived. After that he could think of nothing else to tell about himself. He asked if they knew Spiros Antonapoulos. They did not know him. Singer stood with his hands dangling loose.

His head was still inclined to one side and his glance was oblique. He was so listless and cold that the three mutes in the bowler hats looked at him queerly. After a while they left him out of their conversation. And when they had paid for the rounds of beers and were ready to depart they did not suggest that he join them.

Although Singer had been adrift on the streets for half a day he almost missed his train. It was not clear to him how this happened or how he had spent the hours before. He reached the station two minutes before the train pulled out, and barely had time to drag his luggage aboard and find a seat. The car he chose was almost empty. When he was settled he opened the crate of strawberries and picked them over with finicky care.

The berries were of a giant size, large as walnuts and in full-blown ripeness. The green leaves at the top of the rich-colored fruit were like tiny bouquets. Singer put a berry in his mouth and though the juice had a lush, wild sweetness there was already a subtle flavor of decay. He ate until his palate was dulled by the taste and then rewrapped the crate and placed it on the rack above him. At midnight he drew the window-shade and lay down on the seat. He was curled in a ball, his coat pulled over his face and head. In this position he lay in a stupor of half-sleep for about twelve hours. The conductor had to shake him when they arrived.

Singer left his luggage in the middle of the station floor. Then he walked to the shop. He greeted the jeweler for whom he worked with a listless turn of his head. When he went out again there was something heavy in his pocket For a while he rambled with bent head along the streets. But the unrefracted brilliance of the sun, the humid heat, oppressed him. He returned to his room with swollen eyes and an aching head. After resting he drank a glass of iced coffee and smoked a cigarette. Then when he had washed the ash tray and the glass he brought out a pistol from his pocket and put a bullet in his chest.