“Now,” she said, “wasn’t that foolish of you. You ought to be more careful. You might have injured yourself seriously.”
“All right, lady,” he said. “Here I am.” His voice held a sour resignation to his bitter defeat.
“Can’t you move?” Mrs. Grady asked.
“No, I can’t move. If I could move...”
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Grady pinched her underlip. “It’s your ankle, isn’t it?”
“I fell on it,” the youth said.
They regarded each other. The youth seemed expecting to hear something which he could answer. His face showed a certain churlish anticipation.
“You probably have a sprain,” Mrs. Grady said. “Well, we can’t leave you just lying here. Here,” she said offering him her hand, “let me help you up. Easy now.” The youth extended his hand and clasped hers. Throwing his weight awkwardly on his good ankle, he managed to rise. He stood with the injured ankle folded back from the floor, one hand on the wall for balance.
“You young people,” Mrs. Grady said with a doleful shake of her head, her voice soft with sad pessimism, with implied foreboding. “I don’t know what’s to become of you.”
She assisted him up the stairs. It was an agonizing journey. Finally they reached the top and the youth leaned against the wall. Mrs. Grady unlocked the door. She swung back the door and the youth limped in, setting careful weight on his injured foot. She directed him to a great cushion chair which he sank into, with a sigh. He watched his concerned hostess slide a footstool towards him. He extended his throbbing leg upon the footstool.
Mrs. Grady removed her coat. “We’ll have a look at that now,” she said. She knelt and unlaced his ankle-high work shoe and very lightly slid it off. Then she peeled down his sock and gazed critically at the ankle. She made a solemn humming sound. “There’s quite a swelling,” she announced. “You’ll have to soak it.”
“Look, lady...” the youth began, but he was overruled.
“Now you look, young man,” she said. “You have a very painful and incapacitating injury there. And I’m going to take care of it. Don’t worry, I know what to do. I’ll soak it for you and then bind it. After a little while you’ll be able to walk on it again.”
“Then what? You turn me in?”
Mrs. Grady stood up. “Turn you over to the police?” she said hesitantly. She hadn’t given any thought to that yet. It was in the back of her mind, a tantalizing temptation. She was reluctant to give it recognition. “We’ll talk of that later,” she said. “But first we have to see to your injury. That’s the most important thing.” And she bustled off to the kitchen, humming to herself.
The youth’s face registered puzzlement and suspicion. He looked as though he was confronted with something he had heard about, but had doubted.
He watched as Mrs. Grady heated kettles of water in the kitchen. Then she poured the hot water into a wide pan over which she then dipped a box of Epsom salts, releasing a thin stream which hissed into the water. She brought the pan in and put it down in front of him. He slid his foot from the stool and advanced it gingerly into the potion, then sprang it back.
“It’s hot,” he wailed.
“Oh, a grown lad like you,” Mrs. Grady said reproachfully. “Now come on,” she coaxed. “That’s what you want. Now just put your foot in there.” With a grimace the youth obeyed. “What’s your name anyway?” Mrs. Grady asked.
“Tobin,” the youth said sullenly.
“Well, Mr. Tobin, what were you doing downstairs at my letterbox?”
“It was obvious what I was doing.”
“Trying to steal my check. That wasn’t very nice.”
“You shouldn’t leave it there like that.”
“I was just coming down for it. Here, let me take your jacket,” Mrs. Grady said, rising from the chair she had taken opposite. The youth sat forward and squirmed his arms and shoulders from the jacket. Mrs. Grady took it and as she was about to hang it behind the door she felt an instrument in the pocket. Putting in her hand, she found a switch blade.
“Oh dear,” she said, holding up the knife. She pressed the button and the silver blade snapped out with a sharp click and poised rigidly. Mrs. Grady shuddered as though holding a snake. “What an awful thing,” she said.
“I need it,” Tobin said, embarrassed. “For protection.”
“For protection? From what?”
Tobin shrugged.
“That’s the trouble with you young people today,” Mrs. Grady said. “Switch blades, gangs, violence, brutality. Whatever goes on inside your heads, I don’t know. It was never that way when I was a young person. Oh, we had our share of crime all right, but it was never as brutal as what goes on nowadays. Thieves never carried things like that,” she said showing him the knife. Unable to close it she put it down.
Tobin shrugged again. He was not impressed. To him Mrs. Grady was merely detailing progress. It seemed proper.
“I used to do housework for the Hascombs,” Mrs. Grady said. “Do you know who the Hascombs are?”
“No,” said the youth.
“Well, they’re just some of the richest people in the world. That’s who they are. They have a Long Island estate that’s big enough for them to have their own polo field. In his later years Mr. Hascomb was a judge. He used to tell me of the young people that came before him — people like yourself, Mr. Tobin. He was shocked by the brutal nature of their crimes; but what was worse, he said, seldom did he ever see the slightest shade of remorse or any indication whatsoever that these people wanted to learn a better way of living. It was simply dreadful. Why today, may I ask, does it take eight or ten of you to rob an old man, and then why must you kick him senseless after you have his money?”
The youth shrugged again. “Everybody does it,” he said.
“Have you done it?” Mrs. Grady asked. She looked at him with sad disapproval. “Shame on you,” she said.
Tobin sighed. He took his thumbnail between his teeth. He had heard this kind of talk before and it bored him. But then he heard something else that caught his attention quickly.
“You want to know if I’m going to tell the police about you,” Mrs. Grady said. “Suppose I don’t? Lord knows I don’t want to. But if I let you go how do I know I won’t be subjecting some innocent person to your deviltry? How do I know that tonight or tomorrow night you won’t be out preying on people?”
The youth pondered this. He looked down at his reddened foot in the water. It symbolized his helplessness.
“You young people are absolutely awful,” Mrs. Grady said. “Suppose I were to take a club and beat you now, because you’re sitting helpless? Would that be right? And I could have every justification, you know — you tried to steal the money I need to live on. I’m a widow, alone in the world.”
“I can’t help it, ma’am,” Tobin said, letting his hand drop. “It’s the way things are. That’s how it is.”
“Does that mean you have to give in to it? Didn’t it ever occur to you that you might try to make it a better place?”
“These things have been going on a long time. Some get caught, some don’t.”
“Of course crime is as old as the world. But what I’m saying is how terribly brutal it’s become. There’s really no need for it to be that way. It’s senseless. When I was young, crime was different. There were a lot of gentlemen in it. It was done with more finesse, less brutality.”
The youth pondered again, gnawing at his thumbnail once more. How many people had tried to reform him so far? It began in school with his teachers, then his parents, his older brother, then certain city officials. He had listened cynically and skeptically to it all. Words came easy to people. Some people uttered them so smoothly and effortlessly it seemed they did not really care, that they were speaking only because they felt it an obligation, that they were relieved when they could stop, when Tobin was removed from their presence. He had always supposed they would be shocked and disbelieving if he had promised reformation. He never did. He only listened, because he had sensed the hollowness behind their words.