“You?”
“Yes, both of us.”
With terrified, tear-blurred eyes, David watched his father’s body shake as if some awful strife were going on within him, saw his head lunge forward, his mouth open to speak, once, again, then grow pale and twitch, and finally he turned without a word and stumbled up the parlor steps.
His mother sat for a moment without moving, then quivered and burst into tears, but brushed them off.
Yussie was still standing there, mute and frightened, his blood smeared over his chin.
“Sit there a moment.” She rose and set David on a chair. “Come here you poor child,” she said to Yussie.
“He kicked me righd on de nose!”
“Hush!” She led Yussie to the sink, and wiped his face with the end of a wet towel. “There, now you feel better.” And wetting the towel again, came over to David and set him on her lap.
“He hit me first.”
“Now hush! We won’t say anything more about it.” She patted the lacerated wrist with the cold towel. “Oh! my child!” she moaned biting her lips.
“I wanna go opstai’s,” blubbered Yussie. “I’m gonna tell my modder on you.” He snatched up the clothes hanger from the floor. “Waid’ll I tell my modder on you, yuh gonna gid it!” He flung the door open and ran out bawling.
His mother, sighing painfully, shut the door after him, and began undoing David’s shirt. There were angry red marks on his breast and shoulders. She touched them. He whimpered with pain.
“Hush!” she murmured again and again. “I know. I know, beloved.”
She undressed him, fetched his nightgown and slipped it over him. The cold air on his bruises had stiffened his shoulders and hands. He moved stiffly, whimpering.
“It really hurts now, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.” He felt himself wanting to sniffle.
“Poor darling, let me put you to bed.” She set him on his feet.
“I have to go now. Numbuh one.”
“Yes.”
She led him into the bathroom, lifted the toilet-seat. Urination was painful, affording relief only as a mournful sigh affords relief. His whole body shuddered as his bladder relaxed. A new sense of shyness invaded him; he crept furtively around to stand with his back to her, contracted when she pulled the chain above his head. He went out into the bright kitchen again, into the dark bedroom, and got into bed. There was a lingering, weary sadness in the first chill of the covers.
“And now sleep,” she urged, bending down and kissing him. “And a better day.”
“Stay here.”
“Yes. Of course.” She sat down and gave him her hand.
He curled his fingers around her thumb and lay staring up at her, his eyes drawing her features out of deep shadow. From time to time a sudden gasp would shake him, as though the waves of grief and pain had run his being’s length and were returning now from some remote shore.
XI
DECEMBER sunlight, porous and cloudy, molten on upper window panes. Though it was still early in the afternoon, the tide of cold shade had risen high on wooden houses and brick. Grey clots of snow still clung under the lee of the battered curb. The air was cold yet windless. Winter. To the left of the doorway a sewer steamed.
Noises to the right. He peered out. Before the tailor shop near the corner, a cluster of boys had gathered. Did he dare go over? What if Yussie were among them? He tried to find him. No, he wasn’t there. Then he could go over for a little while. He’d come back before Yussie came. Yes.
He drew near, warily. That was Sidney, Yonk. He knew them. The others? They lived around the corner maybe.
Sidney was in front; the rest followed him. David stood watching them.
“Wanna play?” Sidney asked.
“Yea.”
“So git back of de line. Foller de leader. Boom! Boom! Boom!” He set the pace.
David fell into step behind the last boy. They marched cross the street in single file and stopped before a tall hydrant.
“Jump on Johnny Pump!” commanded Sidney leaping up on the two stumpy arms of the fire-plug. “One two t’ree! Yee!” He jumped off.
In their turn, the rest leaped up, and then ran after him, shouting. Sidney zig-zagged back and forth across the street, lurching against ash-cans, leaping up and down stoops, stepping only on lines in the pavement, and obeying every stray whim that drifted through his head. David liked the game.
Arrived at the barber-pole, Sidney waited for his breathless cohorts to draw up.
“Follow de blue one,” he ordered, and beginning at the bottom of the blue spiral, wound around and round the pole until he stood tiptoe and the band he traced was beyond his reach. When the others had accomplished this feat, he crouched down, crept under the corbel of the barber-shop window, and when he reached the end, poked his head into the doorway and chanted in a croaking voice: “Chickee de cop, behin, de rock. De monkey’s in de ba’ba shop!” And he fled.
The rest squealed the words as he had done, but with increasing haste and diminishing lustiness and sped after him. By the time David’s turn had come, the barber was already at the threshold fuming with irritation. David mutely skirted the doorway and scurried on.
“He didn’ say it!” they jeered.
“Sca’cat w’yntcha say it?” Sidney rebuked him.
“I couldn’t,” he grinned apologetically. “He wuz stannin’ dere awreddy.”
“Foller de leader nex’ time!” Sidney warned him.
Chagrined, David resolved to do better, and thereafter followed faithfully all his leader’s antics, not even balking at running up and down the wooden stairs that led into the ice-man’s cellar.
The game had reached a high peak of excitement. The boy immediately preceding David had just rolled over the lower of two railings before the tailor’s shop, and now it was David’s turn. He grasped the bar, leaned against it, as the rest had done, and began a slow and cautious spin about it. In that strange moment of chaos when house-top and sky hung upside down and the others seemed standing on their heads in air, the inverted face of a man passed through and revolved with the revolving space. A glimpse of black pits, his nostrils, fat cheeks under the rim of his derby, all moving below legs. “Funny,” he thought as the soles of his feet landed on the pavement again. “Upside down like that. Funny.”
He glanced casually after the retreating figure.
Right side up now like everybody else. But — Wide shoulders, grey coat. That derby. That was — he struggled against the ineluctable recognition. No! No! Not him! But he walked like … His hands in his pockets. It was! It was!—
“Hey, c’mon!” Sidney called out impatiently.
But never budging, David stared straight forward. Now the man turned to cross the street, his face in profile.
It was! It was Luter! He was going to his house.
“Waddayuh lookin’ at?” Sidney was provoked. “Doncha wanna play?”
David wrenched himself from his trace. “Yea! Yea! Sure I wanna play.”
He ran into his place in the rank, but a moment later forgot where he was and gazed toward his house in terror. Luter had reached the doorway now, was going in, was gone.
That game now. Oh! That game now! No! No! Foller de leader! Play!
“Hurry up!” said Sidney, “It’s your chanst.”
David looked at him blankly. “W’a wuz yuh doin’, I didn’ see.”
“Aaa!” Disgustedly. “Jump down ’em two steps.”
David climbed up, jumped down, landed with a jarring thud, and followed after.
He knew it! He knew it! That’s why he had come. That game! He was going to make her play now. Like Annie. In the closet!..
“Hey, you ain’ gonna play, dat’s all!”
David started guiltily to see the rest waiting for him again.
“Don’ led ’im play, Sid.” They turned on him.