“Yep!” The helmeted one patted David on the shoulder. “We could use a matron.” And heartily. “C’mon, me boy, yer all roit.” And led him under a low archway, past a flight of stairs and into a bleak, bare, high-ceilinged room. Chairs lined the walls. Bars ribbed the tall windows. They stopped before a white door, went into a tiled-floor toilet that reeked with nostril-searing cleanliness. Beside the doorless alcoves, stretched a drab grey slab, corrugated by a dark trickle of water that splashed into the trough below.
“Step up close an’ do yer dooty, sonny me boy.” He propelled the reluctant David toward the urinal. “C’mon, now. It’s recess time. Sure, I’ve a lad of me own in school.” He turned on the faucet in the wash bowl. “And ye do it with yer mittens on! Say, yer all roit! That’s the way! Git a good one out o’ ye. What would yer mama be sayin, if she found ye were after wetthin yer drawz? This is a divil of a joint, she’d say. What kind of cops are yiz at all? Sure!” He shut off the faucet. “No more’n three shakes, mind ye!”
And David was led out again into the bleak room.
“Any seat in the house, me lad — the winder there — tha-a-ts it. Yer a quiet kid. And we’ll page ye the minute yer mother comes. Ther-r-r!” He turned and went out.
Drearily, David gazed about him. The loneliness of the huge room, made ten-fold lonelier by the bare, steep walls, the long rows of vacant chairs sunken in shadow, the barred windows barring in vacancy, oppressed him with a despair so heavy, so final, it numbed him like a drug or a drowsiness. His listless eyes turned toward the window, looked out. Back yards … grey scabs of ice … on the dead grass … ended in a wall of low frame houses, all built of clapboards, all painted a mud-brown, all sawing the sky with a rip-tooth slant of gabled roofs. Shades were half drawn. From all their chimneys smoke unwreathed into the wintry blue.
Time was despair, despair beyond tears.… He understood it now, understood it all, irrevocably, indelibly. Desolation had fused into a touchstone, a crystalline, bitter, burred reagent that would never be blunted, never dissolved. Trust nothing. Trust nothing. Trust nothing. Wherever you look, never believe. Whatever anything was or did or said, it pretended. Never believe. If you played hide’n’-go-seek, it wasn’t hide’n’-go-seek, it was something else, something sinister. If you played follow the leader, the world turned upside down and an evil face passed through it. Don’t play; never believe. The man who had directed him; the old woman who had left him here; the policeman; all had tricked him. They would never call his mother, never. He knew. They would keep him there. That rat cellar underneath. That rat cellar! That boy he had pushed was still. Coffin-box still. They knew it. And they knew about Annie. They made believe they didn’t, but they knew. Never believe. Never play. Never believe. Not anything. Everything shifted. Everything changed. Even words. Words, you said. Wanna, you said. I wanna. Yea. I wanna. What? You know what. They were something else, something horrible! Trust nothing. Even sidewalks, even streets, houses, you looked at them. You knew where you were and they turned. You watched them and they turned. That way. Slow, cunning. Trust noth—
On the stairs outside, heavy feet tramped down, accompanied by a rhythmic clacking as if some hollow metal were bouncing against the uprights under the bannister rail—
“C’mon, Steve!” A loud voice dwindled into the room beyond. “Kick in fer a change!”
And a blurred reply met blurred rejoinders and laughter. Then the stalwart rap of dense heels approached. The helmeted one switched on the lights, revealing another beside him, a man in plain clothes, thick-set, lipless and impassive, who swung in his hand a large tin dinner-pail. The new-comer turned quizzically to the helmeted one.
“He did?”
“He did so.”
“Well!” ominously.
“A banana that size! And if I hadn’t winked me oiyes quicker than a flash, he’d have poked it in like a spoon into a stew!”
“A cop-fighter, hunh?”
“And a bad one, I’m tellin’ ye! Me peepers are still watherin’! And he’s afther kickin’ me in the brisket till I’m blue as me own coat!”
“Hmm! Maybe we better not git ’im any o’ dat chawklit cake.”
“Well, now!” The helmeted one levered up his helmet to scratch his smoky red hair. “What d’ ye think? He’s been a good boy, since.”
“Iz zat so?”
“Mmm! Quiet as a mouse!”
“Well, ’at makes it different. D’ye like chawklit cake? W’at’s ’is name?”
“David. David — er— David himself.”
“D’ye like chawklit cake, I ast ye?”
“N-no,” fearfully.
“W-a-a-t?” He growled, his eyes narrowing incredulously. “Yuh — don’—like chawklit — cake? Owoo! We gotta keep ye hea den! Dere’s no two ways about it!” He uttered a series of terrifying hissing noises by pinching his air-puffed nostrils.
David cringed.
“He don’ like chawk—”
“Whisht!” The helmeted one kicked the other’s heel. “Sure he does! It’s nothin’ but a bit o’ shoiness that’s kaipin’ him from—”
“I wan’ my mama!” David had begun to whimper. “I wan’ my mama! Mama!”
“Arrh!” The helmeted one exploded. “Now look what yev started, ye divil of a flat-foot! Torturin’ ’im for nothin’ at all. Froitinin’ him out of his wits the way he’ll never know his own mother when he see’s ’er!”
“Who me?” Faint amusement puffed his lip out. “W’y I hardly looked at ’im cock-eyed. Wat’re yuh talkin’ about!”
“It’s yer ugly mug that does it! Go on with ye! None o’ yer guff!” He pushed the other man out of the room. “Don’t mind him me lad! He’s nothin but a harmless bull bellowin’ t’ hear himself bellow! God mend ’im! We’ll get ye yer mother an’ yer chawklit cake too! Never fear! Now you be quiet like a good lad!” He grinned, followed the other man out.
“Mama!” He moaned. “Mama! Mama!”
It was true! All that he feared was true. They would keep him there — Keep him there always! They would never call his mother! And now that he knew, it was too late. He had learned never to trust too late. He lowered his head and sobbed.
We-e-e-e-e-e!
From somewhere a whistle began blowing — a remote, thin blast that suddenly opened into a swooping screech and as suddenly died away.
Whistles? He raised his head. Factory whistles! The others? None! Too far! So far she was. So far away! — But she heard them — she heard the other whistles that he couldn’t hear. The whistles he heard in the summer time. She heard them now. Maybe she looked out of the window — now — this moment! Looked down into the street, up and down the street, searched, called. There he was — outside — on the curb. Be two Davids, be two! One here, one outside on the curb. Now watch! Wait till she looks out! Now watch! See? There she is behind the curtain. Yes, that thick lace curtain — only in the winter it was there. Now she parts them — two hands like that — stoops. See? Her face close to the pane. Cold. And, wrrrr! Up! Bet a shawl is on her. David! David! Come up! Why do you wait? Because! Why? She would have forgotten. That — that door, mama. Oh, she’d laugh. Silly one! Come up! I’ll wait! And then he’d stand on the stoop. One-two-three. Till she crossed the frontroom. One. Two. Three and the kitchen. And then go in. Mama? Yes, I’m here, she’d call down, Yes, come on! Run past the door. Bing! No. Not run if she’s there. Be there too quick. One step and one step. Two steps and two steps. Three steps and—
“Hurhmm!”
Chuckling the helmeted one butted through the mist of dreaming. “Is it the mounted pollies y’are with that leg up?”