“Aaa!”
“You’d better go. Just for a little while. I’m going to sweep here, you know.”
“I want my calendar first,” he pouted, invoking his privilege against the evil hour.
“Get it then. But you’ve got to go down afterwards.”
He dragged a chair over beneath the calendar on the wall, clambered up, plucked off the outworn leaf, and fingered the remaining ones to see how far off the next red day was. Red days were Sundays, days his father was home. It always gave David a little qualm of dread to watch them draw near.
“Now you have your leaf,” his mother reminded him. “Come.” She stretched out her arms.
He held back. “Show me where my birthday is.”
“Woe is me!” She exclaimed with an impatient chuckle. “I’ve shown it to you every day for weeks now.”
“Show me again.”
She rumpled the pad, lifted a thin plaque of leaves. “July—” she murmured, “July 12th … There!” She found it. “July 12th, 1911. You’ll be six then.”
David regarded the strange figures gravely. “Lots of pages still,” he informed her.
“Yes.”
“And a black day too.”
“On the calendar,” she laughed, “only on the calendar. Now do come down!”
Grasping her arm, he jumped down from the chair. “I must hide it now.” He explained.
“So you must. I see I’ll never finish my work today.”
Too absorbed in his own affairs to pay much heed to hers, he went over to the pantry beneath the cupboard, opened the door and drew out a shoe-box, his treasure chest.
“See how many I’ve got already?” he pointed proudly to the fat sheaf of rumpled leaves inside the box.
“Wonderful!” She glanced at the box in perfunctory admiration. “You peel off the year as one might a cabbage. Are you ready for your journey?”
“Yes.” He put away the box without a trace of alacrity.
“Where is your sailor blouse?” she murmured looking about. “With the white strings in it? What have I—?” She found it. “There is still a little wind.”
David held up his arms for her to slip the blouse over his head.
“Now, my own,” she said, kissing his reemerging face. “Go down and play.” She led him toward the door and opened it. “Not too far. And remember if I don’t call you, wait until the whistle blows.”
He went out into the hallway. Behind him, like an eyelid shutting, the soft closing of the door winked out the light. He assayed the stairs, lapsing below him into darkness, and grasping one by one each slender upright to the banister, went down. David never found himself alone on these stairs, but he wished there were no carpet covering them. How could you hear the sound of your own feet in the dark if a carpet muffled every step you took? And if you couldn’t hear the sound of your own feet and couldn’t see anything either, how could you be sure you were actually there and not dreaming? A few steps from the bottom landing, he paused and stared rigidly at the cellar door. It bulged with darkness. Would it hold?… It held! He jumped from the last steps and raced through the narrow hallway to the light of the street. Flying through the doorway was like butting a wave. A dazzling breaker of sunlight burst over his head, swamped him in reeling blur of brilliance, and then receded … A row of frame houses half in thin shade, a pitted gutter, a yawning ashcan, flotsam on the shore, his street.
Blinking and almost shaken, he waited on the low stoop a moment, until his whirling vision steadied. Then for the first time, he noticed that seated on the curbstone near the house was a boy, whom an instant later, he recognized. It was Yussie who had just moved into David’s house and who lived on the floor above. Yussie had a very red, fat face. His big sister walked with a limp and wore strange iron slats on one of her legs. What was he doing, David wondered, what did he have in his hands? Stepping down from the stoop, he drew near, and totally disregarded, stood beside him.
Yussie had stripped off the outer shell of an alarm-clock. Exposed, the brassy, geometric vitals ticked when prodded, whirred and jingled falteringly.
“It still c’n go,” Yussie gravely enlightened him. David sat down. Fascinated, he stared at the shining cogs that moved without moving their hearts of light. “So wot makes id?” he asked. In the street David spoke English.
“Kentcha see? Id’s coz id’s a machine.”
“Oh!”
“It wakes op mine fodder in de mawning.”
“It wakes op mine fodder too.”
“It tells yuh w’en yuh sh’d eat an’ w’en yuh have tuh go tuh sleep. It shows yuh w’en, but I tooked it off.”
“I god a calenduh opstai’s.” David informed him.
“Puh! Who ain’ god a calenduh?”
“I save mine. I godda big book outa dem, wit numbuhs on id.”
“Who can’t do dat?”
“But mine fodder made it,” David drove home the one unique point about it all.
“Wot’s your fodder?”
“Mine fodder is a printer.”
“Mine fodder woiks inna joolery shop. In Brooklyn. Didja ever live in Brooklyn?”
“No.” David shook his head.
“We usetuh — right near my fodder’s joolery shop on Rainey Avenyuh. W’ea does your fodder woik?”
David tried to think. “I don’t know.” He finally confessed, hoping that Yussie would not pursue the subject further.
He didn’t. Instead “I don’ like Brownsville,” he said. “I like Brooklyn bedder.”
David felt relieved.
“We usetuh find cigahs innuh gudduh,” Yussie continued. “An we usetuh t’row ’em on de ladies, and we usetuh run. Who you like bedder, ladies or gents?”
“Ladies.”
“I like mine fodder bedder,” said Yussie. “My mudder always holluhs on me.” He pried a nail between two wheels. A bright yellow gear suddenly snapped off and fell to the gutter at his feet. He picked it up, blew the dust off, and rose. “Yuh want?”
“Yea,” David reached for it.
Yussie was about to drop it into his outstretched palm, but on second thought, drew back. “No. Id’s liddle like a penny. Maybe I c’n pud id inna slod machine ’n’ gid gum. Hea, yuh c’n take dis one.” He fished a larger gear out of his pocket, gave it to David. “Id’s a quarter. Yuh wanna come?”
David hesitated. “I godduh waid hea till duh wissle blows.”
“W’a wissle?”
“By de fectory. All togedder.”
“So?”
“So den I c’n go opstai’s.”
“So w’y?”
“Cuz dey blow on twelve a’clock an’ den dey blow on five a’clock. Den I c’n go op.”
Yussie eyed him curiously. “I’m gonna gid gum,” he said, shrugging off his perplexity. “In duh slod machine.” And he ambled off in the direction of the candy store on the corner.
Holding the little wheel in his hand, David wondered again why it was that every boy on the street knew where his father worked except himself. His father had so many jobs. No sooner did you learn where he was working than he was working somewhere else. And why was he always saying, “They look at me crookedly, with mockery in their eyes! How much can a man endure? May the fire of God consume them!” A terrifying picture rose in David’s mind — the memory of how once at the supper table his mother had dared to say that perhaps the men weren’t really looking at him crookedly, perhaps he was only imagining it. His father had snarled then. And with one sudden sweep of his arm had sent food and dishes crashing to the floor. And other pictures came in its train, pictures of the door being kicked open and his father coming in looking pale and savage and sitting down like old men sit down, one trembling hand behind him groping for the chair. He wouldn’t speak. His jaws, and even his joints, seemed to have become fused together by a withering rage. David often dreamed of his father’s footsteps booming on the stairs, of the glistening doorknob turning, and of himself clutching at knives he couldn’t lift from the table.