Again she tried to answer but could not. “Please,” she managed finally. “Please, Mr. Kennedy — I beg—”
“Am I right in saying so,” he repeated with great deliberateness. “That no harm will come to you.”
Anne gave no answer.
“Where do you keep your profit-box, marm?” Kennedy said smoothly.
He must have turned her loose, for she sucked in a breath and scrambled to her feet. “Under the roof,” she said. “Under the roof, Mr. Kennedy. In a linen-trunk.”
To this day I wonder what Mother Anne intended. To win a minute’s time? To coax Kennedy out of the cellar, away from the profit-box and from me? It makes little difference now.
“That’s a lie, Mr. Kennedy!” I said.
Anne cried out, tried to speak, then cried out again.
“Is that you, boy?” said Kennedy. “Speak on up!”
“It’s nobody,” Anne said quickly. “Don’t you mind—”
“That’s right, missus! Nobody whatever!” I yelled, thrashing impotently against the wall. “The bills are behind the mash-kettle, Mr. Kennedy! Twined up in a blouse!”
I date my entry into the Trade from that instant. What doomed me was not the betrayal itself, ruinous though it was—; my doom lay in the reasoning behind it. I didn’t give the lie to Mother Anne out of a sense of the wrongs done to me, or out of righteousness, or vengefulness, or even out of fear—: I did it out of the simple desire to matter. Friendless and without the least standing in the world, I was nonetheless guilty of the sin of pride. Sometimes I think there is no other.
“Thank you kindly, Mr. Nobody,” Kennedy said, and as he spoke there came a sound like that of a boot-heel striking a sack of rice and Anne dropped slackly to the floor. Her milk-colored fist, balled gracelessly together, like a child’s hand taken from a railing, fell against my heel and quivered there.
Kennedy rummaged about behind the boiler, cursing industriously under his breath. Anne’s white fist held me enchanted.
“Oho!” Kennedy said at last. “Yes.”
“Tie me loose, Mr. Kennedy!” I called out. I hadn’t yet set eyes on him, but I pictured a squat, hard-featured man—; grave, of course, but with a ready smile. When at last he came, shoving the curtain aside so it fell over Anne’s fist and stilled it, he looked nothing like the men that I’d imagined. His long, stooped body and shriveled bloodless face looked like nothing, in fact, that I had ever seen, except perhaps the winged skulls carved by the richer families in town onto their head-stones.
He looked me up and down and gave a laugh. “Mother Bradford’s buh, buh, boy,” he said.
I stood as straight as I could, struggling to look dignified, but after a spell of time had passed without his saying a single word I began to suffer sorely under my nakedness. When I could meet his gaze no longer, I dropped my eyes reluctantly to Mother Anne. Her shift was ripped open at the breast and a palm-sized bruise was darkening at her temple. Farther down, above her belly, a stain was spreading whose source was hidden by the bunching of her shift. When it was clear to me that she was dead I looked at Kennedy to see whether he had noticed, but he seemed oblivious to all around him. He stood before me awkwardly, breathing through his mouth, with an expression on his face that I knew well enough, though it took me a long, dull moment to decipher it. His right hand clasped the ring above me—; his left twitched restlessly at his trousers. Instinctively I turned to face the wall.
Kennedy took in a rattling breath behind me.
“Mother Bradford’s boy,” he said.
Stutter Kennedy
I’M JUST ON MY WAY FROM THE PRIVY, having paid my evening tithes. The End is waiting for me there with a grin on its face fit for a monkey’s christening. I hang back, quiet as a dove, and bide. So here it is.
So here it is, says I. I won’t be keeping you as I know you’re very busy.
There has to be an end, Stuts.
Does there? says I.
You’ve been no end of help, Stuts, the End says. Truly.
Aye! says I. That I have. And is this—you don’t mind my asking— how you shows your appreciation of it.
You know I appreciate it, says the End. I’ve given you room to play in, after all. If you haven’t made good use of it, the fault is not my own.
I’d of liked to make use of it to whup that niggra boy, says I.
You’d of liked to slip one into his knickers, the End says, giving me the wink.
I set quiet. The one don’t rule the tother out, says I.
No. The one don’t rule the tother out, says the End. It grins.
Just you answer me this, says I, before you do me under. Answer me this. Why is that niggra such a bother to my mind?
We are each of us someone’s nigger, Stuts. Didn’t your mother tell you?
Each of us a niggra, says I. Each of us—?
The End plucks at a piece of grass.
That’s it, then? That’s all? You sound like bleeding Asa Trist!
The End shakes its head. A little something to remind you of your place, Mr. Kennedy. That’s all.
I curse and spit. What place is that, pray to tell us? Hey?
The End gives a curtsy. The next in line.
A Penance
VIRGIL COME UP ON ME, Dodds says. Seeking to lay a penance on me.
In broad day-time, while I clambring up the hill with this blankety-blank bucket. Looking at me like he never did make my right features out before. He come up on me all in a sudden and stop me in my tracks and in a voice fit to bring down the Union cannon holler out—
Dodds! I’m wise to your racket after all this time. You and I are going to revisit the scene of our finest hour.
I stand up straight as a picket. Don’t follow you, sackly, Mr. Virgil.
That’s right — I’m going to follow you, old snake-in-the-weeds. Get shambling.
He clutching a long wedge-tip spade, same spade we use to fill in the privy-hole over the Deemer, in he left hand. In he right hand they a bottle full of lantern-oil. I don’t say nothing past that. I hunch down and make slow as a mule for the Deemer’s hole. I look for Parson or somebody but they ain’t nothing doing at that hour.
You’re looking for someone to get in my way, Virgil say. I’ll confess something to you, Dodds. I’m hoping to see them try.
Can I put the bucket down, I say.
You’d best get moving, you son-of-a-bitch, or you’ll be wearing that god-damned bucket for a girdle.
This a error of judgment, I say.
Virgil laugh. One more won’t make much difference.
We come to the old privy-hole. Filled in now. Tobacky-house twixt us and the rest the property, woods all behind. Patch show dark on the ground where we put the Deemer under. Part of it glitter against the rest and I pick up a sly old chip of mirror.
Sloppy, Virgil mutter. We were sloppy.
It were dark, I say, watching he hand fingering that spade. I suppose we done it good enough.
I suppose otherwise, he say, chucking the spade down. Get to work.
I look at the spade. This a grave error of judgment, I say. This won’t bring no good but evil.
As if you knew the difference, Virgil say. He face gone flat and white and if I didn’t know he knew the game before, I know it now. The words get themselves upright, slow and easy, and line up in a row—: