Empty lot where a house had burned down. All of a sudden he remembered how it had been, in the dark last night: something tripping him, hard squarish cement something when he felt of it, like what was left when a house was burned. A lot of grass around it.
No, it wasn't, he said in his mind frantically, it wasn't like that, I must remember wrong. His mind said back at him, Like you remembered wrong before?
Danny was going on talking but he couldn't listen. Please, oh, please, it can't have happened again. It never did happen, nothing happened before, you just remembered wrong is all. You can't ever be sure in the dark, and it was night then too, of course it had to be, it was always night when-When things happened. A light green shirt that time because it was hot, it was summer, and the mark didn't come out when she washed it, you could still see where it'd been. That wasn't blood either, acourse it wasn't, how could it be?
He said louder than he meant to, "I-I got to go home, I better not be late for supper," and walked away fast as he could. He didn't want to hear any more about it, or he might remember too much. There wasn't anything to remember, he was just making up stories in his head to try and scare her, because he There were long times when he never thought about it, but when he did, it was all right there sharp and clear, more like it pounced at him instead of him remembering. That other night. The first time. Wet red mark on the green shirt and her scolding-because it was late. The big doll with the pink dress and goldy hair. And next day people talking about-what had happened-to that colored girl.
He was almost running now, trying to run away from the voice in his mind, and he blundered into a man walking the other way. The man said something and put out a hand to steady him on his feet, but Marty pulled away and dodged round the corner into Graham Court. He leaned on the broken-down picket fence of the corner house and he hit it with his fist, the breath sobbing in his throat, tears squeezing out from tight-shut eyes.
"I tole her," he said low in his throat. "I tried tell her!" It was all he could do, wasn't it? What else could thirteen years old do? But there wasn't much to tell, that time or this time-he really remembered, knew his own self. She said so. He didn't know, he must've remembered wrong, or he was a wicked boy just trying to scare her. Making up stories that couldn't be so.
And she washed the green shirt but the mark still showed after.
After a while Marty straightened and went on, slowly, down the little cul-de-sac. He didn't want to go home; just two things pulled him that way, drearily, as they had before. Habit, and Dad's voice that time a while back, slow and easy like always, Dad saying, "You want to be nice t' your ma, Marty, an' help her all you can, an' don't do nothing to worry her. I know it ain't easy, times, but things ain't easy for her neither. You got to remember she come of folks had a lot more than the Lindstroms, back home-her pa Ole Larsen was a rich man, eleven hundert acres he had all good land too, an' his girls never wanted for nothing. Maybe them Larsens did give theirselves airs, but maybe they had reason to, an' anyways your ma never had cause to makeshift an' scrims on nothing, till she married me-an' it ain't exactly been a easy row to hoe for her, not noways. I know she gets cross-tongued once in a while, but you got to remember things is hard for her too."
That had been before-anything happened. If it had.
Marty went up the stairs of the apartment building slow, hanging onto the shaky railing. He felt another thing he'd got to feeling almost all the time lately, and that was as if there were two of him: one was a little kid whose ma was right whatever she said or did, just naturally because she was Ma-and the other was, well, nearest he could come was Marty-separate-from-Ma, who knew Ma might be wrong about some things. He tried to push that Marty away, because he didn't want to really know that, but seemed like that Marty was getting stronger and stronger in him. At the same time there were two other Martys, the one that was just a wicked little boy making up stories-and the one that knew different.
That one was scared, deep and cold inside. Because it was all his fault, must be, even if he'd never meant, never known, if he'd just sort of forgot for a while.
And the bad feeling had begun maybe when Dad went away, but what had made it so bad ever since was-that first time, back there on Tappan Street on a breathless night in late September.
He'd had to tell her. Things happened that were too big for you, frightening and confusing, that you couldn't do anything about yourself-you told your ma or dad, and they knew what to do. Only Dad hadn't been there.
And there was a third place the real bad feeling started, after she wouldn't believe, wouldn't listen-when she did something she'd never done before, ever: when she went out and bought a newspaper, and read about-It. And said like to herself in a funny kind of whisper, "Only some nigger girl, anyways. Prob'ly trash-just trash."
And the next day she'd gone and found this place for them to move, account it was cheaper, she said.
He got to the dark top of the stairs, and he thought frantically, I got to tell her. I got to try. Because He was sick and shaking with fear, with guilt, with the weight of a thing thirteen couldn't bear alone. The door was locked like always and he knocked and she said sharp, "Who is it?"
"It's me, Ma, let me in." And there wasn't any other way to say it than he did, then: "Ma, it's happened again! Ma-please listen-I didn't mean to-I never meant nothing to happen-but it must've, because-"
She just stood and stared at him.
"-Because it was blood on my coat's morning." He gulped and went on through the lump in his throat, "And-and the place they found-it-it was right where I-"
The fear pulled her face all tight and cross looking for a minute, but then it changed to being mad at him, and she said quick, "I don't listen to a boy tells lies!"
He looked at her dumbly. He knew what else she'd say, like she had before; but this time he knew something else-that what she said wasn't just at him, it was at that place she had way inside her where she knew it was so-it was to shut the door to that place and forget it was there at all. And now she was asking him to help her, seemed like, not mad any more but asking.
"You get washed an' eat your supper while it's hot, an' then you set right down to that schoolwork you shoulda done last night-I'm allus tellin' you, don't want to end up like your dad, not enough schoolin' for a decent job-you're a real smart boy, Marty, you take after my folks, an' last thing I do I see you get educated good, maybe even college. But you got to remember you don't know ever'thing yet, see, an'-an' kids get mixed up in their minds, like, that's all-"
He whispered, "I'm not awful hungry, Ma."
And all the while the secret was there in the room with them, neither of them daring to look at it open: that she wouldn't see for what it really was, that he was getting more and more afraid of-that they had to live with somehow.
Danny stood there by the drugstore awhile after Marty left. On top of his mind he thought, That big lummox of a Lindstrom kid, sure a dumb one. But most of him was occupied with the job he was on, and he felt kind of tensed-up because it was the first time his dad had taken much notice of him, acted like he was a person with any sense, and he wanted to do this right.
It had been a big surprise to him to feel the way he did. Asked him last week, he'd have said it wasn't nothing to him, whatever his dad did or said-been three and a half years since he'd laid eyes on him, anyways-and that went other way round too, they'd always just sort of stayed out of each other's way. Same as with his mother, but she was just a nothing, like a handful of water, and there was at least something to his dad. And he'd felt a new, funny feeling when his dad said that: Kind of a sharp kid, you can maybe be some use to me.