I moved on to the counter where you could buy the magic photographic plates which showed nothing until you exposed them to the light. I wanted to buy one, but I had no money. John came beside me and said,
“Richard, I’ll get you one.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes, I’ll get you two.”
He put down four pennies to pay for two prints and the storekeeper gave me the box to choose my prints. On the edge of each little plate was the name of its subject. I chose the liner Mauretania and Buckingham Palace.
“Here,” I said to John, offering him one of them. “You keep one.”
He put his hands behind his back and blew his tongue at me between his thick lips.
“All right, then, thanks, we have to go home now. Come on, John,” I said.
Eating his banana, John was compliant. We came out of the store and went to the corner where we turned into our street. Our houses were a block and a half away. We could just see them. Under the billowing trees and the cool autumn light they looked asleep. They called to me. I wanted suddenly to be home.
“Let’s run, John,” I said.
We began to run, but we got no farther than a large hedge which ran up the driveway of the second house from the comer.
It was a great house, with a large garage in back, and a deep lawn. I knew the brothers who lived there. Their name was Grandville. They were a year or two older and very self-important because of their family automobiles and their electric train system, which occupied the whole top floor of their house.
They now jumped out from behind the hedge. With them were three other boys. They had all just come home from school. While we had idled in the candy store, they had gone by to wait for us.
“John, John, the dog-faced one!” they called and took John and dragged him up the driveway toward the garage in the windy, empty neighborhood. “Crazy, lazy, John’s a daisy,” they chanted, and I ran along yelling,
“Let us go, let us go!”
“Shut up, or we’ll get you too,” cried one of the brothers.
“Richie!” moaned John, “Richie!”
The terror in his blurry voice was like that in a nightmare when you must scream and cannot make a sound. His face was belly-white and his eyes were staring at me. I was his protector. I would save him.
“Richie! Richie!”
But I could do nothing against the mob of five, but only run along calling to them to “let go of us” — for I felt just as much captive as John, whom they dragged by arms and legs. He went heavy and limp. They hauled him through the chauffeur’s door — a narrow one beside the big car doors, which were closed — and shut the door after us all. The center of the garage was empty, for the big Pierce-Arrow limousine was out, bearing Mrs. Grandville somewhere on a chauffeur-driven errand.
“Put him there!” yelled one of the brothers.
Four boys held John on the cement floor by the drain grille while the other brother went to the wall, uncoiled a hose, and turned the spigot. The hose leaped alive with a thrust of water.
“Now let go and get back or you’ll all get wet,” called the Grandville boy. As the others scampered back he turned the powerful blow of the hose water on John. It knocked him down. He shut his eyes and turned his blind face to the roof. His shapeless mouth fell open in a silent cry. Still clutching his candy banana, he brought it to his mouth in delayed memory of what it was for, and what had been a delight was now a sorrowful and profitless hunger for comfort in misery.
“Get up, dogface,” yelled one of the boys.
Obediently John got up, keeping his eyes closed, suffering all that must come to him. The hose column toppled him over again. Striking his face, blows of water knocked his head about until it seemed it must fly apart.
“I know!” cried an excited and joyful young voice. “Let’s get his clo’es off!”
There was general glee at this idea. The hose was put away for the moment, and everyone seized John and tore at his clothes. He made his soundless wail with open mouth and I thought he shaped my name again.
When he was naked they ordered him to stand again, and he did so, trying to protect his modesty with his thick hands. They hit him with the hose again and buffeted him like a puppet. The hose water made him spin and slide on the oily floor. The noise was doubled by echoes from the peaked high roof of the garage.
Nobody thought of me.
I backed to the door and opened it and ran away. On the concrete driveway was a tricycle belonging to the younger Grandville. I mounted it and rode off as fast as I could. My chest was ready to break open under my hard breathing. My knees rose and fell like pistons. My face was streaming with tears of rage at John’s ordeal and the disgrace of my helplessness before it. I rode to John’s house and threw myself up the front steps, but before I could attack the door it was opened to me. Gail Burley was watching for us and when she saw me alone in gasping disorder, she cried,
“Why, Richard! What’s the matter! Where’s John!”
At first I could only point, so I took her hand and tugged at her to come with me. It was proof of the passion and power I felt at the moment that without more questioning she came. I remounted the tricycle and led her up the street to the Grandvilles’. In a little while as I went I was able to tell her what was happening.
When she understood, she increased her stride. She became magnificent in outrage. Her hazel eyes darkened to deep topaz and her reddish golden hair seemed to spring forward into the wind. She was like a famous ship, dividing the elements as she went.
“Oh! Those horrid, cruel little beasts!” she exclaimed. “Oh! What I would do to them — and Richard, you are an absolute darrling to get away and come for me. Oh! That poor John!”
We hurried up the driveway. The game was still going on. We could hear cries and the hiss of the hose. Gail Burley strode to the door and threw it open. She saw her son pinned against the far brick wall by the long pole of the spray. He tried to turn his face from side to side to avoid its impact. It swept down his white soft body and he continually tried to cover himself with his hands. Nonresistant, he accepted all that came to him. His eyes were still closed and his mouth was still open.
Stepping with baleful elegance across the puddles of the floor, Gail Burley threw aside the boys who were dancing at the spectacle, and came to the Grandville brother with the hose. She astounded him. In his ecstatic possession, he had heard no one arrive. She seized the hose and with a gesture commanded him to turn off the water, which he did. She dropped the hose and went to John and took him dripping and blue with cold into her arms. He fell inert against her, letting his hands dangle as she hugged him. But he made a word at last.
“Muzza,” he said thickly, “oh, Muzza, Muzza.”
“John-John,” she said, holding his wet head against the hollow of her lovely neck and shoulder. “It’s all right, It’s all right. Muzza is here. Poor John-John.”
The boys were now frightened. The oldest said,
“We were only trying to have some fun, Mrs. Burley.”
“Go to the house,” she commanded in her flattest tone, which held promises of punishment for all as soon as she could inform their parents, “and bring a big towel and a blanket. — Richard, you might throw together John’s things and bring them along.”
She was obeyed soberly and quickly. In a few minutes she and I were taking John home. He was huddled inside a doubled blanket. He was shivering. His teeth chattered.
“Where’s my banana?” he managed to say.
“Oh, never mind,” said his mother. “We can get you another banana. What were you doing with a banana anyway?”
“It was a candy one,” I explained.