“Excuse me, sir, but I wish he would grieve. I wish he would bawl his heart out. Wash out that black hate. I ought to go home. None of my concern. It’s a woman’s job.” He moved and his hand went toward the phone. “He has a teacher. I can’t help feeling concerned, sir. May I try?”
The Judge said, “Of course, Mike,” and he put his brittle old bones into a chair.
Mike Russell pried the number out of the Board of Education. “Miss Lillian Dana? My name is Russell. You know a boy named Freddy Titus?”
“Oh, yes. He’s in my class.” The voice was pleasing.
“Miss Dana, there is trouble. You know Judge Kittinger’s house? Could you come there?”
“What is the trouble?”
“Freddy’s little dog is dead of poison. I’m afraid Freddy is in a bad state. There is no one to help him. His folks are away. The woman taking care of him,” Mike’s careful explanatory sentences burst into indignation, “has no more sympathetic imagination than a broken clothes-pole.” He heard a little gasp. “I’d like to help him, Miss Dana, but I’m a man and a stranger, and the Judge...” He paused.
“...is old,” said the Judge in his chair.
“I’m terribly sorry,” the voice on the phone said slowly. “Freddy’s a wonderful boy.”
“You are his friend?”
“Yes, we are friends.”
“Then, could you come? You see, we’ve got to get a terrible idea out of his head. He thinks a man across the street poisoned his dog on purpose. Miss Dana, he has no doubt! And he doesn’t cry.” She gasped again. “Greenwood Lane,” he said, “and Hannibal Street — the southeast corner.”
She said, “I’ll come. I have a car. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
Russell turned and caught the Judge biting his lips. “Am I making too much of this, sir?” he inquired humbly.
“I don’t like the boy’s stubborn conviction.” The Judge’s voice was dry and clear. “Any more than you do. I agree that he must be brought to understand. But...” the old man shifted in the chair. “Of course, the man, Matlin, is a fool, Mike. There is something solemn and silly about him that makes him fair game. He’s unfortunate. He married a widow with a crippled child, and no sooner were they married than she collapsed. And he’s not well off. He’s encumbered with that enormous house.”
“What does he do, sir?”
“He’s a photographer. Oh, he struggles, tries his best, and all that. But with such tension, Mike. That poor misshapen girl over there tries to keep the house, devoted to her mother. Matlin works hard, is devoted, too. And yet the sum comes out in petty strife, nerves, quarrels, uproar. And certainly it cannot be necessary to feud with children.”
“The kids have done their share of that, I’ll bet,” mused Mike. “The kids are delighted — a neighborhood ogre, to add the fine flavor of menace. A focus for mischief. An enemy.”
“True enough.” The Judge sighed.
“So the myth is made. No rumor about ole Matlin loses anything in the telling. I can see it’s been built up. You don’t knock it down in a day.”
“No,” said the Judge uneasily. He got up from the chair.
The young man rubbed his dark head. “I don’t like it, sir. We don’t know what’s in the kids’ minds, or who their heroes are. There is only the gang. What do you suppose it advises?”
“What could it advise, after all?” said the Judge crisply. “This isn’t the slums, whatever Matlin says.” He went nervously to the window. He fiddled with the shade pull. He said, suddenly, “From my little summer house in the backyard you can overhear the gang. They congregate under that oak. Go and eavesdrop, Mike.”
The young man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”
“I... think we had better know,” said the Judge, a trifle sheepishly.
The kids sat under the oak, in a grassy hollow. Freddy was the core. His face was tight. His eyes never left off watching the house of the enemy. The others watched him, or hung their heads, or watched their own brown hands play with the grass.
They were not chattering. There hung about them a heavy, sullen silence, heavy with a sense of tragedy, sullen with a sense of wrong, and from time to time one voice or another would fling out a pronouncement, which would sink into the silence, thickening its ugliness...
The Judge looked up from his paper. “Could you...?”
“I could hear,” said Mike in a quiet voice. “They are condemning the law, sir. They call it corrupt. They are quite certain that Matlin killed the dog. They see themselves as Robin Hoods, vigilantes, defending the weak, the wronged, the dog. They think they are discussing justice. They are waiting for dark. They speak of weapons, sir — the only ones they have. B.B. guns, after dark.”
“Great heavens!”
“Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stop it.”
Mrs. Somers was cooking supper when he tapped on the screen. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”
“I want your help, Mrs. Somers. For Freddy.”
“Freddy,” she interrupted loudly, with her nose high, “is going to have his supper and go to bed his regular time, and that’s all about Freddy. Now, what did you want?”
He said, “I want you to let me take the boy to my apartment for the night.”
“I couldn’t do that!” She was scandalized.
“The Judge will vouch...”
“Now, see here, Mr. what’syourname — Russell. This isn’t my house and Freddy’s not my boy. I’m responsible to Mr. and Mrs. Titus. You’re a stranger to me. As far as I can see, Freddy is no business of yours whatsoever.”
“Which is his room?” asked Mike sharply.
“Why do you want to know?” She was hostile and suspicious.
“Where does he keep his B.B. gun?”
She was startled to an answer. “In the shed out back. Why?”
He told her.
“Kid’s talk,” she scoffed. “You don’t know much about kids, do you, young man? Freddy will go to sleep. First thing he’ll know, it’s morning. That’s about the size of it.”
“You may be right. I hope so.”
Mrs. Somers slapped potatoes into the pan. Her lips quivered indignantly. She felt annoyed because she was a little shaken. The strange young man really had hoped so.
Russell scanned the street, went across to Matlin’s house. The man himself answered the bell. The air in this house was stale, and bore the faint smell of old grease. There was over everything an atmosphere of struggle and despair. Many things ought to have been repaired and had not been repaired. The place was too big. There wasn’t enough money, or strength. It was too much.
Mrs. Matlin could not walk. Otherwise, one saw, she struggled and did the best she could. She had a lost look, as if some anxiety, ever present, took about nine-tenths of her attention. May Matlin limped in and sat down, lumpishly.
Russell began earnestly, “Mr. Matlin, I don’t know how this situation between you and the boys began. I can guess that the kids are much to blame. I imagine they enjoy it.” He smiled. He wanted to be sympathetic towards this man.
“Of course they enjoy it.” Matlin looked triumphant.
“They call me The Witch,” the girl said. “Pretend they’re scared of me. The devils. I’m scared of them.”
Matlin flicked a nervous eye at the woman in the wheelchair. “The truth is, Mr. Russell,” he said in his high whine, “they’re vicious.”
“It’s too bad,” said his wife in a low voice. “I think it’s dangerous.”
“Mama, you mustn’t worry,” said the girl in an entirely new tone. “I won’t let them hurt you. Nobody will hurt you.”