The boy picked up the piece of chocolate cake and began to gnaw it from one corner.
"Norton," Sheppard said, "do you have any idea what it means to share?"
A flicker of attention. "Some of it's yours," Norton said.
"Some of it's his," Sheppard said heavily. It was hopeless. Almost any fault would have been preferable to selfishness-a violent temper, even a tendency to lie.
The child turned the bottel of ketchup upside-down and began thumping ketchup onto the cake.
Sheppard's look of pain increased. "You are ten and Rufus Johnson is fourteen," he said. "Yet I'm sure your shirts would fit Rufus." Rufus Johnson was a boy he had been trying to help at the reformatory for the past year. He had been released two months ago. "When he was in the reformatory, he looked pretty good, but when I saw him yesterday, he was skin and bones. He hasn't been eating cake with peanut butter on it for breakfast."
The child paused. "It's stale," he said. "That's why I have to put stuff on it."
Sheppard turned his face to the window at the end of the bar. The side lawn, green and even, sloped fifty feet or so down to a small suburban wood. When his wife was living, they had often eaten outside, even breakfast, on the grass. He had never noticed then that the child was selfish. "Listen to me," he said, turning back to him, "look at me and listen."
The boy looked at him. At least his eyes were forward.
"I gave Rufus a key to this house when he left the reformatory-to show my confidence in him and so he would have a place he could come to and feel welcome any time. He didn't use it, but I think he'll use it now because he's seen me and he's hungry. And if he doesn't use it, I'm going out and find him and bring him here. I can't see a child eating out of garbage cans."
The boy frowned. It was dawning upon him that something of his was threatened.
Sheppard's mouth stretched in disgust. "Rufus's father died before he was born," he said. "His mother is in the state penitentiary. He was raised by his grandfather in a shack without water or electricity and the old man beat him every day. How would you like to belong to a family like that?"
"I don't know," the child said lamely.
"Well, you might think about it sometime," Sheppard said.
Sheppard was City Recreational Director. On Saturdays he worked at the reformatory as a counselor, receiving nothing for it but the satisfaction of knowing he was helping boys no one else cared about. Johnson was the most intelligent boy he had worked with and the most deprived.
Norton turned what was left of the cake over as if he no longer wanted it.
"You started that, now finish it," Sheppard said.
"Maybe he won't come," the child said and his eyes brightened slightly.
"Think of everything you have that he doesn't!" Sheppard said. "Suppose you had to root in garbage cans for food? Suppose you had a huge swollen foot and one side of you dropped lower than the other when you walked?"
The boy looked blank, obviously unable to imagine such a thing.
"You have a healthy body," Sheppard said, "a good home. You've never been taught anything but the truth. Your daddy gives you everything you need and want. You don't have a grandfather who beats you. And your mother is not in the state penitentiary."
The child pushed his plate away. Sheppard groaned aloud.
A knot of flesh appeared below the boy's suddenly distorted mouth. His face became a mass of lumps with slits for eyes. "If she was in the penitentiary," he began in a kind of racking bellow, "I could go to seeeeee her." Tears rolled down his face and the ketchup dribbled on his chin. He looked as if he had been hit in the mouth. He abandoned himself and howled.
Sheppard sat helpless and miserable, like a man lashed by some elemental force of nature. This was not a normal grief. It was all part of his selfishness. She had been dead for over a year and a child's grief should not last so long. "You're going on eleven years old," he said reproachfully.
The child began an agonizing high-pitched heaving noise.
"If you stop thinking about yourself and think what you can do for somebody else," Sheppard said, "then you'll stop missing your mother."
The boy was silent but his shoulders continued to shake. Then his face collapsed and he began to howl again.
"Don't you think I'm lonely without her too?" Sheppard said. "Don't you think I miss her at all? I do, but I'm not sitting around moping. I'm busy helping other people. When do you see me just sitting around thinking about my troubles?"
The boy slumped as if he were exhausted but fresh tears streaked his face.
"What are you going to do today?" Sheppard asked, to get his mind on something else.
The child ran his arm across his eyes. "Sell seeds," he mumbled.
Always selling something. He had four quart jars full of nickels and dimes he had saved and he took them out of his closet every few days and counted them. "What are you selling seeds for?"
"To win a prize."
'What's the prize?"
"A thousand dollars."
"And what would you do if you had a thousand dollars?"
"Keep it," the child said and wiped his nose on his shoulder.
"I feel sure you would," Sheppard said. "Listen," he said and lowered his voice to an almost pleading tone, "suppose by some chance you did win a thousand dollars. Wouldn't you like to spend it on children less fortunate than yourself? Wouldn't you like to give some swings and trapezes to the orphanage? Wouldn't you like to buy poor Rufus Johnson a new shoe?"
The boy began to back away from the bar. Then suddenly he leaned forward and hung with his mouth open over his plate. Sheppard groaned again. Everything came up, the cake, the peanut butter, the ketchup-a limp sweet batter. He hung over it gagging, more came, and he waited with his mouth open over the plate as if he expected his heart to come up next.
"It's all right," Sheppard said, "it's all right. You couldn't help it. Wipe your mouth and go lie down."
The child hung there a moment longer. Then he raised his face and looked blindly at his father.
"Go on," Sheppard said. "Go on and lie down."
The boy pulled up the end of his t-shirt and smeared his mouth with it. Then he climbed down off the stool and wandered out of the kitchen.
Sheppard sat there staring at the puddle of half-digested food. The sour odor reached him and he drew back. His gorge rose. He got up and carried the plate to the sink and turned the water on it and watched grimly as the mess ran down the drain. Johnson's sad thin hand rooted in garbage cans for food while his own child, selfish, unresponsive, greedy, had so much that he threw it up. He cut off the faucet with a thrust of his fist. Johnson had a capacity for real response and had been deprived of everything from birth; Norton was average or below and had had every advantage.
He went back to the bar to finish his breakfast. The cereal was soggy in the cardboard box but he paid no attention to what he was eating. Johnson was worth any amount of effort because he had the potential. He had seen it from the time the boy had limped in for his first interview.
Sheppard's office at the reformatory was a narrow closet with one window and a small table and two chairs in it. He had never been inside a confessional but he thought it must be the same kind of operation he had here, except that he explained, he did not absolve. His credentials were less dubious than a priest's; he had been trained for what he was doing.
When Johnson came in for his first interview, he had been reading over the boy's record-senseless destruction, windows smashed, city trash boxes set afire, tires slashed -the kind of thing he found where boys had been transplanted abruptly from the country to the city as this one had. He came to Johnson's I. Q. score. It was 140. He raised his eyes eagerly.