Part One 3 страница

sulky cat and stretched herself. The room was drab in the

fresh, hot morning sun, and a pair of silk stockings hung limp

and withered from the cord of the window-shade.

'Is that drunk fool still hanging around downstairs?' she

demanded.

Biff took off his shirt and examined the collar to see if it were

clean enough to be worn again. 'Go down and see for yourself.

I told you nobody will hinder you from kicking him out.'

Sleepily Alice reached down and picked up a Bible, the blank

side of a menu, and a Sunday-School book from the floor

beside the bed. She rustled through the tissue pages of the

Bible until she reached a certain passage and began reading,

pronouncing the words aloud with painful concentration. It

was Sunday, and she was preparing the weekly lesson for her

class of boys in the Junior Department of her church. 'Now as

he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew

his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

And Jesus said unto them, "Come ye after me, and I will make

you to become fishers of men." And straightway they forsook

their nets, and followed him.'26

Biff went into the bathroom to wash himself. The silky

murmuring continued as Alice studied aloud. He listened...

and in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He

went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.

And Simon and they that were with Him followed after Him.

And when they had found Him, they said unto Him, "All men

seek for Thee." '

She had finished. Biff let the words revolve again gently

inside him. He tried to separate the actual words from the

sound of Alice's voice as she had spoken them. He wanted to

remember the passage as his mother used to read it when he

was a boy. With nostalgia he glanced down at the wedding

ring on his fifth finger that had once been hers. He wondered

again how she would have felt about bis giving up church and

religion.

'The lesson for today is about the gathering of the disciples,'

Alice said to herself in preparation. 'And the text is, "All men

seek for Thee." '

Abruptly Biff roused himself from meditation and turned on

the water spigot at full force. He stripped off his undervest

and began to wash himself. Always he was scrupulously clean

from the belt upward. Every morning he soaped his chest and

arms and neck and feet—and about twice during the season he

got into the bathtub and cleaned all of his parts.

Biff stood by the bed, waiting impatiently for Alice to get up.

From the window he saw that the day would be windless and

burning hot. Alice had finished reading the lesson. She still

lay lazily across the bed, although she knew that he was

waiting. A calm, sullen anger rose in him. He chuckled

ironically. Then he said with bitterness: 'If you like I can sit

and read the paper awhile. But I wish you would let me sleep

now.'

Alice began dressing herself and Biff made up the bed. Deftly

he reversed the sheets in all possible ways, putting the top one

on the bottom, and turning them over and upside down. When

the bed was smoothly made he waited until Alice had left the

room before he slipped off his trousers and crawled inside.

His feet jutted out from beneath the cover and his wiry-haired

chest was very dark against the pillow. He was glad he had not

told Alice about what had happened to the drunk. He had

wanted to talk

to somebody about it, because maybe if he told all the facts

out loud he could put his finger on the thing that puzzled him.

The poor son-of-a-bitch talking and talking and not ever

getting anybody to understand what he meant. Not knowing

himself, most likely. And the way he gravitated around the

deaf-mute and picked him out and tried to make him a free

present of everything in him.

Why?

Because in some men it is in them to give up everything

personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons—throw

it to some human being or some human idea. They have to. In

some men it is in them—The text is 'All men seek for Thee.'

Maybe that was why—maybe—He was a Chinaman, the

fellow had said. And a nigger and a wop and a Jew. And if he

believed it hard enough maybe it was so. Every person and

every thing he said he was------

Biff stretched both of his arms outward and crossed his naked

feet. His face was older in the morning light, with the closed,

shrunken eyelids and the heavy, iron-like beard on his cheeks

and jaw. Gradually his mouth softened and relaxed. The hard,

yellow rays of the sun came in through the window so that the

room was hot and bright. Biff turned wearily and covered his

eyes with his hands. And he was nobody but—Bartholomew

—old Biff with two fists and a quick tongue—Mister Brannon

—by himself.

J. HE sun woke Mick early, although she had stayed out mighty

late the night before. It was too hot even to drink coffee for

breakfast, so she had ice water with syrup in it and cold

biscuits. She messed around the kitchen for a while and then

went out on the front porch to read the funnies. She had

thought maybe Mister Singer would be reading the paper on

the porch like he did most Sunday mornings. But Mister

Singer was not there, and later on her Dad said he came in

very late the night before and had company in his room. She

waited for Mister Singer a long time. All the other boarders

came down except him. Fi- 28

nally she went back in the kitchen and took Ralph out of his

high chair and put a clean dress on him and wiped off his face.

Then when Bubber got home from Sunday School she was

ready to take the kids out. She let Bubber ride in the wagon

with Ralph because he was barefooted and the hot sidewalk

burned his feet. She pulled the wagon for about eight blocks

until they came to the big, new house that was being built. The

ladder was still propped against the edge of the roof, and she

screwed up nerve and began to climb.

'You mind Ralph,' she called back to Bubber. 'Mind the gnats

don't sit on his eyelids.'

Five minutes later Mick stood up and held herself very

straight. She spread out her arms like wings. This was the

place where everybody wanted to stand. The very top. But not

many kids could do it. Most of them were scared, for if you

lost your grip and rolled off the edge it would kill you. All

around were the roofs of other houses and the green tops of

trees. On the other side of town were the church steeples and

the smokestacks from the mills. The sky was bright blue and

hot as fire. The sun made everything on the ground either

dizzy white or black.

She wanted to sing. All the songs she knew pushed up toward

her throat, but there was no sound. One big boy who had got

to the highest part of the roof last week let out a yell and then

started hollering out a speech he had learned at High School

—'Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your ears!' There

was something about getting to the very top that gave you a

wild feeling and made you want to yell or sing or raise up

your arms and fly.

She felt the soles of her tennis shoes slipping, and eased

herself down so that she straddled the peak of the roof. The

house was almost finished. It would be one of the largest

buildings in the neighborhood—two stories, with very high

ceilings and the steepest roof of any house she had ever seen.

But soon the work would all be finished. The carpenters

would leave and the kids would have to find another place to

play.

She was by herself. No one was around and it was quiet and

she could think for a while. She took from the pocket of her

shorts the package of cigarettes she had bought the night

before. She breathed in the smoke slowly. The ciga-

rette gave her a drunk feeling so that her head seemed heavy

and loose on her shoulders, but she had to finish it.

M.K.—That was what she would have written on everything

when she was seventeen years old and very famous. She

would ride back home in a red-and-white Packard automobile

with her initials on the doors. She would have M.K. written in

red on her handkerchiefs and underclothes. Maybe she would

be a great inventor. She would invent little tiny radios the size

of a green pea that people could carry around and stick in their

ears. Also flying machines people could fasten on their backs

like knapsacks and go zipping all over the world. After that

she would be the first one to make a large tunnel through the

world to China, and people could go down in big balloons.

Those were the first tilings she would invent They were

already planned.

When Mick had finished half of the cigarette she smashed it

dead and flipped the butt down the slant of the roof. Then she

leaned forward so that her head rested on her arms and began

to hum to herself.

It was a funny thing—but nearly all the time there was some

kind of piano piece or other music going on in the back of her

mind. No matter what she was doing or thinking it was nearly

always there. Miss Brown, who boarded with them, had a

radio in her room, and all last winter she would sit on the

steps every Sunday afternoon and listen in on the programs.

Those were probably classical pieces, but they were the ones

she remembered best. There was one special fellow's music

that made her heart shrink up every time she heard it.

Sometimes this feEow's music was like little colored pieces of

crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing

she had ever imagined about.

There was the sudden sound of crying. Mick sat up straight

and listened The wind ruffled the fringe of hair on her

forehead and the bright sun made her face white and damp.

The whimpering continued, and Mick moved slowly along the

sharp-pointed roof on her hands and knees. When she reached

the end she leaned forward and lay on her stomach so that her

head jutted over the edge and she could see the ground below.

The kids were where she had left them. Bubber was 30

squatting over something on the ground and beside him was a

little black, dwarf shadow. Ralph was still tied in the wagon.

He was just old enough to sit up, and he held on to the sides of

the wagon, with his cap crooked on his head, crying.

'Bubber!' Mick called down. 'Find out what that Ralph wants

and give it to him.'

Bubber stood up and looked hard into the baby's face. 'He

don't want nothing.'

'Well, give him a good shake, then.'

Mick climbed back to the place where she had been sitting

before. She wanted to think for a long time about two or three

certain people, to sing to herself, and to make plans. But that

Ralph was still hollering and there wouldn't be any peace for

her at all.

Boldly she began to climb down toward the ladder propped

against the edge of the roof. The slant was very steep and

there were only a few blocks of wood nailed down, very far

apart from each other, that the workmen used for footholds.

She was dizzy, and her heart beat so hard it made her tremble.

Commandingly she talked out loud to herself: 'Hold on here

with your hands tight and then slide down until your right toe

gets a grip there and then stay close and wiggle over to the

left. Nerve, Mick, you've got to keep nerve.'

Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing. It took her

a long time to reach the ladder and to feel safe again. When

she stood on the ground at last she seemed much shorter and

smaller and her legs felt for a minute like they would crumple

up with her. She hitched her shorts and jerked the belt a notch

tighter. Ralph was still crying, but she paid the sound no

attention and went into the new, empty house.

Last month they had put a sign out in front saying that no

children were allowed on the lot. A gang of kids had been

scuffling around inside the rooms one night, and a girl who

couldn't see in the dark had run into a room that hadn't been

floored and fallen through and broken her leg. She was still at

the hospital in a plaster parish cast. Also, another time some

tough boys wee-weed all over one of the walls and wrote

some pretty bad words. But no matter how many Keep Out

signs were put up, they couldn't run

kids away until the house had been painted and finished and

people had moved in.

The rooms smelled of new wood, and when she walked the

soles of her tennis shoes made a flopping sound that echoed

through all the house. The air was hot and quiet. She stood

still in the middle of the front room for a while, and then she

suddenly thought of something. She fished in her pocket and

brought out two stubs of chalk—one green and the other red.

Mick drew the big block letters very slowly. At the top she

wrote EDISON, and under that she drew the names of DICK

TRACY and MUSSOLINI. Then in each corner with the

largest letters of all, made with green and outlined in red, she

wrote her initials—M.K. When that was done she crossed

over to the opposite wall and wrote a very bad word—

PUSSY, and beneath that she put her initials, too.

She stood in the middle of the empty room and stared at what

she had done. The chalk was still in her hands and she did not

feel really satisfied. She was trying to think of the name of

this fellow who had written this music she heard over the

radio last whiter. She had asked a girl at school who owned a

piano and took music lessons about him, and the girl asked her

teacher. It seemed this fellow was just a kid who had lived in

some country in Europe a good while ago. But even if he was

just a young kid he had made up all these beautiful pieces for

the piano and for the violin and for a band or orchestra too. In

her mind she could remember about six different tunes from

the pieces of his she had heard. A few of them were kind of

quick and tinkling, and another was like that smell in the

springtime after a rain. But they all made her somehow sad

and excited at the same time.

She hummed one of the tunes, and after a while in the hot,

empty house by herself she felt the tears come in her eyes. Her

throat got tight and rough and she couldn't sing any more.

Quickly she wrote the fellow's name at the very top of the list

—MOTSART.

Ralph was tied in the wagon just as she had left him. He sat up

quiet and still and his fat little hands held on to the sides.

Ralph looked like a little Chinese baby with his square black

bangs and bis black eyes. The sun was in his 32

face, and that was why he had been hollering. Bubber was

nowhere around. When Ralph saw her coming he began

tuning up to cry again. She pulled the wagon into the shade by

the side of the new house and took from her shirt pocket a

blue-colored jelly bean. She stuck the candy in the baby's

warm, soft mouth.

'Put that in your pipe and smoke it,' she said to him. In a way it

was a waste, because Ralph was still too little to get the real

good flavor out of candy. A clean rock would be about the

same to him, only the little fool would swallow it. He didn't

understand any more about taste than he did about talking.

When you said you were so sick and tired of dragging him

around you had a good mind to throw him in the river, it was

the same to him as if you had been loving him. Nothing much

made any difference to him. That was why it was such an

awful bore to haul him around.

Mick cupped her hands, clamped them tight together, and

blew through the crack between her thumbs. Her cheeks

puffed out and at first there was only the sound of air rushing

through her fists. Then a high, shrill whistle sounded, and

after a few seconds Bubber came out from around the corner

of the house.

She rumpled the sawdust out of Bubber's hair and straightened

Ralph's cap. This cap was the finest thing Ralph had. It was

made out of lace and all embroidered. The ribbon under bis

chin was blue on one side and white on the other, and over

each ear there were big rosettes. His head had got too big for

the cap and the embroidery scratched, but she always put it on

him when she took him out. Ralph didn't have any real baby

carriage like most folks' babies did, or any summer bootees.

He had to be dragged around in a tacky old wagon she had got

for Christmas three years before. But the fine cap gave him

face.

There was nobody on the street, for it was late Sunday

morning and very hot. The wagon screeched and rattled.

Bubber was barefooted and the sidewalk was so hot it burned

his feet. The green oak trees made cool-looking black shadows

on the ground, but that was not shade enough.

'Get up in the wagon,' she told Bubber. 'And let Ralph sit in

your lap.'

'I can walk all right.'

The long summer-time always gave Bubber the colic. He

didn't have on a shirt and his ribs were sharp and white. The

sun made him pale instead of brown, and his little titties were

like blue raisins on his chest.

'I don't mind pulling you,' Mick said. 'Get on in.'

*O.K.'

Mick dragged the wagon slowly because she was not in any

hurry to get home. She began talking to the kids. But it was

really more like saying things to herself than words said to

them.

'This is a funny thing—the dreams I've been having lately. It's

like I'm swimming. But instead of water I'm pushing out my

arms and swimming through great big crowds of people. The

crowd is a hundred times bigger than in Kresses' store on

Saturday afternoon. The biggest crowd in the world. And

sometimes I'm yelling and swimming through people,

knocking them all down wherever I go— and other times Fm

on the ground and people are trompling all over me and my

insides are oozing out on the sidewalk. I guess it's more like a

nightmare than a plain

On Sundays the house was always full of folks because the

boarders had visitors. Newspapers rustled and there was cigar

smoke, and footsteps always on the stairs.

'Some things you just naurally want to keep private. Not

because they are bad, but because you just want them secret.

There are two or three things I wouldn't want even you to

know about'

Bubber got out when they came to the corner and helped her

lift the wagon down the curb and get it up on the next

sidewalk.

'But there's one thing I would give anything for. And that's a

piano. If we had a piano I'd practice every single night and

learn every piece in the world. That's the thing I, want more

than anything else.'

They had come to their own home block now. Their house

was only a few doors away. It was one of the biggest houses

on the whole north side of town—three stories i*

high. But then there were fourteen people in the family. There

weren't that many in the real, blood Kelly family— but they

ate there and slept there at five dollars a head and you plight

as well count them on in. Mr. Singer wasn't counted in that

because he only rented a room and kept it straightened up

himself.

The house was narrow and had not been painted for many

years. It did hot seem to be built strong enough for its three

stories of height. It sagged on one side.

Mick untied Ralph and lifted him from the wagon. She darted

quickly through the hall, and from the corner of her eye she

saw that the living-room was full of boarders. Her Dad was

there, too. Her Mama would be in the kitchen. They were all

hanging around waiting for dinner-time.

She went into the first of the three rooms that the family kept

for themselves. She put Ralph down on the bed where her Dad

and Mama slept and gave him a string of beads to play with.

From behind the closed door of the next room she could hear

the sound of voices, and she decided to go inside.

Hazel and Etta stopped talking when they saw her. Etta was

sitting in the chair by the window, painting her toe-nails with

the red polish. Her hah- was done up in steel rollers and there

was a white dab of face cream on a little place under her chin

where a pimple had come out. Hazel was flopped out lazy on

the bed as usual. 'What were you all jawing about?' It's none of

your nosy business,' Etta said. 'Just you hush up and leave us

alone.'

'It's my room just as much as it is either one of yours. I have as

good a right hi here as you do.' Mick strutted from one corner

to the other until she had covered all the floor space. 'But then

I don't care anything about picking any fight. All I want are

my own rights.'

Mick brushed back her shaggy bangs with the palm of her

hand. She had done this so often that there was a little row of

cowlicks above her forehead. She quivered her nose and made

faces at herself in the mirror. Then she began walking around

the room again.

Hazel and Etta were O.K. as far as sisters went. But Etta was

like she was full of worms. All she thought about was movie

stars and getting in the movies. Once she had

written to Jeanette MacDonald and had got a typewritten letter

back saying that if ever she came out to Hollywood she could

come by and swim in her swimming pool. And ever since that

swimming pool had been preying on Etta's mind. All she

thought about was going to Hollywood when she could scrape

up the bus fare and getting a job as a secretary and being

buddies with Jeanette MacDonald and getting in the movies

herself.

She primped all the day long. And that was the bad part. Etta

wasn't naturally pretty like Hazel. The main thing was she

didn't have any chin. She would pull at her jaw and go through

a lot of chin exercises she had read in ft movie book. She was

always looking at her side profile in the mirror and trying to

keep her mouth set in a certain way. But it didn't do any good.

Sometimes Etta would hold her face with her hands and cry hi

the night about it.

Hazel was plain lazy. She was good-looking but thick in the

head. She was eighteen years old, and next to Bill she was the

oldest of all the kids in the family. Maybe that was the trouble.

She got the first and biggest share of everything—the first

whack at the new clothes and the biggest part of any special

treat. Hazel never had to grab for anything and she was soft.

'Are you just going to tramp around the room all day? It makes

me sick to see you hi those silly boy's clothes. Somebody

ought to clamp down on you, Mick Kelly, and make you

behave,' Etta said.

'Shut up,' said Mick. 'I wear shorts because I don't want to

wear your old hand-me-downs. I don't want to be like either of

you and I don't want to look like either of you. And I won't.

That's why I wear shorts. I'd rather be a boy any day, and I

wish I could move in with Bill.'

Mick scrambled under the bed and brought out a large hatbox.

As she carried it to the door both of them called after her,

'Good riddance!'

Bill had the nicest room of anybody in the family. Like a den

—and he had it all to himself—except for Bubber. Bill had

pictures cut out from magazines tacked on the walls, mostly

faces of beautiful ladies, and in another corner were some

pictures Mick had painted last year herself at the free art class.

There was only a bed and a desk in the room. JO

Bill was sitting hunched over the desk, reading Popular

Mechanics. She went up behind him and put her arms around

his shoulders. 'Hey, you old son-of-a-gun.'

He did not begin tussling with her like he used to do. •Hey,' he

said, and shook his shoulders a little.

'Will it bother you if I stay in here a little while?'

'Sure—I don't mind if you want to stay.'

Mick knelt on the floor and untied the string on the big

hatbox. Her hands hovered over the edge of the lid, but for

some reason she could not make up her mind to open it

'I been thinking about what I've done on this already,' she said.

'And it may work and it may not.'

Bill went on reading. She still knelt over the box, but did not

open it. Her eyes wandered over to Bill as he sat with his back

to her. One of his big feet kept stepping on the other as he

read. His shoes were scuffed. Once their Dad had said that all

Bill's dinners went to his feet and his breakfast to one ear and

bis supper to the other ear, that was a sort of mean thing to say

and Bill had been sour over it for a month, but it was funny.

His ears flared out and were very red, and though he was just

out of high school he wore a size thirteen shoe. He tried to

hide his feet by scraping one foot behind the other when he

stood up, but that only made it worse.

Mick opened the box a few inches and then shut it again. She

felt too excited to look into it now. She got up and walked

around the room until she could calm down a little. After a

few minutes she stopped before the picture she had painted at

the free government art class for school kids last winter. There

was a picture of a storm on the ocean and a sea gull being

dashed through the air by the wind. It was called 'Sea Gull

with Back Broken in Storm.' The teacher had described the

ocean during the first two or three lessons, and that was what

nearly everybody started with. Most of the kids were like her,

though, and they had never really seen the ocean with their

own eyes.

That was the first picture she had done and Bill had tacked it

on his wall. All the rest of her pictures were full of people.

She had done some more ocean storms at first —one with an

airplane crashing down and people jumping out to save

themselves, and another with a trans-Atlan-

tic liner going down and all the people trying to push and

crowd into one little lifeboat.

Mick went into the closet of Bill's room and brought out some

other pictures she had done in the class—some pencil

drawings, some water-colors, and one canvas with oils. They

were all full of people. She had imagined a big fire on Broad

Street and painted how she thought it would be. The flames

were bright green and orange and Mr. Bran-non's restaurant

and the First National Bank were about the only buildings left.

People were lying dead in the streets and others were running

for their lives. One man was in his nightshirt and a lady was

trying to carry a bunch of bananas with her. Another picture

was called 'Boiler Busts in Factory,' and men were jumping

out of windows and running while a knot of kids in overalls

stood scrouged together, holding the buckets of dinner they

had brought to their Daddies. The oil painting was a picture of

the whole town fighting on Broad Street. She never knew why

she had painted this one and she couldn't think of the right

name for it. There wasn't any fire or storm or reason you could

see in the picture why all this battle was happening. But there

were more people and more moving around than in any other

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