Savage Holiday

by Richard Wright

  “Look!” Tony was screaming now with a mixture of compulsive terror and fascination in his face. “The little baby fighters are falling down...!”

  Sweat had stood on Tony’s face and his body trembled. He looked wildly about, as though seeing something that Erskine could not see. Suddenly he dropped the planes; then, in an effort to find shelter from his self-created nightmare, he grabbed Erskine’s legs, shut his eyes, and clung to him frantically.

  “What’s the matter, Tony?” Erskine had asked him, holding him.

  “Oh! Oh! I’m so scared,” Tony had whimpered.

  “Now, now,” Erskine had said. “It’s nothing. Don’t cry! I’m here with you...”

  In the end Erskine too had grown frightened, for he could feel what was frightening the child. What could he do for Tony? He’s all mixed up...He ought to talk to Mrs. Blake about Tony...But had he the right to interfere? He had stooped and gathered up the bombing planes from the sidewalk and handed them to Tony. But Tony would not take them; he backed off, shaking his head, turning his face away.

  “I don’t want ‘em; I don’t want ‘em,” Tony had sobbed, flinging out his hands.

  “But they’re yours, Tony,” he’d tried to persuade the child. “Take ‘em and keep ‘em.”

  “They scare me; they scare me!” he’d sobbed.

  Tony had started running towards the entrance of the building. Erskine had been of a mind to run after him, to try to comfort him, but he checked himself. The bombing planes suddenly felt loathsome in his hands and he had an impulse to toss them into the street. But, no...He’d be acting like Tony if he did that...He sighed, picturing Tony hiding and sobbing somewhere, trembling and brooding over images of life much too big and complicated for him. He took the abandoned bombing planes and gave them to Mrs. Westerman.

  “Just keep these for Tony, wont you?” he’d asked her. “He forgot them and left them on the sidewalk.”

  “He, he—“ Mrs. Westerman had chuckled. “That child’s a case. He’s always doing that. He’s a queer child, he is...He plays alone, then gets scared and runs off and leaves his toys.

  “Does he do that all the time?”

  “All the time,” Mrs. Westerman had said, shaking her head. “He’s scared of something...”

  Erskine had been so angry and depressed that he had not wanted to eat his dinner that night.

  He still sat hunched on the bench in Central Park, staring at the green grass long after the images of Tony’s tortured face and his bombing planes had vanished from his mind. Good God...Now, he understood it. Yes, poor little Tony had thought that he, naked, frantic, wild-eyed, had been about to fight him and fear had made him lose his balance and topple...Christ, were there happenings like that in this world? Were there shadows of that density lurking behind these bright straight streets? He longed to discuss this with somebody, but he felt that at the very moment of uttering his words to describe it its reality would somehow vanish. Strangely, the accident had happened more than four hours ago, and it was not until this moment that he had realized the truth.

  Brooding, the memory of his own long dead mother returned to him. Yes; he understood Tony. He too recalled watching strange men tramping in and out of the house in his childhood, and he felt a surging sense of terror, old, buried, trying to recapture him. He cut the distasteful recollection short by doubling his fists, rising and glaring about, oblivious of his surroundings. He muttered out loud: “Women oughtn’t to do things like that...”

  Again his emotions became religious. The certainty he had felt in church returned. He must somehow redeem what had happened to Tony! That was it! Conviction hardened in him. In redeeming Tony, he’d be redeeming himself. How neatly the double motives fitted! He’d help to purge the world of such darkness...How right he’d been in refusing to accept blame for Tony’s death; it hadn’t been his fault at all. Only an ignorantly lustful woman could spin such spider webs of evil to snare men and innocent children! As he walked he told himself with the staunchest conviction of his life: “That Mrs. Blake’s the guilty one...”

  He entered a cafeteria and toyed absently with a plate of food. On the sidewalk again, he headed slowly toward home. In the lower hallway of the building he met Mrs. Westerman.

  “What about Tony?” he asked her.

  Mrs. Westerman shook her head and closed her eyes.

  “Ah, that poor thing...God bless his soul...He died still holding that toy pistol of his,” she said. “I think it was one you gave him.”

  “Did they find out how he fell?”

  “He was just playing and fell,” Mrs. Westerman told him. “That’s what the Medical Examiner said. And of course, the child never regained conscious.”

  “Is there anything I can do for Mrs. Blake?” he asked her.

  Mrs. Westerman let her deep, gray eyes rest meltingly on Erskine’s face.

  “You’re so kind, Mr. Fowler,” she sighed. “Tony was so fond of you. He spoke of you all the time. Told me many times that he wished you were his daddy...He was so alone, that child.” Mrs. Westerman shook her head and closed her eyes again. “Lord, I don’t, know...” Her voice trailed off.

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Westerman?” Erskine asked, sensing that she was about to say something about Mrs. Blake.

  “I just don’t know,” Mrs. Westerman repeated significantly.

  “What are you talking about?” Erskine demanded, hugging his Bible and Sunday-school-book tightly, feeling tension entering him.

  “I’m not one to judge others, Mr. Fowler,” Mrs. Westerman said, looking Erskine full in the face.

  “You can speak frankly to me,” he told her.

  Mrs. Westerman drew a deep breath, waved her hand in front of her eyes as though to brush aside a repellent image, and then lifted her hands in a gesture of disgust.

  “That woman...And she calls herself a mother,” Mrs. Westerman sighed again. Plainly she wanted to be coaxed to talk.

  “Yes,” Erskine said, feeling relieved, “I understand.”

  “She’s upstairs now. Just got back from the undertaker, she did. She’s just shattered. But she blames everybody but herself for what happened. She says she wants to sue the building for letting that railing be loose like that...Says she’s sure somebody must’ve been on that balcony—”

  “What?” Erskine asked in suppressed alarm. “Somebody on the balcony. Somebody with Tony?” “She’s hinting at something like that—”

  “But what does she mean?’ he asked, striving to appear calmer.

  “God only knows ..

  “Does she think that somebody pushed Tony off?”

  “She didn’t say...You can hardly talk to her. She was weeping and vomiting...She says that she thinks she saw a naked person on the balcony...” Erskine was petrified. Terror rose so hotly in his chest that for a moment he could not breathe. He struggled for speech.

  “What?” He remembered that he had to control himself. “That’s my balcony...What’s she talking about? A naked man?” Mrs. Westerman had not used the word “man,” and Erskine knew that he ought not to have used it “What is this, Mrs. Westerman?”

  Mrs. Westerman caught hold of Erskine’s arm and whispered: “Come in here a moment, Mr. Fowler. I want to talk to you in private...”

  He followed her inside her dingy apartment; he stood stiffly, looking around at the shabby, over-stuffed furniture. She had caught him completely off balance and he regretted having allowed himself to evince so much surprise. He’d change his attitude at once.

  “What is this you’re trying to tell me, Mrs. Westerman?” he asked her rather roughly, reverting to his businessman’s attitude. But he was really asking himself if he shouldn’t have told the police after all.

  “Listen,” Mrs. Westerman whispered to him, obviously relishing her role. “She had a man in her apartment until five this morning, see? That’s the kind of woman she is...”

  “Oh! But I thought she said that she was sleeping when Tony fell—”

&nbs
p; “She was; she claims—”

  “Then how could she see somebody on my balcony?”

  “She says she got up once to signal to Tony not to make so much noise,” Mrs. Westerman explained. “Then she says that she went back to bed...For a long while, she says, she didn’t hear anything...She got worried, thinking that Tony had gone down into the street...She then went to her window again and couldn’t see Tony. Now, here’s the funny part of it...She says that she saw feet...somebody’s feet dangling in the air...She says that she thought that it was some other child playing with Tony, you understand? I’ll tell you her very words...‘Naked feet dangling in the air’...Can you imagine that? Maybe she was drunk; she admits she’d been drinking a little...Mr. Fowler, I could still smell liquor on her breath when she went down with me in the elevator to see Tony’s little body lying there...” Mrs. Westerman shrugged. “Or maybe she’s all mixed up, in a kind of fog or something; you know? Maybe she’s remembering the man who was with her, hunh? Could be, couldn’t it, Mr. Fowler? She feels guilty now and she’s trying to think up something out of thin air to take the blame off of her...”

  “But I don’t understand,” Erskine protested, blinking. “Why, that’s my balcony...I heard nobody out there but Tony; he was beating his drum...And how could she talk of seeing someone naked out there...?” He choked, but managed to continue. “And what’s all that got to do with Tony’s falling?”

  “Nothing, if you ask me, Mr. Fowler,” Mrs. Westerman said stoutly. “And my husband’ll say the same thing. He’s not here now; he’s down at the police station trying to answer all their damn-fool questions. Listen, I think she was drunk, drunk as a coot. I think she was confused and I’d say so in court under oath, so help me God.”

  “But how could she see onto my balcony?” Erskine asked. He knew well that she could see his balcony, but he thought it best to establish his ignorance of that; he wanted to be totally innocent of everything connected with Tony’s falling.

  “From her kitchen window, if she leaned out a little—”

  “Oh,” he breathed, pretending surprise, “I didn’t know that.”

  “She can get a tiny glimpse of your balcony...But, Mr. Fowler, she didn’t see anything; take my word for it” Mrs. Westerman swore. “I told her to her face that I doubted if she saw anything or anybody on the balcony but Tony...Listen, Mr. Fowler, she’s just like all these loose women; they’re a dime a dozen...When somebody catches ‘em with a man, they start yelling: ‘Rape!’ it’s a wonder she didn’t say it was a nigger she saw. You understand?”

  “I understand,” Erskine said, nodding.

  “‘Naked feet dangling in the air’ on the balcony,” Mrs. Westerman repeated Mrs. Blake’s words in a tone of derision. “And, would you believe it, she said that those feet were going up, mind you; those naked feet were going up in the air! When I told her that that was impossible, she switched back to that damned iron railing...”

  “Say, just how drunk was she when she went down this morning to see Tony?” Erskine asked her shrewdly.

  “Ha!” Mrs. Westerman exclaimed dramatically, rolling her eyes at him. She sucked her lungs full of air and launched out: “Listen, Mr. Fowler, you haven’t heard anything yet...When that woman started talking to me about ‘naked feet dangling in the air,’ ‘naked feet going up,’ I asked her real sweetlike: “What feet are you talking about, Mrs. Blake? Tell me, what color were these feet?’ Well, she started blinking and stalling and then she said: White, of course, all feet are white...’ ‘Are all feet white, Mrs. Blake?’ I asked her. ‘Maybe they were colored feet,’ I suggested to her. She fell for it, hook, line and sinker, and she says to me: ‘No; it wasn’t a colored person’s feet...’ She didn’t catch on; then I says to her, I did: ‘Listen here, Mrs. Blake, maybe they were pink feet you saw?’ And then, still innocent as a child, she says to me, shaking her head: ‘What do you mean? I’m not blind! I know what I saw!’ Then I says to her: ‘I ain’t saying you’re blind, but I want you to describe those feet to me...Now, just how many feet did you see, Mrs. Blake?’ She thinks a minute, then says: Two. I saw two feet.’ ‘Going up in the air?” I asks. ‘Yes; going up,’ she says. I showed her my foot (I was wearing my house slippers then) and I says to her: ‘My feet are pink, see? Now, were the feet you saw, were they pink, like mine?’

  She thinks a minute, then she says, real quick-like: ‘Yes; I guess they were pink.’ Ha, ha...Mr. Fowler, I had her right where I wanted her. Now, Mr. Fowler, I’m no drinker myself, but I know a lush when I see one. So I says to her: ‘Mrs. Blake, tell me, just how many toes did each foot have?’ She blinked again, like she didn’t know what I was getting at. Really, when you get right down to it, she’s kinda stupid, you know. She started mumbling about how everybody mistreats her and so forth, then she wanted to know: ‘What are you talking about? ‘Feet have five toes. Everybody knows that. Why, you’re talking like you think I didn’t see feet...’ ‘Hunh, hunh,’ I says to her. ‘Now, look here, Mrs. Blake, feet have five toes, but was one toe very long? One toe was very long, wasn’t it?’ ‘What do you mean?’ she asks me. ‘One toe being very long?’ ‘Look,’ I says, ‘we all have a big toe, don’t we? Now, was one toe very, very long?” She still didn’t get the point; I had to spell it out to her. ‘Listen here, Mrs. Blake,’ I says. ‘If the big toes on those pink feet you saw were very long—long like snouts, like elephant trunks, then I understand it all? See? You saw pink elephants, dearie! Not feet! Maybe you had a mild case of D.T.’s, hunh? You saw little pink elephants going up, floating in the air...Now, get some sense in your head and stop all this crazy talk about seeing naked feet...If you don’t, I’ll tell those cops just how drunk you really were, you hear?’ Well, Mr. Fowler, that shut her up good and clean. She clamped her mouth and she hasn’t breathed another word about ‘naked feet dangling in the air,’ “ Mrs. Westerman finished on a note of high triumph. “Mr. Fowler, that woman won’t talk about naked feet again, I assure you.”

  Erskine was numb. He had to see that woman; he had to do something and soon...

  “Are you sure she’s in now?” he asked her.

  “Oh, sure; she’s up here. And do you know, with all of her goings and comings, she’s as much as admitted to me that she hasn’t got a single, real, honest-to-goodness friend she can turn to now? Nobody! Can you beat that? May God strike me dead, but many’s the time she’s rolled up here at that door—“ Mrs. Westerman pointed dramatically “—in a big shiny car at two or three o’clock in the morning, half drunk, swaying like a sheet on a clothesline as she walked...And always some cheap little punk waving at her from the car before he drove off...Of course, sometimes they went up with her, but don’t ask me what they did! Now, she’s alone...What kind of friends did she have, I ask you?”

  “God only knows,” Erskine sighed.

  “Yes, God only knows,” Mrs. Westerman readily relished the phrase and rolled it on her tongue. She shook her head. “It’s a pity that a fine, Christian man like you has to be bothered with the likes of her, Mr. Fowler. Oh, that Mrs. Blake...She sure upset us all today. My poor husband came tearing in here, white as flour, asking me to phone upstairs and tell Mrs. Blake that her son was hurt. Would you believe it? I had to wait on that phone till she was sober enough to understand what I was saying...That phone rang six times before it could wake her out of a drunken sleep...”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Erskine clucked his tongue and shook his head; his legs were trembling.

  “Well, let’s all hope for the best,” Mrs. Westerman sang, throwing a bright, ironic smile at Erskine.

  “Yes. Well, see you later,” Erskine said.

  He rode up in the elevator, thinking” She saw someone on the balcony...But she isn’t sure...Good God! She was close...Would she tell the police what she had seen, or had Mrs. Westerman’s scornful rejection of her confused perceptions made her hesitate? He entered his apartment and stared at the bulk of the unread Sunday paper. How like a dream it all was! No; it was real. Ton
y’s death was real; Tony’s timid questions about where babies came from were real...He lay on his unmade bed and the afternoon wore on. The sky grew gradually dark and deep shadows entered the room. He rose and stared moodily out of his open window at the window of Mrs. Blake’s living room and was surprised to see a light burning there. Her window was up too. Go and see her now...No; wait...Wait for what? He didn’t know.

  He gave a start as his phone rang. He picked up the receiver and heard a dim hum, and back of that hum he caught the faint sounds of street traffic, honking of auto horns, a policeman’s whistle...

  “Hello,” he called into the phone.

  Silence.

  “Hello, hello,” he repeated.

  Still silence, but the sounds of street traffic were still audible.

  “Hello!” he raised his voice, his eyes worried.

  The line clicked. Hmnnn...Had someone waited just long enough to hear his voice, and then hung up? He cradled the phone and stared. Had someone, besides Mrs. Blake, seen him naked on that balcony? But, if they had, wouldn’t they have spoken to the police about it before now? Oh, maybe that had been Mrs. Blake? He rushed to his open window and heard the sound of her television set: music was playing. The sound he’d heard on the phone was that of street traffic...He shook his head; he was too wrought up; he was imagining things. Whoever had called would call again no doubt...

  He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers though his damp hair. It was almost night. Restless, he rose and stood at his window and stared at the lights of the city. He spun round as his phone rang again. He snatched it up and spoke:

  “Hello!”

  There was no answer. This time there was a cacophony of faint voices, as though the transmitter on the other end was picking up sounds in a bar or restaurant. He darted to his open window and peered into Mrs. Blake’s living room. The clear strains of music were still coming over...Definitely, it was not Mrs. Blake who was phoning him.