Savage Holiday

by Richard Wright

  As she talked Erskine felt that he was walking barefooted over red hot coals. She’d heard his door when it had slammed shut! And she’d been out into the hallway while he’d been weirdly riding up and down, naked and sweating, in the “elevator! Good God! It’s a wonder that he’d not bumped into her!

  “...but Tony was so quiet that I got worried. You know how it is with children; when they make noise, you want ‘em to stop; but when they’re quiet, too quiet, you get to thinking that maybe something’s gone wrong...When I tried to see him this time-leaning out of my kitchen window—I couldn’t. I called and he didn’t answer. Then I was sure he’d disobeyed me and had gone down into the street. I was about to turn away from the window when I saw...I thought I saw—I know it sounds crazy— but I thought I saw naked feet dangling in the air, going up...”

  “Naked feet?” Erskine tried to make his voice sound disbelieving; he felt sweat on his face.

  “That’s what I thought I saw,” she mumbled, blinking, begging him with her eyes to believe her.

  “But what do you mean?” he demanded.

  “It sounds odd, I know,” she agreed. “The super and his wife, that Mrs. Westerman, won’t believe me. They don’t like me, anyway...But that’s what I saw...”

  “You think you saw that?” he asked her pointedly.

  “I saw feet...real f-feet; they w-were going uup—“ She broke off in confusion and her face reddened.

  “You think that somebody was on that balcony with Tony?”

  “I don’t know. But—”

  “Maybe Tony fell from some other floor,” he suggested. “He did play on other floors, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, her eyes cast down. “That’s true...Oh, God, I don’t know!” She looked at him hopefully. “Maybe that was a workman I saw...?”

  “On a Sunday morning?” There was a trace of scorn in his voice. “And what would he be doing barefooted?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered in a singsong voice.

  “Maybe Tony pulled off his shoes and was climbing,” he suggested. “Boys do things like that, you know, in the summertime—”

  “No; no...These were big feet I saw,” she asserted stoutly.

  “Could you be certain of how big they were from that distance?” he asked in a district attorney’s tone. “Maybe you were looking at another balcony—”

  “I don’t know; I don’t know...”

  “Are you sure that you didn’t see a reflection or something?” He pressed her gently, sympathetically.

  “I know it sounds wild...You didn’t hear anything on the balcony, did you?” she asked suddenly.

  “Tony woke me up with his drum,” he said easily. “Then I went back to sleep—”

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized; yet it was evident that she was not at all satisfied.

  “Were you alone?” he questioned her, wanting to see if she’d lie about the man who had spent the night with her.

  Resentment flickered in her eyes and two red spots bloomed in her cheeks and spread till her entire face burned. Yes; she knows that Mrs. Westerman has talked to me...

  “Yes,” she said uneasily, “at that time I was.” She looked off, biting her lips.

  She had evaded telling him the truth. A little whore...He felt more and more justified in not telling her that it was his feet dangling in the air that she had seen just before he had fallen through his window into the bathroom. Yet, clashing with his feeling of justification was a sense of anger and jealousy for her living so loosely, sloppily, for her giving herself so easily. He felt that she had no moral claim upon him, yet he wanted to save her, rescue her, and find out something about the strange man who’d spent the night with her...And, under it all, his heart was sullen and guilty because he realized that his emotions were hopelessly contradictory.

  “If you’d seen ‘naked feet’ like that,” he advised her with sudden coldness, “you should have called someone—”

  “Everybody’s telling me what I should have done!” she lamented, bursting into a wild sob. “I didn’t know...Maybe I only thought I saw something...” She was almost ready to give up her story. In despair she flung back her head and covered her eyes with her hands; her knees spread and the folds of her robe fell away and he was looking at the quick thickening of her thighs as they curved upward. Now, since his fear was abating, she was beginning to excite him all the more. She sat up at last and stared at him with full eyes clouded with tears and he could not meet her gaze.

  “For Tony’s sake, I’d like to help you in this,” he told her haltingly.

  “You’re very kind...” She smiled at him suddenly, smiled with tears in her eyes. “It helps a lot when you can talk to somebody. I don’t know why you bother with me. You know, I’ve always been a little scared of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know really. You always seem so friendly, yet so faraway, in another world—”

  “I’m not faraway at all, my dear,” he told her, his confidence waxing, feeling that he had no need to be uneasy with her now.

  -”I’m no intellectual,” she said, concerned with the impression that she was making. “I’m just a straight-from-the-shoulder, down-to-earth woman who says what she thinks. If I don’t do or say the right thing, it’s just because I don’t always know what the right thing to say or do is....” She smiled a smile that indicated that, though she was humble, she knew her intrinsic worth.

  “Don’t let that bother you,” he coaxed her.

  Her face showed sudden consternation. She stood abruptly and placed the index finger of her right hand to her temple and shook her head.

  “Lord, I’ve forgotten to get little Tony’s clothes together,” she wailed. “The undertaker wanted them as soon as possible...I’m so worried that I don’t know if I’m going or coming...”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m going to lay his little things out,” she said, going into the next room.

  Erskine sat and brooded. He’d help her; it was his duty to...But what a woman! She had no more morals than a cat...At last he now understood how she was able to live in the Elmira Apartments; she had a hat-check concession in a nightclub. Well...He’d lend a helping hand to this woman who’d killed her child’s spirit even before the child’s body had been accidentally killed...

  Mrs. Blake returned to the room with an armful of Tony’s clothes which she placed gently on a chair. Slowly she lifted up one of the child’s garments and stared at it with troubled eyes.

  “My little baby,” she began weeping again. “God, tell me what happened to him! Tony, you’re not gone...It can’t, it cant be true!”

  Erskine choked back a wild and hot impulse to tell her what had happened. No; she’d never believe the simple truth, would she? And she’d wonder why he hadn’t told before. Her tears unhinged him and he sat numbed and helpless.

  “You mustn’t give way, you know,” he implored her.

  Gradually she quieted a bit, then looked around with eyes swimming in tears. She rose and went to the sofa and picked up the crumpled copy of the New York Times and proceeded to spread it out and place the clothes on it. She was unfolding the second section when she paused and stared down intently at something that Erskine could not see.

  “Look!” she called in a low, breathless voice. “What?” he answered.

  “It’s blood!” she almost screamed, dropping the papers from her hands. “LOOK!”

  Erskine ran to her side. The sheet of newspaper lay at her feet and he saw on it a huge, irregular blotch of what was undoubtedly blood; it had soaked through several layers of the newspaper and glared guiltily at him...

  “That’s blood; isn’t it?” she asked in a whisper.

  Erskine froze and did not answer; as he stared he recalled what had happened. While in the hallway, he’d been holding his newspaper in his right hand; but, after he’d returned from the balcony, he, without knowing it, had switched the papers into his wounded l
eft hand. And, upon leaving Miss Brownell’s door, he had had the idea of exchanging her paper for his! AND HE HADN’T REALIZED THAT HIS BLEEDING LEFT PALM HAD LEFT THIS TELLTALE BLOTCH OF BLOOD...Now, how could he explain that stain of blood? Each moment seemed to bring forth some incident to enforce his silence about the truth. Slowly, furtively, he secreted his taped left palm...

  “That’s blood,” she said, talking more to herself than to him.

  “Looks like it,” he mumbled, not knowing what else to say.

  “But...” Turning, she looked full at him. “Do you think Tony was hurt before he fell?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What happened to my child?” she wailed again, gritting her teeth in anguish.

  He lifted the wad of newspaper, took it to the light, and made a pretense of examining it closely. What could he tell her? She’d take this bloody wad of newspaper to the police, unless he stalled her off somehow.

  “Do you think someone bothered Tony?” she asked.

  “It’s hard to tell,” he said. “He might have hurt himself, maybe—”

  “But he’d have called me if he had,” she insisted, her eyes blinking in bewilderment

  He had to think of something; yes; he had it...

  “Oh,” he pretended surprise. “I heard him crying this morning—”

  “Crying?”

  “Yes; I heard his drum; it woke me up...Then I heard him crying in the hallway,” he explained, actually visualizing what he was recounting. “I remember now; I went back to sleep, listening to his crying—”

  “Then he was hurt,” she said.

  “Might’ve fallen off the hobbyhorse,” he said with a hot and dry throat.

  “But my paper was in front of my door,” she said.

  “Then he must have come into the hallway and tried to stop the blood with the newspaper,” Erskine told her.

  “But he ought to have called me,” she protested, standing, her eyes wide with wonder.

  “Maybe he thought you’d punish him,” he argued.

  His words had a tremendous effect upon her; she turned her face from him, sank upon the heap of clothes in the chair, and sobbed.

  “Don’t say that” she begged. “Mrs. Westerman tells everybody that Tony was scared of me...No; no; no...Tony, Tony, what did mummy do to you? I wasn’t mean, Tony; Tony, my poor little helpless baaaby...” She gulped. “I whipped him when he was bad, when he wouldn’t obey...But what else could I do?”

  Erskine watched her like a hawk. Her sense of guilt and her grief were making her accept what he’d suggested, but he knew that her mind would revert again to this patch of blood and she’d be demanding explanations. WHAT WAS HE TO DO WITH THIS WOMAN? Stealthily, his left hand slipped into his coat and touched the tip ends of his four pencils; then he rammed the left hand into his trouser pocket; she must not see the tape, white and glaring, that covered the wound...With his right hand he touched her shoulder.

  “Don’t get too worked up, dear,” he told her. “I’m sure Tony hurt himself some way, maybe worse than he thought. Maybe that’s why he fell...”

  He led her to the sofa and she half fell upon it, leaned forward and covered her face with her hands; she sat like that a long time, sighing, trying to control herself.

  “Don’t you think you ought to tell the police about that blood on the paper?” he asked her; he had to know what she was going to do.

  “Oh, God, help me,” she moaned, lifting her face to him. “People say I’m bad...If I told about Tony being hurt and scared to tell me, then that Mrs. Westerman would crucify me. They’ll believe anything she says...I don’t know what to do.”

  She wept without restraint. He wanted to leave, but fear would not let him. Suppose she changed her mind and reported those bloody newspapers to the police? If the police saw that his left hand was cut, they’d want to know how it happened. And the most casual test would prove that the blood on those papers was of the same type that was in his veins. He had to remain close to her now for his own safety...

  “Have you no friends?” he inquired softly.

  “No,” she breathed.

  “I mean somebody with whom you can discuss all this?”

  “I wouldn’t dare tell the people I know how I live—”

  “But don’t you think we ought to show these bloody papers to the police?” he asked her again, boldly.

  “What good would that do?” she asked despairingly. “It must’ve happened like you said; he hurt himself and was scared, scared of me...And I don’t want people to talk and talk about me!”

  “Look, you must brace up...”

  She sat upright and stared stonily at the floor.

  “I’m more alone than you can imagine,” she confessed. Then, fearing that she was becoming too quickly intimate, she asked him: “Say, don’t you want something?” She glanced down at herself. “Oh, God, I look a mess tonight...Look, how about a drink?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “A cup of coffee, then?”

  “Well, I’ll take one with you.”

  “Good”

  As she went into the kitchen, he watched the flowing movements of her body under the rose-colored robe. Her sheer animality gripped him with wonder. Listening to her bustling in the kitchen, he knew that he’d made, in spite of himself, an emotional commitment. But what was he to do with the woman? He didn’t know her; he had to be careful. Maybe she was trying to trap him, preparing blackmail? Yet he sat, impatiently waiting for her return...Why was he so glad to welcome her gestures of modesty, even though he thought her a whore? Why had her plea of ignorance put him so quickly at ease? She knew exactly, instinctively, how to put confidence in him. But was she doing it deliberately? And would she ever link that splotch of blood with him?

  Suddenly a fearfully delicious idea declared itself in him: one act on his part could tie into a knot of meaning all of the contradictory impulses evoked in him by this dramatically sensual woman; one decision of his could allay his foolish guilt about Tony’s strange death; one gesture of his could quell the riot of those returning memories from the dark bog of his childhood past; one deed of his could place him so near her that she’d never think of that damned spot of blood; one resolution could banish this precipice to which his retirement had brought him and set him down amidst a plain of days stretching out before him; one vow could enable him to answer God’s call, save this woman, and serve Him as he should—He’d ask her to marry him!

  It was an executive’s decision—moral, clean-cut, efficient, practical; it hit the bull’s eye of his emotions. It solved his problems, hers, squared little Tony’s death, and placed him in the role of a missionary. His lips parted as the idea swam luminously in his consciousness. She’d obey him! She was simple; and, above all, he’d be the boss; he’d dominate her completely...

  But, hadn’t he once already rejected the idea of marrying her? Yes; but the situation was different now. He was in danger. And he need not really care what his friends would think...Hadn’t he stood against them for years in his attitude toward religion? He’d marry her and take her to another city...He was not really guilty, but his marrying her would solve everything, banish all the shadows and make his world simple and concrete once more...

  But how was he to go about this? He must make no blunders. It wouldn’t be opportune to even hint at it now; he’d wait a little...Ah! His waiting would be predicated upon his helping her arrange Tony’s funeral; that would keep him near her. How wonderfully it all coincided! Not a single strand would dangle loose!

  At last she came in with a tray filled with ham sandwiches, a pot of coffee, sugar, and cream.

  “Oh, Mrs. Blake, you shouldn’t’ve bothered, really—”

  “But I haven’t had a bite to eat today,” she told him.

  “I’m hungry too,” he admitted.

  “I’m Mabel,” she murmured coyly, placing his cup of coffee on an end table next to his easy chair.

  “And I’m Erskine,�
� he said, smiling.

  They ate in silence. Now that he’d decided to go all the way, he studied her. She was of medium height; her deep-set eyes were dark brown and held a remote, shy, impulsive look; her mouth was a little large without being in any way loose, with shapely, strong lips; but what excited him most were strong white teeth which, through her almost always slightly parted lips, could be seen hovering in her mouth, as though waiting to bite...

  “You know, Mabel,” he began quietly, “I’m an insurance man. Only yesterday I retired after thirty years. I’m quite free and I’d be only too glad to handle the arrangements for Tony.”

  She paused with a mouthful of food, swallowed, and tears flooded her eyes.

  “Oh, God,” she sighed, “would you do that? I’m so lost...”

  “There, there,” he consoled her, patting her arm, secretly glad of the firm but yielding flesh beneath the tips of his fingers.

  Her face reflected humble admiration.

  “You’re retired?” she asked incredulously. “But you’re so young!”

  “I’m forty-three.” He struggled to keep pride out of his voice.

  “And I’m twenty-nine,” she said absently. “But how could you retire so early?”

  “I started work when I was thirteen.”

  She shook her head; she couldn’t understand it.

  “I began working when I was twelve, and I’m getting nowhere,” she confessed.

  He basked in the glory of the praise in her eyes. “Tell me, what plans have you for Tony?”

  “I hate to be such a bother.”

  “You’re not. And I want to help. Really, I do.” “I’m not used to someone taking worries off my mind,” she said wistfully. “It makes me a little scared.”