by Jane Bowles
She had been playing in the pit for a long time. Like many other children, she fancied herself at the head of a regiment; at the same time, she did not join in any neighborhood games, preferring to play all alone in the pit, which lay about a mile beyond the edge of town. She was a scrupulously clean child with a strong, immobile face and long, well-arranged curls. Sometimes when she went home toward evening there were traces of clay on her dark coat, even though she had worked diligently with the brush she carried along every afternoon. She despised untidiness, and she feared that the clay might betray her headquarters, which she suspected the other children of planning to invade.
One afternoon she stumbled and fell on the clay when it was still slippery and wet from a recent rainfall. She never failed to leave the pit before twilight, but this time she decided to wait until it was dark so that her sullied coat would attract less attention. Wisely she refrained from using her brush on the wet clay.
Having always left the pit at an earlier hour, she felt that an explanation was due to her soldiers; to announce simply that she had fallen down was out of the question. She knew that her men trusted her and would therefore accept in good faith any reason she chose to give them for this abrupt change in her day’s routine, but convincing herself was a more difficult task. She never told them anything until she really believed what she was going to say. After concentrating a few minutes, she summoned them with a bugle call.
“Men,” she began, once they were lined up at attention, “I’m staying an hour longer today than usual, so I can work on the mountain goat maneuvers. I explained mountain-goat fighting last week, but I’ll tell you what it is again. It’s a special technique used in the mountains around big cliffs. No machine can do mountain-goat fighting. We’re going to specialize.” She paused. “Even though I’m staying, I want you to go right ahead and have your recreation hour as usual, like you always do the minute I leave. I have total respect for your recreation, and I know you fight as hard as you play.”
She dismissed them and walked up to her own headquarters in the deepest part of the pit. At the end of the day the color of the red pit deepened; then, after the sun had sunk behind the hill, the clay lost its color. She began to feel cold and a little uneasy. She was so accustomed to leaving her men each day at the same hour, just before they thronged into the gymnasium, that now lingering on made her feel like an intruder.
It was almost night when she climbed out of the pit. She glanced up at the hilltop house and then started down toward the deserted lower road. When she reached the outskirts of town she chose the darkest streets so that the coat would be less noticeable. She hated the thick pats of clay that were embedded in its wool; moreover she was suffering from a sense of inner untidiness as a result of the unexpected change in her daily routine. She walked along slowly, scuffing her heels, her face wearing the expression of a person surfeited with food. Far underneath her increasingly lethargic mood lurked a feeling of apprehension; she knew she would be reprimanded for returning home after dark, but she never would admit either the possibility of punishment or the fear of it. At this period she was rapidly perfecting a psychological mechanism which enabled her to forget, for long stretches of time, that her parents existed.
She found her father in the vestibule hanging his coat up on a peg. Her heart sank as he turned around to greet her. Without seeming to, he took in the pats of clay at a glance, but his shifting eyes never alighted candidly on any object.
“You’ve been playing in that pit below the Speed house again,” he said to her. “From now on, I want you to play at the Kinsey Memorial Grounds.” Since he appeared to have nothing to say, she started away, but immediately he continued. “Some day you may have to live in a town where the administration doesn’t make any provision for children at all. Or it may provide you with a small plot of land and a couple of dinky swings. There’s a very decent sum goes each year to the grounds here. They provide you with swings, seesaws and chin bars.” He glanced furtively at her coat. “Tomorrow,” he said, “I drive past that pit on my way out to Sam’s. I’ll draw up to the edge of the road and look down. See that you’re over at the Memorial Grounds with the other children.”
Mary never passed the playgrounds without quickening her step. This site, where the screams of several dozen children mingled with the high, grinding sound of the moving swings, she had always automatically hated. It was the antithesis of her clay pit and the well-ordered barracks inside it.
When she went to bed, she was in such a state of wild excitement that she was unable to sleep. It was the first time that her father’s observations had not made her feel either humiliated or ill. The following day after school she set out for the pit. As she was climbing the long hill (she always approached her barracks from the lower road), she slackened her pace and stood still. All at once she had had the fear that by looking into her eyes the soldiers might divine her father’s existence. To each one of them she was like himself—a man without a family. After a minute she resumed her climb. When she reached the edge of the pit, she put both feet together and jumped inside.
“Men,” she said, once she had blown the bugle and made a few routine announcements, “I know you have hard muscles in your legs. But how would you like to have even harder ones?” It was a rhetorical question to which she did not expect an answer. “We’re going to have hurdle races and plain running every day now for two hours.”
Though in her mind she knew dimly that this intensified track training was preparatory to an imminent battle on the Memorial playgrounds, she did not dare discuss it with her men, or even think about it too precisely herself. She had to avoid coming face to face with an impossibility.
“As we all know,” she continued, “we don’t like to have teams because we’ve been through too much on the battlefield all together. Every day I’ll divide you up fresh before the racing, so that the ones who are against each other today, for instance, will be running on the same side tomorrow. The men in our outfit are funny about taking sides against each other, even just in play and athletics. The other outfits in this country don’t feel the same as we do.”
She dug her hands into her pockets and hung her head sheepishly. She was fine now, and certain of victory. She could feel the men’s hearts bursting with love for her and with pride in their regiment. She looked up—a car was rounding the bend, and as it came nearer she recognized it as her father’s.
“Men,” she said in a clear voice, “you can do what you want for thirty minutes while I make out the racing schedule and the team lists.” She stared unflinchingly at the dark blue sedan and waited with perfect outward calm for her father to slow down; she was still waiting after the car had curved out of sight. When she realized that he was gone, she held her breath. She expected her heart to leap for joy, but it did not.
* * *
“Now I’ll go to my headquarters,” she announced in a flat voice. “I’ll be back with the team lists in twenty-five minutes.” She glanced up at the highway; she felt oddly disappointed and uneasy. A small figure was descending the stone steps on the other side of the highway. It was a boy. She watched in amazement; she had never seen anyone come down these steps before. Since the highway had replaced the old country road, the family living in the hilltop house came and went through the back door.
Watching the boy, she felt increasingly certain that he was on his way down to the pit. He stepped off the curb after looking prudently for cars in each direction; then he crossed the highway and clambered down the hill. Just as she had expected him to, when he reached the edge of the pit he seated himself on the ground and slid into it, smearing his coat—dark like her own—with clay.
“It’s a big clay pit,” he said, looking up at her. He was younger than she, but he looked straight into her eyes without a trace of shyness. She knew he was a stranger in town; she had never seen him before. This made him less detestable, nonetheless she had to be rid of him shortly because the men were expecting her back with the te
am lists.
“Where do you come from?” she asked him.
“From inside that house.” He pointed at the hilltop.
“Where do you live when you’re not visiting?”
“I live inside that house,” he repeated, and he sat down on the floor of the pit.
“Sit on the orange crate,” she ordered him severely. “You don’t pay any attention to your coat.”
He shook his head. She was exasperated with him because he was untidy, and he had lied to her. She knew perfectly well that he was merely a visitor in the hilltop house.
“Why did you come out this door?” she asked, looking at him sharply. “The people in that house go out the back. It’s level there and they’ve got a drive.”
“I don’t know why,” he answered simply.
“Where do you come from?” she asked again.
“That’s my house.” He pointed to it as if she were asking him for the first time. “The driveway in back’s got gravel in it. I’ve got a whole box of it in my room. I can bring it down.”
“No gravel’s coming in here that belongs to a liar,” she interrupted him. “Tell me where you come from and then you can go get it.”
He stood up. “I live in that big house up there,” he said calmly. “From my room I can see the river, the road down there and the road up here, and this pit and you.”
“It’s not your room!” she shouted angrily. “You’re a visitor there. I was a visitor last year at my aunt’s.”
“Good-bye.”
He was climbing out of the pit. Once outside he turned around and looked down at her. There was an expression of fulfillment on his face.
“I’ll bring the gravel some time soon,” he said.
She watched him crossing the highway. Then automatically she climbed out of the pit.
She was mounting the tedious stone steps behind him. Her jaw was clamped shut, and her face had gone white with anger. He had not turned around once to look at her. As they were nearing the top it occurred to her that he would rush into the house and slam the door in her face. Hurriedly she climbed three steps at once so as to be directly behind him. When he opened the door, she pushed across the threshold with him; he did not seem to notice her at all. Inside the dimly lit vestibule the smell of fresh paint was very strong. After a few seconds her eyes became more accustomed to the light, and she saw that the square room was packed solid with furniture. The boy was already pushing his way between two identical bureaus which stood back to back. The space between them was so narrow that she feared she would not be able to follow him. She looked around frantically for a wider artery, but seeing that there was none, she squeezed between the bureaus, pinching her flesh painfully, until she reached a free space at the other end. Here the furniture was less densely packed—in fact, three armchairs had been shoved together around an uncluttered area, wide enough to provide leg room for three people, providing they did not mind a tight squeeze. To her left a door opened on to total darkness. She expected him to rush headlong out of the room into the dark in a final attempt to escape her, but to her astonishment he threaded his way carefully in the opposite direction until he reached the circle of chairs. He entered it and sat down in one of them. After a second’s hesitation, she followed his example.
The chair was deeper and softer than any she had ever sat in before. She tickled the thick velvet arms with her fingertips. Here and there, they grazed a stiff area where the nap had worn thin. The paint fumes were making her eyes smart, and she was beginning to feel apprehensive. She had forgotten to consider that grown people would probably be in the house, but now she gazed uneasily into the dark space through the open door opposite her. It was cold in the vestibule, and despite her woollen coat she began to shiver.
“If he would tell me now where he comes from,” she said to herself, “then I could go away before anybody else came.” Her anger had vanished, but she could not bring herself to speak aloud, or even to turn around and look at him. He sat so still that it was hard for her to believe he was actually beside her in his chair.
Without warning, the dark space opposite her was lighted up. Her heart sank as she stared at a green wall, still shiny with wet paint. It hurt her eyes. A woman stepped into the visible area, her heels sounding on the floorboards. She was wearing a print dress and over it a long brown sweater which obviously belonged to a man.
“Are you there, Franklin?” she called out, and she walked into the vestibule and switched on a second light. She stood still and looked at him.
“I thought I heard you come in,” she said. Her voice was flat, and her posture at that moment did not inspire Mary with respect. “Come to visit Franklin?” she asked, as if suddenly aware that her son was not alone. “I think I’ll visit for a while.” She advanced toward them. When she reached the circle she squeezed in and sat opposite Mary.
“I hoped we’d get a visitor or two while we were here,” she said to her. “That’s why I arranged this little sitting place. All the rest of the rooms are being painted, or else they’re still too smelly for visiting. Last time we were here we didn’t see anyone for the whole two weeks. But he was a baby then. I thought maybe this time he’d contact when he went out. He goes out a lot of the day.” She glanced at her son. “You’ve got some dirt on that chair,” she remarked in a tone which did not express the slightest disapproval. She turned back to Mary. “I’d rather have a girl than a boy,” she said. “There’s nothing much I can discuss with a boy. A grown woman isn’t interested in the same things a boy is interested in.” She scratched a place below her shoulder blades. “My preference is discussing furnishings. Always has been. I like that better than I like discussing styles. I’ll discuss styles if the company wants to, but I don’t enjoy it nearly so well. The only thing about furnishings that leaves me cold is curtains. I never was interested in curtains, even when I was young. I like lamps about the best. Do you?”
Mary was huddling as far back into her chair as she could, but even so, without drawing her legs up and sitting on her feet, it was impossible to avoid physical contact with the woman, whose knees lightly touched hers every time she shifted a little in her chair. Inwardly, too, Mary shrank from her. She had never before been addressed so intimately by a grown person. She closed her eyes, seeking the dark gulf that always had separated her from the adult world. And she clutched the seat cushion hard, as if she were afraid of being wrenched from the chair.
“We came here six years ago,” the woman continued, “when the Speeds had their house painted, and now they’re having it painted again, so we’re here again. They can’t be in the house until it’s good and dry because they’ve both got nose trouble—both the old man and the old lady—but we’re not related. Only by marriage. I’m a kind of relative to them, but not enough to be really classed as a relative. Just enough so that they’d rather have me come and look after the house than a stranger. They gave me a present of money last time, but this time it’ll be clothes for the boy. There’s nothing to boys’ clothes really. They don’t mean anything.”
She sighed and looked around her.
“Well,” she said, “we would like them to ask us over here more often than they do. Our town is way smaller than this, way smaller, but you can get all the same stuff there that you can here, if you’ve got the money to pay. I mean groceries and clothing and appliances. We’ve got all that. As soon as the walls are dry we go back. Franklin doesn’t want to. He don’t like his home because he lives in an apartment; it’s in the business section. He sits in a lot and don’t go out and contact at all.”
The light shone through Mary’s tightly closed lids. In the chair next to her there was no sound of a body stirring. She opened her eyes and looked down. His ankles were crossed and his feet were absolutely still.
“Franklin,” the woman said, “get some candy for me and the girl.”
When he had gone she turned to Mary. “He’s not a rough boy like the others,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d d
o if he was one of the real ones with all the trimmings. He’s got some girl in him, thank the Lord. I couldn’t handle one of the real ones.”
He came out of the freshly painted room carrying a box.
“We keep our candy in tea boxes. We have for years,” the woman said. “They’re good conservers.” She shrugged her shoulders. “What more can you expect? Such is life.” She turned to her son. “Open it and pass it to the girl first. Then me.”
The orange box was decorated with seated women and temples. Mary recognized it; her mother used the same tea at home. He slipped off the two rubber bands that held the cover on, and offered her the open box. With stiff fingers she took a stick of green candy from the top; she did not raise her eyes.
A few minutes later she was running alone down the stone steps. It was almost night, but the sky was faintly green near the horizon. She crossed the highway and stood on the hill only a few feet away from the pit. Far below her, lights were twinkling in the Polish section. Down there the shacks were stacked one against the other in a narrow strip of land between the lower road and the river.
After gazing down at the sparkling lights for a while, she began to breathe more easily. She had never experienced the need to look at things from a distance before, nor had she felt the relief that it can bring. All at once, the air stirring around her head seemed delightful; she drank in great draughts of it, her eyes fixed on the lights below.
“This isn’t the regular air from up here that I’m breathing,” she said to herself. “It’s the air from down there. It’s a trick I can do.”
She felt her blood tingle as it always did whenever she scored a victory, and she needed to score several of them in the course of each day. This time she was defeating the older woman.
The following afternoon, even though it was raining hard, her mother could not stop her from going out, but she had promised to keep her hood buttoned and not to sit on the ground.
