by Dell Shannon
"No trouble at all," said Mendoza without a smile. "Tell me-and take your time to think about it-did your sister say anything to you recently about being annoyed by a man who followed her and stared at her?"
"They did, sometimes," she said, nodding. "I told her it was account of her looking so-you know-and that Miss Weir at that school said so too. But-you mean special, just lately? I can't remember she mentioned anything like that… Wait a minute though, she did! Only it wasn't a man like that, like you mean, somebody whistling at her or making smart cracks. Way she said it, it was more as if there was something sort of funny about it. She didn't say much-just about some guy who stared at her, got on her nerves, you know. She said she was going try find out who he was, and get him to stop."
Mendoza almost dropped his cigarette, suppressing an exclamation. "She said that? It sounds as if he were someone local then, someone who lives or works around here?"
"Don't know anything about that, I don't think she mentioned any particular place she'd seen him-except-she did say, and I guess that must've been what she meant, she thought she knew somebody who knew this guy. A kid over on Commerce Street, she said… No, I don't know if this kid lived on Commerce or she'd maybe just seen him there, see. She just said, next time she saw him she was going to ask him who this other guy was, and tell him tell the guy stop bothering her."
"She had seen this boy with him?"
"Maybe. I don't know. She must've, or how would she know the boy knew him? All Elena said she knew about him, was his name's Danny… . I didn't pay much notice to it, she didn't sound like it was anything important, just-like it made her kind of mad because it was so silly."
Do we start moving at last? Mendoza asked himself. A little something, a nuance, no more-maybe nothing at all-but a starting place.
He was pleased. He asked her where she wanted to go.
"Main an' First, its nice of you… You mean you think this guy might be the one? But it wasn't anything at all, or I'd sure have remembered and told you before! She didn't sound like she was scared of him or anything. You might ask that Miss Weir about it, though, if you think it's real important, because Elena did say she was going to tell her all about it-maybe she told her more than she did me."
FIVE
Martin Lindstrom put on the blue corduroy jacket that was getting too small for him, and buttoned it up slowly. He didn't feel very good.
"Where you going?" she asked sharply.
"Just out awhile." He still had fifteen cents left but that wasn't enough to get into a movie, except the one over on Main that had Mexican pictures, and those were never any good even if you could talk Mexican, nothing interesting in them.
"You be back for supper, mind! I don't want you gallivanting all over the streets alla time like these kids their mothers don't care what they're up to. Why you got to go out, Marty? It's raining something fierce, you better stay home."
"I-I-got to see a guy's all," he said. "One o' the guys at school, Ma, I said I'd help him with his homework, see."
"Oh." Her tight mouth relaxed a little; she was proud of his good marks at school.
It was a lie; and he didn't want to go out in the rain, but he didn't want to stay here either; he felt bad, but he wasn't sure about what exactly, just everything. He'd been feeling that way a long while, all wrong but not knowing how or where, seemed like. Of course he knew when everything had sort of started to get on top of him like this, it was after Dad went. He wondered where Dad was now. The funny thing was, and it was part of the bad feeling now, he ought to be feeling better about everything because of what that guy this morning said about finding Dad.
"Ma," he said. "Ma, you think that guy will-you know-find him, and-" He looked back at her from the door; right then, he dimly knew himself, he was begging her for the reassurance, Things will get like they used to be.
"I don't care if they do or not," she said, and besides the crossness in her voice there was the quivering fear he sensed from her almost all the time now. "It's not right," she whispered to herself, "asking a person all them questions. Just because you get where you got to ask relief, they think they can go nosing into ever'thing. Not as if I like to take charity-didn't ask till I had to. Nobody in our family ever been on charity before-comes hard to a respectable woman allus held her head up an' took nothing from nobody. Way they act, you'd think I was doing something wrong, ask for enough keep a roof over our heads 'n' food in our mouths. Forty dollars a month!" She sat hunched in the rocker, thin arms hugging her flat body. "County's got millions. Come poking around with their questions before they let me have forty dollars!"
"He only ast four-five things, Ma-"
"He ast four-five things too much! What business is it of theirs? No, acourse, they won't find your dad, they'll never find him." She said that with fear, with hope, with insistence. "If your dad was minded go off like that, he'd be real careful make it so's nobody'd ever find him, an'-an' it's seven-eight months back he went, too."
The boy was silent. He knew all sorts of things in the dumb, vague way thirteen does know-hardly aware that he knew. She made out she didn't mind Dad going off, except for the money, but she did. She was afraid and making out she wasn't. He knew there were things in her mind that for years she'd shut away somewhere, and now they'd got out, they were shapeless unseen monsters, crowding in on her and him both.
"Don't you stay out later than six," she said. "Six is supper like allus."
Then, all of a sudden, he knew why he felt bad-why he'd been feeling like this all the time since. In awful clarity it came to him that things never stayed the same, or even got back to what they'd been before. However bad things were, you were safe, knowing what a day would be like, tomorrow and next week; but it would change so you didn't ever know, and you couldn't stop it any way. She wanted to, and she thought she had, and now she'd found nobody ever could. One of the invisible monsters right here with them now was the threat and promise of change to come.
It was knowledge too big for thirteen, and he turned blindly and ran out, and down the dark rickety stair into the rain.
The rain was cold coming down but like mostly in California when it rained it wasn't really cold, not cold like back in Minnesota with the snow and all. The snow was kind of nice, though-Dad said-Dad didn't like California much-maybe he'd gone back east, and he stopped, breathless, and leaned on the window of the drugstore on the corner there, as if he was looking at the picture of the pretty girl saying Instant Protection, but he didn't see anything in the window. Oh, Dad! he cried in silent agony.
He'd lost Dad too, just then, and forever. It wouldn't matter if Dad came back, things would never be like they were, ever again.
"Hi, kid," said Danny behind him.
Marty turned, eager for companionship, for anybody to talk to. "Hi, Danny, wh-what's new?" It came out kind of squeaky-sounding, like a real little kid, and embarrassed him all the more because of Danny being-well, Danny.
"Nothin' much. Say, Marty-"
Mr. Cummings had already turned on the lights in the drugstore, the rain made it so dark-it was getting dark anyway, fast-and Marty could see their blurred reflections in the glass of the window. They looked funny together, him and Danny Smith, but maybe only to anybody knew them. Because he was so big beside Danny, he'd grown so fast just this last year-Dad said their family always did start to grow awful young-last month when all the kids got measured for gym in school, he'd been sixty-eight inches and some over, and that was only four inches shorter than Dad. In the glass there, sideways, he saw himself looking man-size, looming alongside of Danny-but it was the other way round inside them. Danny was like a grown-up somehow, things he knew and said and did, not having to be in any special time, and always having money, and sometimes he smoked cigarettes. It wasn't just Marty, he guessed most of the guys around here felt the same about Danny, and Danny sort of bossed them around, and they let him.
The figures in the window glass weren't sharp, just shapes like, but just th
e way the smaller one moved you'd know it was Danny, didn't have to really see his sharp straight nose and the way his forehead went up flat, not bulgy, into black hair that was wavy like a girl's with a permanent, or his eyes that moved a lot and were bluer than most blue eyes.
"Say, Marty, why'd you run off las' night?" Danny was asking. "At the show, alla sudden-we hadden seen it right through yet either. You scareda your ole lady, hafta get home when she says?"
"I didn't so sudden," he said quickly. Danny and a lot of the guys around here, they thought that was funny-both kinds of funny; they sort of needled you if your mother said a certain time and you did what she said. "I just decided to," he said. "It wasn't a very good pitcher anyway."
"You kiddin'? It was-"
"I seen it before," said Marty, desperately.
Danny just looked at him. Then he said, "You been down t' see where the murder was?"
Something moved a little, dark and uneasy, at the very bottom of Marty's mind. "What murder?"
"Jeez, don't you know anything happens? Right down at Commerce 'n Humboldt, you know where that house burn down across from the wop store. It was some girl, an' boy, was she a mess, blood all over an' one of her eyes punched right out-whoever did it sure musta been mad at her-I dint get there till after they took her away, but you could still see some o' the blood, oney the rain-"
Marty's stomach gave a little jump. He put his right hand over that place on the left sleeve of the blue corduroy coat, where the mark was. It wasn't a very big spot, but it showed dark against the light blue and it was stiff. It hadn't been there this time last night when he put the jacket on; he'd noticed it this morning.
I got it in the theater last night, he told himself. Of course it wasn't blood. Something on the seat in there, it was.
Empty lot where a house had burned down. All of a sudden he remembered how it had been, in the dark last night: something tripping him, hard squarish cement something when he felt of it, like what was left when a house was burned. A lot of grass around it.
No, it wasn't, he said in his mind frantically, it wasn't like that, I must remember wrong. His mind said back at him, Like you remembered wrong before?
Danny was going on talking but he couldn't listen. Please, oh, please, it can't have happened again. It never did happen, nothing happened before, you just remembered wrong is all. You can't ever be sure in the dark, and it was night then too, of course it had to be, it was always night when-When things happened. A light green shirt that time because it was hot, it was summer, and the mark didn't come out when she washed it, you could still see where it'd been. That wasn't blood either, acourse it wasn't, how could it be?
He said louder than he meant to, "I-I got to go home, I better not be late for supper," and walked away fast as he could. He didn't want to hear any more about it, or he might remember too much. There wasn't anything to remember, he was just making up stories in his head to try and scare her, because he There were long times when he never thought about it, but when he did, it was all right there sharp and clear, more like it pounced at him instead of him remembering. That other night. The first time. Wet red mark on the green shirt and her scolding-because it was late. The big doll with the pink dress and goldy hair. And next day people talking about-what had happened-to that colored girl.
He was almost running now, trying to run away from the voice in his mind, and he blundered into a man walking the other way. The man said something and put out a hand to steady him on his feet, but Marty pulled away and dodged round the corner into Graham Court. He leaned on the broken-down picket fence of the corner house and he hit it with his fist, the breath sobbing in his throat, tears squeezing out from tight-shut eyes.
"I tole her," he said low in his throat. "I tried tell her!" It was all he could do, wasn't it? What else could thirteen years old do? But there wasn't much to tell, that time or this time-he really remembered, knew his own self. She said so. He didn't know, he must've remembered wrong, or he was a wicked boy just trying to scare her. Making up stories that couldn't be so.
And she washed the green shirt but the mark still showed after.
After a while Marty straightened and went on, slowly, down the little cul-de-sac. He didn't want to go home; just two things pulled him that way, drearily, as they had before. Habit, and Dad's voice that time a while back, slow and easy like always, Dad saying, "You want to be nice t' your ma, Marty, an' help her all you can, an' don't do nothing to worry her. I know it ain't easy, times, but things ain't easy for her neither. You got to remember she come of folks had a lot more than the Lindstroms, back home-her pa Ole Larsen was a rich man, eleven hundert acres he had all good land too, an' his girls never wanted for nothing. Maybe them Larsens did give theirselves airs, but maybe they had reason to, an' anyways your ma never had cause to makeshift an' scrims on nothing, till she married me-an' it ain't exactly been a easy row to hoe for her, not noways. I know she gets cross-tongued once in a while, but you got to remember things is hard for her too."
That had been before-anything happened. If it had.
Marty went up the stairs of the apartment building slow, hanging onto the shaky railing. He felt another thing he'd got to feeling almost all the time lately, and that was as if there were two of him: one was a little kid whose ma was right whatever she said or did, just naturally because she was Ma-and the other was, well, nearest he could come was Marty-separate-from-Ma, who knew Ma might be wrong about some things. He tried to push that Marty away, because he didn't want to really know that, but seemed like that Marty was getting stronger and stronger in him. At the same time there were two other Martys, the one that was just a wicked little boy making up stories-and the one that knew different.
That one was scared, deep and cold inside. Because it was all his fault, must be, even if he'd never meant, never known, if he'd just sort of forgot for a while.
And the bad feeling had begun maybe when Dad went away, but what had made it so bad ever since was-that first time, back there on Tappan Street on a breathless night in late September.
He'd had to tell her. Things happened that were too big for you, frightening and confusing, that you couldn't do anything about yourself-you told your ma or dad, and they knew what to do. Only Dad hadn't been there.
And there was a third place the real bad feeling started, after she wouldn't believe, wouldn't listen-when she did something she'd never done before, ever: when she went out and bought a newspaper, and read about-It. And said like to herself in a funny kind of whisper, "Only some nigger girl, anyways. Prob'ly trash-just trash."
And the next day she'd gone and found this place for them to move, account it was cheaper, she said.
He got to the dark top of the stairs, and he thought frantically, I got to tell her. I got to try. Because He was sick and shaking with fear, with guilt, with the weight of a thing thirteen couldn't bear alone. The door was locked like always and he knocked and she said sharp, "Who is it?"
"It's me, Ma, let me in." And there wasn't any other way to say it than he did, then: "Ma, it's happened again! Ma-please listen-I didn't mean to-I never meant nothing to happen-but it must've, because-"
She just stood and stared at him.
"-Because it was blood on my coat's morning." He gulped and went on through the lump in his throat, "And-and the place they found-it-it was right where I-"
The fear pulled her face all tight and cross looking for a minute, but then it changed to being mad at him, and she said quick, "I don't listen to a boy tells lies!"
He looked at her dumbly. He knew what else she'd say, like she had before; but this time he knew something else-that what she said wasn't just at him, it was at that place she had way inside her where she knew it was so-it was to shut the door to that place and forget it was there at all. And now she was asking him to help her, seemed like, not mad any more but asking.
"You get washed an' eat your supper while it's hot, an' then you set right down to that schoolwork you shoulda done last night
-I'm allus tellin' you, don't want to end up like your dad, not enough schoolin' for a decent job-you're a real smart boy, Marty, you take after my folks, an' last thing I do I see you get educated good, maybe even college. But you got to remember you don't know ever'thing yet, see, an'-an' kids get mixed up in their minds, like, that's all-"
He whispered, "I'm not awful hungry, Ma."
And all the while the secret was there in the room with them, neither of them daring to look at it open: that she wouldn't see for what it really was, that he was getting more and more afraid of-that they had to live with somehow.
***
Danny stood there by the drugstore awhile after Marty left. On top of his mind he thought, That big lummox of a Lindstrom kid, sure a dumb one. But most of him was occupied with the job he was on, and he felt kind of tensed-up because it was the first time his dad had taken much notice of him, acted like he was a person with any sense, and he wanted to do this right.
It had been a big surprise to him to feel the way he did. Asked him last week, he'd have said it wasn't nothing to him, whatever his dad did or said-been three and a half years since he'd laid eyes on him, anyways-and that went other way round too, they'd always just sort of stayed out of each other's way. Same as with his mother, but she was just a nothing, like a handful of water, and there was at least something to his dad. And he'd felt a new, funny feeling when his dad said that: Kind of a sharp kid, you can maybe be some use to me.
Besides, this was different from hooking little stuff off store counters or stripping cars at night. This was a big job.
When the man came, he spotted him right off from what his dad had said he looked like; but he waited awhile, just went on looking in the drugstore window. The guy stopped and stood there too, waiting, under the store canopy. Nobody came past after him, and when Danny walked down the block there weren't any cops watching from alleys, nobody at all. It was all going just like his dad had planned, but of course you had to play it smart. Danny walked back to the drugstore; he didn't stop by the guy waiting there, just slowed down, and he said, "He's changed his mind, mister, he says meet him at the Paradise Bar on Second, right now."
