The Street

by Ann Petry

  Bub opened the door of the hall and slipped inside. The hall was quiet and dark. He listened for footsteps. There was no sound at all. He made no effort to open the mail boxes, but peered inside them. The first three were empty. The next two contained letters—he could see the slim edges showing up white in the dark interior of the boxes.

  Slow footsteps started on the stairs and he examined the hall with care. There was no place to hide. He didn’t want to appear suddenly on the steps outside, for the two men would notice him and wonder what he had been doing.

  He sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and bent over, pretending to tie his shoelace. Then he untied it, waited until he heard the footsteps reach the landing above him and started shoving the lacers through the eyelets of his shoe.

  The footsteps came closer and he bent over further He looked toward the sound. A skirt was going past him—an old lady’s skirt because it was long; there were black stockings below the skirt and shapeless, flat-heeled shoes.

  ‘Having trouble with your shoelace, son?’

  ‘Yes’m.’ He refused to look up, thinking that she would go away if he kept his head down.

  ‘You want me to tie it?’

  ‘No’m.’ He lifted his head and smiled at her. She was a nice old lady with white hair and soft, dark brown skin.

  ‘You live in this house, son?’

  ‘Yes’m.’ Her old eyes were sharp, keen. He hoped she couldn’t tell by looking at him that he was doing something not quite right. It wasn’t really wrong because he was helping the police, but he hadn’t yet been able to get over the feeling that the letters that weren’t the right ones ought to be put back in the boxes. He would talk to Supe about it when he went home. Meantime, he grinned up at her because he liked her.

  ‘You’re a nice boy,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bub Johnson.’

  ‘Johnson. Johnson. Which floor you live on, son?’

  ‘The top one.’

  ‘Why, you must be Mis’ Johnson’s grandson. You sure are a nice boy, son,’ she said.

  She went out the door, murmuring, ‘Mis’ Johnson’s grandson. Now that’s real nice he’s here with her.’

  Bub remained on the bottom step. He had told two lies in succession. They came out so easily he was appalled, for he hadn’t even hesitated when he said he lived here in this house and then that he lived on the top floor. That made two separate, distinct ones. What would Mom think of him? Perhaps he oughtn’t to do this for Supe any more. He was certain Mom would object.

  But he earned three whole dollars last week. Three whole dollars all at one time, and Mom ought to be pleased by that. When he had a lot more, he’d tell her about it, and they would laugh and joke and have a good time together the way they used to before she changed so. He tried to think of a word that would describe the way she had been lately—mad, he guessed. Well, anyway, different because she was so worried about their not having any money.

  He opened three mail boxes in succession. The key stuck a little, but by easing it he made it work. He stuffed the letters in the big pockets of his short wool jacket.

  The street door opened smoothly. He slipped quietly outside to the stoop. The men were still talking. They didn’t turn their heads. He stood motionless in back of them.

  ‘The trouble with colored folks is they ain’t got no gumption. They ought to let white folks know they ain’t going to keep on putting up with their nonsense.’

  ‘How they going to do that? You keep saying that, and I keep telling you you don’t know what you’re talking about. A man can’t have no gumption when he ain’t got nothing to have it with. Why, don’t you know they could clean this whole place out easy if colored folks started to acting up. What else they going to do but—’

  Bub walked past them, hands in his pockets; paused for a moment right in front of them to look up and down the street as though deciding in an aimless kind of fashion which way he’d go and how he’d spend the afternoon.

  And standing there with people going past him, the two men behind him arguing interminably, aimlessly, a sudden, hot excitement stirred in him. It was a pleasant tingling similar to the feeling he got at gangster movies. These men behind him, these people passing by, didn’t know who he was or what he was doing. It could be they were the very men he was trying to catch; it could be the evidence to trap them was at that very moment reposing in the pockets of his jacket.

  This was more wonderful, more thrilling, than anything he had ever done, any experience he had ever known. It wasn’t make-believe like the movies. It was real, and he was playing the most important part.

  He walked slowly down the street, his hands in his pockets, savoring his own importance. He paused in the middle of the block where he lived to watch a crap game that was going on. A big man leaning against an automobile pulled into the curb, held the stakes in his hands—fistfuls of money, Bub thought, looking at the ends of the dollar bills. Boy, but he’s big all over—big arms, big shoulders, big hands, big feet. The other men formed a small circle around him, squatting down when they rolled the dice, standing up to watch whoever was shooting.

  A thin, tall boy breathed softly on the dice cupped tight in his hand. ‘Work for poppa. Come for poppa. Act right for poppa. Hear what poppa say.’ His body rocked back and forth as he talked to the dice, oblivious of everything, the street, the big man, the impatient little circle around him.

  ‘Come on, roll ’em! What the hell!’

  ‘Christ, you going to kiss them dice all day?’

  ‘Roll em, boy! Roll ’em!’

  The boy ignored them, went on talking softly, sweetly to the dice. ‘Do it for poppa. Show your love for poppa. Come for poppa.’

  The big man kept turning his head, taking quick looks first up and then down the street. Bub looked, too, to see what it was he was seeking. A mounted cop turned into the block from Seventh Avenue. The horse picked up his feet delicately, gaily, as he came side-stepping and cavorting toward them. The sun glinted on the bits of metal on his harness, enriched the chestnut brown of his hide. Bub stared at the approaching pair completely entranced, for the street stretched away and away in back of them and the horse and the man glowed in the sunlight.

  ‘Blow it,’ the big man said out of the side of his mouth.

  Bub didn’t move. He edged closer to the thin boy and stared at the boy’s hand closed so tightly over the dice as he waited to hear again the rhythm of the boy’s soft talking.

  ‘Scram, kid,’ the big man said.

  Bub moved a little nearer to the thin boy in the hope that if he stayed long enough he might be able to get his hands on the dice and talk to them himself.

  ‘Get the hell out of here,’ the man growled, pushing him violently away.

  Bub trotted off down the street. The big palooka, who does he think he is? The big palooka! He liked the sound of the words, and he said them over and over to himself as he walked along—the big palooka, the big palooka.

  The key in his pants pocket made a pleasant jingling as he walked, because it clinked against his doorkey. He skipped along to make it louder. Then he ran a little way, but the sound seemed to disappear, so he slowed down, and began to imitate the dancing, cavorting horse that he had seen picking his way along the street with the sun shining on him.

  ‘The big palooka,’ he said softly. He stopped trotting like the horse and the key jingled in his pocket. The sound reminded him that he hadn’t done any work in his own street that afternoon.

  Before he headed for home, he had stopped in three apartment houses. The letters he obtained formed lumps in his pockets. Going in and out of the doorways, pausing to listen for footsteps in the halls, walking stealthily up to the mail boxes, sitting down on a bottom step to tie his shoe whenever someone came in or went out, tiptoeing out of the buildings, quickened the excitement in him. People in the houses were completely and stupidly unaware of his presence; their voices coming from behind the closed doors of the apartments a
dded to his sense of daring.

  He wished he could share the wonder of it with someone. Supe was too matter-of-fact and never took any interest in the details. His excitement and his pleasure in this thing he was doing enchanted him so that he walked straight into the middle of the gang of boys who had chased him earlier in the afternoon.

  They were standing under Mrs. Hedges’ window, talking.

  ‘Aw, you can’t go down there. Them white cops are mean as hell—’

  ‘You’re afraid of ’em,’ Gray Cap said. There was a sneer on his lean, black face. The light-colored gray cap that gave him his name was far back on his head; the front turned toward the back so that his face was framed against the pale fuzzy wool.

  ‘Who’s afraid of ’em?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I ain’t.’

  ‘You are, too.’

  It might have ended in a fight except that Gray Cap spied Bub approaching. He was coming toward them, so wrapped in thought, so unaware, so full of whatever dream was foremost in his mind, that they nudged each other with delight. They spread out a little so they could encircle him.

  ‘You start it,’ one of them whispered.

  Gray Cap nodded. He was standing feet wide apart, hands on hips, dead center in Bub’s path, grinning. It always worked, he thought. Start a fight and then take the kid’s money and anything else he had on him. You could rob anybody that way in broad daylight. The gang simply closed in once the fight got started.

  He waited, watching Bub’s slow approach, savoring the moment when he would look up and see that he was trapped. Three boys had moved slowly, carefully, so that they were in back of Bub. There. They had him. Gray Cap moved forward a little, to hasten the entry of the bird into the trap. Perfect.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, and grinned.

  Bub looked up, surprised. He turned his head slowly, knowing beforehand what he would find. Yes, there was one on each side of him; two, no, three, in back of him. He kept on walking, thinking that he would walk right up to Gray Cap, and then suddenly swerve past him and run for the door.

  Gray Cap’s hand shot out, grabbed the collar of Bub’s jacket.

  ‘Take your hands off my clothes,’ Bub said feebly.

  ‘Who’s going to make?’ Bub didn’t answer. ‘Who’s going to make?’ Gray Cap repeated. Bub still didn’t answer. Gray Cap’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your mother’s a whore,’ he said suddenly.

  Bub was startled. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He says he don’t know what it is. Look at him.’ Gray Cap grinned at his henchmen. ‘He don’t know what his mother is.’

  ‘She is not,’ Bub said defensively, impelled to deny whatever it was that had set Gray Cap to grinning and winking.

  ‘What you mean she ain’t? You just said you don’t know what it is. Look at him. He don’t know what it is and he says she ain’t. Look at him.’

  Bub didn’t answer.

  ‘His mother’s a whore,’ Gray Cap repeated. ‘Does nasty things with men,’ he elaborated.

  ‘She don’t either,’ Bub said indignantly. ‘And you stop talking about her.’

  ‘Yah! Who’s going to make? Your mother’s a whore. Your mother’s a whore.’

  Bub doubled up his fist and reached for and found the boy’s nose.

  ‘Why, you—’ The boy aimed a blow at Bub—a blow that slanted off as Bub ducked. Gray Cap pushed close against him, then knocked him off balance so that he went sprawling backward on the pavement. Bub got up and the boy hit him squarely on the nose. His nose started to bleed.

  The others closed in, forming a tight knot around him, their hands reaching, ready to explore his pockets. Gray Cap spied Mrs. Hedges sitting in the window imperturbably watching the proceedings. He was so delighted with the thought of this young and tender victim ready for the plucking that he yelled out, ‘Yah! You’re a whore, too!’

  ‘You, Charlie Moore’—Mrs. Hedges leaned out of her window. ‘Leave that boy alone.’

  Their faces turned toward the window—sullen, secret, hating. Their hands were still extended toward Bub, reaching for him.

  Gray Cap glared at her without replying.

  None of them moved. ‘You heard me, you little bastards,’ she said in her rich, pleasant voice. ‘You leave that boy alone. Or I’ll come out there and make you.’

  ‘Aw, nuts.’ Gray Cap’s hands went down to his sides. The boys backed off slowly, turned toward the street, staying close together as they went.

  Gray Cap was the last to leave. He turned to Bub. ‘Get other people to fight for you, huh? I’ll fix you. I’ll catch you coming home from school and I’ll fix you good.’

  ‘No, you won’t neither, Charlie Moore. That boy come home all messed up and I’ll know you done it. Don’t you fool with me.’

  He backed away from her hard eyes. ‘Aw, his mother’s a whore and so are you,’ he muttered. It was a mere shred of defiance, and he didn’t say it very loudly, but he had to say it because the gang was standing at the curb. Their hands were in their pockets as they stared up the street in apparent indifference, but he knew they were listening, because it showed up in every line of their lounging bodies.

  ‘You go on outta this block, Charlie Moore.’ Mrs. Hedges’ rich, pleasant voice carried well beyond the curb. ‘And don’t you walk through here no more’n you have to.’

  Mrs. Hedges remained at the window, her arms folded on the sill. She and Bub looked at each other for a long moment. They appeared to be holding a silent conversation—acknowledging their pain, commiserating with each other, and then agreeing to dismiss the incident from their minds, to forget it as though it had never occurred. The boy looked very small in contrast to the woman’s enormous bulk. His nose was dripping blood—scarlet against the dark brown of his skin. He was shivering as though he was cold.

  Finally their eyes shifted as though some common impulse prompted them to call a halt to this strange communion. Mrs. Hedges concentrated on the street. Bub went into the apartment house, his nose blowing bubbles of blood.

  He was afraid. He examined his fear, standing in the hall. It was as though something had hold of him and refused to let go; and whatever it was set him to trembling. He decided it was because he had been lying and fighting all in one day. Yet he couldn’t have avoided the fight. He couldn’t let anyone talk about his mother like that.

  He rapped on the cellar door under the stairs. He was still shaking with fear and excitement. The slow, heavy tread of the Super coming up the stairs sounded far away—menacing, frightening. When the Super opened the door, he followed him down the steep, old stairs to the basement in silence.

  When they reached the bottom step, he began to feel better. He always delivered the letters to Supe down here. The fire was friendly, warm. The pipes that ran overhead with their accumulation of grime, the light bulbs in metal cages, the piles of coal—shiny black in the dim light—even the dusty smell of the basement, turned it into a kind of robbers’ den.

  It was a mysterious place and yet somehow friendly. The shadowed corners, the rows of garbage cans near the door that led to the areaway gaping wide and empty, the thick hempen ropes of the dumb-waiter, helped make it strange, secret, exciting. Those long brown ropes that held the dumb-waiter offered a way of escape if sudden flight became necessary. He could almost see himself going up, hand over hand, up and up, the stout ropes.

  There was so much space down here, too. As he looked at the small dusty windows just visible in the concrete walls, at the big pillars that held the house up, he forgot about his bloody nose. The sudden sharp pain of hearing his mother talked about while the other boys laughed slowly left him. Only the memory of the horrid-sounding words that had come from Gray Cap’s hard, wide mouth stayed with him.

  This was real. The other was a bad dream. Going upstairs after school to a silent, empty house wasn’t real either. This was the reality. This great, warm, open space was where he really belonged. Supe was captain of the detectives and he, Bub, was his most val
ued henchman. At the thought, the memory of Gray Cap’s jeering eyes and of the hard, young bodies pressed suffocatingly close to his slipped entirely away.

  He lifted his hand to his forehead in salute. ‘Here you are, Captain.’ He pulled the wadded-up letters from his pockets.

  The Super held them lightly in his great, work-worn hands. ‘I’ll turn ’em over to the ’thorities tomorrow.’ He looked at Bub curiously. ‘You been in a fight?’ he asked.

  Bub wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But I won. The other guy was all messed up. Two black eyes. And he lost a tooth. Right in the front.’

  ‘Good,’ Jones said. And thought they oughtta killed the little bastard.

  ‘Supe,’ Bub said, ‘oughtn’t those letters that ain’t the right ones—oughtn’t those others be put back?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jones nodded in agreement. ‘The other fellows put ’em back.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, relief in his voice. And then eagerly, ‘Have they caught any of the crooks yet?’

  ‘No. But they will. It takes a little time. But don’t you worry none about it. They’ll catch ’em all right.’

  ‘I guess I’ll do a little more work, Captain,’ he said. Mom wouldn’t be home for a long time yet. The street was better than that clammy silence upstairs. And this time he would keep a sharp eye out for Gray Cap and his gang. He wouldn’t walk right into the middle of them like he did just now.

  ‘That’s good,’ Jones said. ‘The more you work, the sooner the cops’ll catch the crooks.’

  15

  MIN came out of the apartment house with a brown-paper bag hugged tight under her arm. It contained her work clothes—a faded house dress and a pair of old shoes, the leather worn and soft and shaped to her bunions. She paused before she reached the street to look up at the sky. It was the color of lead—gray, sullen, lowering. Wind clouds of a darker gray scudded across it. She frowned. It was going to rain or snow; probably snow, because the air was cold and the wind blowing through the street smelt of snow.