Stepping on the Cracks

by Mary Downing Hahn

***

  One Monday in February, something happened to take my mind off Jimmy for a while. Gordy came to school with a black eye. He scowled at me across the classroom as if he were daring me to say anything about it, and I stared down at my desktop, too sad to look at him. I didn't want to think about Mr. Smith cursing Gordy, hitting him, hurting him.

  To avoid Gordy, I turned my attention to Mrs. Wagner. She was standing in front of a map of the world, using a yardstick to point out Iwo Jima. The marines had landed, she told us, and the Japanese army was fighting fiercely to drive them off the island. Slowly she moved the yardstick to Europe and showed us where the Russian army was fighting the Nazis in Poland. Then she moved on to the western front, where the Allies were slowly but surely pushing the Nazis back across the Rhine and into Germany.

  As Mrs. Wagner described bombing raids and tanks and guns, I stole a glance at Gordy. He was bent over his desktop, carving a fighter plane into the wooden surface. While I watched he drew bombs dropping, one by one, with his pen. His lips moved, and I knew he was making silent explosions.

  At recess, Elizabeth and I huddled against the wall of the school, out of the way of the kids playing dodgeball and jump rope. Across the playground Gordy, Toad, and Doug were sitting on the top of the monkey bars, pretending to be gunners. From where we stood, we could hear the "ackety, ackety, ack" of their artillery fire.

  "I hope Stuart doesn't see Gordy today," Elizabeth said. "One look at that eye and Stuart might go home and have it out with his father, like he wanted to on Christmas. He's not strong enough to do anything like that."

  She shoved her hands deeper in her pockets and hunched her shoulders against the wind. Even with her hair blowing in her face, I knew she was staring at Gordy.

  As soon as school was out, Elizabeth and I went to the Fishers' house. If Gordy showed up, we planned to stop him from going inside, but he didn't come that day or the next. On Wednesday, Stuart asked us where his brother was.

  Without answering, Elizabeth and I looked at each other. A mistake. From the expression on our faces, Stuart guessed we were hiding something. He was sitting in a chair beside his bed, wearing one of Mr. Fisher's old sweaters and the pair of jeans I'd taken from Jimmy's bureau drawer. He was still thin and pale, and his eyes had dark shadows under them. I was sure he wasn't well, not yet.

  "It's the old man." Stuart put down the book of poetry he'd been reading, and Barbara laid her hand on his arm. "He's beating Gordy again, isn't he?" Stuart asked.

  "No," Elizabeth said. "That's not it."

  "Then where is he?" Stuart looked at Elizabeth and me.

  My face heated up, and I stared down at the floor, unable to meet his eyes. "I don't know," I mumbled.

  "We haven't seen him," Elizabeth said. "But he's all right."

  "No," Stuart said. "He's not all right." He stood up and looked out the window at the brown grass and bare trees and tangled shrubbery. The sky was gray and even the prettiest houses looked ugly in the dull afternoon light. "It can't go on."

  "You can't do anything, Stu," Barbara said.

  Without looking at her, Stuart went to the closet and found the old jacket he'd worn in the woods.

  "Stu," Barbara said, "you mustn't go over there." She was on her feet now, standing between Stuart and the door.

  In the quiet room, the jacket's zipper made a loud sound as Stuart yanked it up. "I have to," he said. "Can't you understand?"

  "Your father will turn you in." Barbara grabbed his arm, but he shrugged her hand away. "Besides, you're not well." She hurried down the hall after him.

  "Stuart, where are you going?" Mrs. Fisher met him at the bottom of the steps.

  "Home," he said. Opening the door, he stepped out into the wind.

  Barbara, Elizabeth, and I grabbed our coats and ran after him. By the time he'd reached the trolley tracks, he was coughing.

  "Stu, please," Barbara said, "be sensible."

  Elizabeth and I plucked at his sleeve, but he ignored all three of us and kept walking.

  "They'll send you to war," I screamed at him. "You'll die!"

  But he didn't listen to any of us. At the corner of Davis Road, he paused and looked down the street. There in front of his house was the old black Ford.

  Turning to Barbara, he said, "Go home. Please, Barb, let me handle this my way."

  "What are you going to do?" she said.

  "Talk to him, that's all. Make him see."

  "See what?" The wind whipped Barbara's hair and ballooned her coat.

  Stuart didn't answer. He walked down the street with the three of us at his heels. At his gate, he looked at Barbara. "Thanks for everything," he said. "No matter what happens, nobody will ever know you or your family were involved in any way."

  Stuart paused and looked at each of us. "As far as you all know, I've been hiding in the woods since last summer."

  Barbara began to cry. While Elizabeth and I watched, Stuart put his arm around her. Clinging to her for a moment, Stuart kissed her. Then he let her go and climbed the front steps slowly.

  "Please leave now," he said to us before he opened the door and went inside.

  Barbara stood at the gate, one hand gripping the latch, and stared at the house. Nothing happened. The window shades stayed down, the door stayed shut. While we watched, Mittens came out from under the porch, slunk up the steps, and sat down by the milk box.

  Barbara looked at Elizabeth and me. "Let's go," she whispered. Brushing the tears from her eyes, she turned her back on the Smiths' house.

  For a moment I thought Elizabeth would protest, but, without saying a word, she followed Barbara and me up the street. Her head down, the wind tugging at her curls, Elizabeth looked as defeated as my mother had the day we walked home from our visit to the Smiths' house.

  On the corner, Barbara hesitated. Gordy was pedaling toward us on his bike, his face flushed from the wind. Slamming on the brakes, he skidded to a stop a few inches from us.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked.

  Barbara started to cry again, leaving it to Elizabeth to answer. "Stuart was worried because you hadn't been to see him," she said. "He guessed about your father hitting you, and he went to your house. He's there right now. We tried to stop him, but he went anyway."

  Gordy's face turned white. I was standing so close to him I could see the constellations of freckles on his face, the tiny network of blue veins at his temples, the purple scar over his eyebrow, the yellowing bruises on his face. For a moment I wanted to reach out and touch the scar, but Gordy was already racing away from us.

  Silently, we watched him swerve through his front gate, ditch the bike, and run up the front steps. The door slammed shut behind him with a bang loud enough to startle a pair of sparrows away from their perch on the telephone line.

  "Now what?" Elizabeth looked at Barbara, but she was still crying.

  Elizabeth turned to me. "What should we do?"

  "I don't know." Looking at Barbara, I felt like crying, too. What I really wanted to do was go home. It was time for "Captain Midnight," and I wished with all my heart I could be a little kid again, sitting on the floor by the radio with my special decoder badge, waiting for the secret message. Jimmy would be sitting at the dining room table complaining about his homework, and Mother would be out in the kitchen singing "Chattanooga Choo Choo" while she fixed dinner. How could everything have changed so much in just four years?

  While I stood there silently, Elizabeth patted Barbara's arm. "Don't cry," she said gruffly. "Stuart will be okay. Gordy will straighten it all out."

  Like a child, Barbara wiped her eyes with the back of her mitten and sniffled. She'd never bothered to button her coat, and it flapped around her like bat wings in the wind.

  "You girls go home," she whispered. "I'll see you later."

  Without looking back, Barbara walked away slowly, leaving Elizabeth and me to trudge home through the winter dusk by ourselves. It was getting colder, and we hunched our shoulders against the win
d.

  "What do you think will happen to Stuart?" Elizabeth asked me.

  "Mr. Smith will turn him in," I said. "Then the army will send him to war."

  "That's what I think, too," Elizabeth said. "I hate Mr. Smith. Next to Hitler, he's the worst man in the world."

  "They should send him to war instead of Stuart," I said.

  Elizabeth nodded. "They should put him in the front line and let the Nazis kill him. That's what he deserves."

  We were standing in front of Elizabeth's house. Even though it wasn't dark yet, the lights were on. They made her house look warm and cozy.

  Halfheartedly, I stamped on the sidewalk. "Step on a crack," I said, "break Mr. Smith's back."

  Elizabeth joined me, and our voices rang out like steel in the icy air. "Step on a crack, break Mr. Smith's back! Step on a crack, break Mr. Smith's back!"

  While we were shouting and stamping Mr. Smith to a pulp, Elizabeth's door opened, and Mrs. Crawford looked out at us. "Come inside, Elizabeth," she called. "You'll catch your death out there in the cold."

  Turning away, I ran up the sidewalk to my house. A light shone from my living room window, too, silhouetting my brother's star. Backlit, it was black just like the star in the Crawfords' window. From here you couldn't tell that Jimmy's was gold and Joe's was blue.

  26

  When I opened the front door, I saw Mother sitting on the couch. On her lap was a folded flag, and on it were two medals. The room was very quiet. All my fears for Stuart flew right out of my heart. Clutching my schoolbooks to my chest, I stared at her, waiting for her to tell me what had happened.

  "Some men from the army came today," Mother said. "They brought Jimmy's medals."

  Still weak in the knees, I sank down beside her. Pointing to one of the medals, Mother said, "This is the Silver Star. He got it for gallantry in action. And this is the Purple Heart."

  In the silence the clock on the mantel ticked. Neither of us spoke. We sat there side by side, staring at Jimmy's medals. For this little star on a red, white, and blue ribbon, for this heart my brother died. I remembered the afternoon Barbara showed me Butch's medals. Who decided which ones a soldier received? Was Butch braver than Jimmy because he got the Distinguished Service Cross instead of the Silver Star?

  Biting my lip, I frowned at the medals, trying to find some consolation in them, in what they stood for, in the knowledge my brother died bravely. To me they were just pretty decorations. They were no substitute for Jimmy's living presence.

  "They were very nice, the young men who brought them. Tall and handsome in their uniforms, like Jimmy was," Mother said. Her voice was low and hoarse, and I suspected she'd cried after the soldiers left. It made me even sadder to think of her all alone crying over the medals.

  "They told me I should be proud of Jimmy," she went on. "He died for his country. He was brave. A hero."

  Mother sighed, and a tear splashed down on the flag folded so neatly on her lap. Looking past me at the gold star in our window, she frowned. "How does God choose who dies and who lives?" she asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, she got to her feet and laid the flag and the medals on the coffee table as gently as a mother might lay a baby in a crib. "Your father will be proud to see these," she said to me.

  In a few moments, I heard her rattling pots and pans in the kitchen. Soon Daddy would be home, asking if dinner was ready.

  I stood in the doorway and watched Mother pare three potatoes. There were so many questions I wanted to ask her, so many things I wanted to tell her, but she kept her back turned, busying herself with chores. Suppose I told her what Stuart had said about killing? Or what Barbara had said about Butch's medals? Like her, did Mother secretly wish someone else had won that Silver Star? Trying to get her attention, I cleared my throat, but Mother didn't look at me. Silently, I gathered up my schoolbooks and went upstairs to begin my homework.

  With so many worries weighing me down, it was hard to keep my mind on my vocabulary exercises. Usually I loved learning new words and putting them into interesting sentences, but not this evening. Shoving my notebook and dictionary aside, I went to the window and pressed my face against the cold glass. The houses across the alley huddled behind a scraggly line of fences and hedges. Beyond them was a ball field, then a little woods, then Davis Road. Hidden by the roofs and trees, the Smiths' house was just a few blocks away. If only I knew what was happening there.

  ***

  The next day, Gordy was absent from school. At recess Elizabeth and I asked Toad and Doug if they knew where he was. They looked at each other, and I knew they were worried.

  "We waited for him on the corner," Doug said, "but he didn't come."

  "So we went to his house," Toad put in. "We knew things were bad with his father and all."

  "But it looked deserted," Doug went on. "The blinds were pulled down, and nobody came to the door. We walked around back, but we didn't see anybody."

  "I saw a curtain move upstairs," Toad said.

  Doug made a snorting noise. "You didn't see anything, you dope."

  Toad scowled and kicked a stone across the playground. "Something's wrong in that house," he insisted. "I just know it."

  Doug snorted again. "Don't pay any attention to Toad," he said to Elizabeth and me. "He listens to too many scary radio shows. He can't even sleep at night unless he's got the hall light shining in his room. He thinks the Shadow's coming up the steps to get him."

  Doug leaned close to Toad and imitated the Shadow's laugh. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" he hissed in Toad's ear.

  Despite Doug's ridicule, I felt chills race up and down my neck. Toad's face was red, and he was arguing with Doug, denying he kept the hall light on, claiming "The Shadow" was a dumb show, calling Doug a liar.

  "You mean you knocked and nobody came to the door?" Elizabeth asked, butting into their quarrel.

  The boys nodded, agreeing now. "All we saw was a cat sitting on the porch," Doug said.

  "Was the car out front?" Elizabeth wanted to know.

  "That beat-up old Ford Mr. Smith drives?" Doug asked.

  "Yeah," Toad said, "it was there. That's why I think something's wrong." He glared at Doug, daring him to argue the point again.

  The recess bell rang, and we ran across the playground. Sliding into my seat, I opened my big blue geography book and tried to pay attention to Mrs. Wagner, but it was hard to think about the major resources of Idaho. I couldn't keep my eyes away from Gordy's empty desk. It sat there, three rows from mine, its top scarred with doodles of bombers and battleships, a silent reminder of him.

  ***

  When school was out, Elizabeth and I ran all the way to the Fishers' house, but as soon as Barbara opened the door, we knew Stuart wasn't there. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her face was pale.

  "I've gone over to the Smiths' two or three times today," Barbara said, "but nobody comes to the door. I'm sure someone's home. I could almost hear them listening to me knocking."

  Elizabeth and I looked at each other. Toad was right, I thought. Something was wrong. I knew it in the marrow of my bones.

  And Elizabeth knew, too. Grabbing my hand, she dragged me out of the Fishers' house. Without saying a word, we ran across the trolley tracks and headed toward Davis Road. With the wind at our backs, we rounded the corner and then stopped, stunned by what we saw.

  A police car and an ambulance were parked in front of the Smiths' house. While we watched, Elizabeth's father came down the front steps with Mr. Smith. From where we stood, Elizabeth and I could see the handcuffs binding Mr. Smith's wrists behind his back. He didn't look as big and fierce as he had the last time I'd seen him. His head was bent, his shoulders hunched, his walk unsteady. While a crowd of neighbors stared, Mr. Crawford shoved Mr. Smith roughly into the back seat of the police car and slammed the door.

  Then two men carrying a stretcher made their way carefully out of the house. Gordy was right behind them. The back doors of the ambulance sto
od open, and the men pushed the stretcher inside. When Gordy tried to climb in after it, one of the men shook his head. The doors closed, the light flashed, and the siren started. Away went the ambulance. Right behind it was the police car.

  Mrs. Smith stood on the front porch and watched the two vehicles speed past Elizabeth and me. When they turned the corner and disappeared down Dartmoor Avenue, she covered her face with her hands. June and the two little boys clung to her skirt. The baby toddled back and forth, chasing Mittens.

  As the sound of the sirens faded away in the gray air, we ran down the street toward Gordy. His back was turned, but when he heard our footsteps, he wheeled around to confront us.

  Elizabeth and I stopped and stared at him, speechless. His face was a mass of bruises, and tears were seeping out of his swollen eyes. I thought he would yell at us, curse us, chase us away, but he just stood there. The expression on his face reminded me of a photograph I'd seen in Life of a soldier suffering from battle fatigue. The weariness and sorrow in his eyes made me hurt inside.

  There was a cry behind us, and I turned to see Barbara running toward us, her coat billowing around her. Wordlessly, she threw her arms around Gordy and drew him close. To my amazement, he clung to her like a child and wept.

  "What happened?" she asked him. "Where's Stuart?"

  "Dad beat him last night," Gordy sobbed. "He wouldn't fight back, Barbara, he just tried to keep the old man from hurting the rest of us. Mother was so scared she dragged us all in the bedroom and locked the door, she shoved a chest in front of it, too. The old man had a baseball bat, he tried to break down the door, and when he couldn't, he smashed up the house." Gordy started crying again. "All night he kept us up there. I thought Stuart was lying downstairs dead."

  Elizabeth grasped my arm so tightly I could feel her fingernails bite right through the sleeve of my jacket. "How did you get out?" she asked Gordy.

  "Mother wouldn't let us open the door. She said he'd kill us all. So we stayed in the room, but finally I opened the window and yelled for help. Mother didn't want me to, she didn't want anyone to know, she thought maybe he'd just sleep it off and everything would be okay. But the lady next door heard me and called the cops."