Stepping on the Cracks

by Mary Downing Hahn

  "Where is Stuart?" Barbara asked again, louder this time. "What happened to him?"

  "They took him to the hospital," Gordy whispered. "The old man almost killed him."

  "Oh, my God," Barbara whispered. "Oh, my God."

  Elizabeth and I stared at each other. My mouth was too dry to speak. My arms and legs felt weak, too. I saw Stuart in that soft white bed in the Fishers' house, cozy and safe under the blue quilt. After being so sick, he'd gotten well only to have his own father hurt him.

  "He beat you, too, didn't he?" Elizabeth asked Gordy.

  "No worse than other times." Gordy tried to wipe his tears away, but he winced with pain when he touched his face.

  "There should be a deep, dark dungeon where people like your father could be chained to the wall forever and forever," Elizabeth said. "Him and Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito. They should all be there."

  "What's your mother going to do?" Barbara asked Gordy.

  "Take us to our grandmother's house," he said, "down in North Carolina. She never wants to see the old man again, not after what he did to Stuart. This time she better mean it."

  Gordy tried to toss his hair back and look tough, but he didn't quite succeed. "We'll get out of this town as soon as Stuart's better," he said, glancing at the neighbors standing in a little group, talking quietly. "It can't be soon enough for me." Gordy spat into the mud puddle at his feet and turned away.

  "Wait!" Barbara seized his arm and drew him back. "Where did they take Stuart?"

  "Some army hospital," he said. "They know he deserted."

  This time Barbara let Gordy go. We stood on the sidewalk and watched him run up his front steps. Mrs. Smith had taken the younger children inside, but Mittens still crouched hopefully on the porch.

  Gordy opened the door, but before he went inside he turned and looked back at us. "Thanks, Barbara," he said. "You too, Lizard, Magpie. You done your best. The way things worked out, it wasn't your fault."

  He went into the house, and Mittens darted through the door behind him.

  Barbara put an arm around Elizabeth and an arm around me. "Come on," she said, hugging us against her sides.

  "Do you think Stuart will be all right?" I asked Barbara.

  She squeezed my shoulders even tighter. "I hope so, Margaret. I'll find out where he is and go see him."

  "Can we come with you?" Elizabeth asked.

  I ducked my head, embarrassed. Sometimes Elizabeth just didn't have any sense.

  Barbara gave Elizabeth a hug. "I'll let you know what I find out. Okay?" She tried to smile, but her eyes were still watery with tears.

  At the corner, the three of us paused and looked back down Davis Road. On Dartmoor Avenue, lamps glowed in windows, warming the dusk, but the Smiths' house was as gray and cheerless as the cloudy sky. One crack of light shone out from under a drawn shade in the living room. Even from here, I could feel the unhappiness in the house.

  27

  Gordy wasn't in school the next day. If it hadn't been pouring down rain, Elizabeth and I would have gone to his house, but even our umbrellas and boots didn't keep us dry. We were soaked by the time we got home.

  "Daddy says Mr. Smith won't be in jail long," Elizabeth told me. We were on her front porch, and the rain pouring off the eaves curtained us from the street. It was like being behind a waterfall.

  "They charged him with being drunk and disorderly," Elizabeth went on, "but if Mrs. Smith doesn't accuse him of anything else, he'll be free as a bird in no time."

  "It's not fair," I said. "The police should know she's scared of him. Wouldn't you be afraid to make him mad?"

  For an answer, Elizabeth clenched her fist and pretended to sock Mr. Smith. "Not me," she boasted. "If I ever get married and my husband treats me bad, he'll be sorry."

  In silence we watched the rain. It was coming down so hard that drops the size of silver dollars bounced up from the sidewalk. Garfield Road was a sheet of muddy brown water. A car passed slowly, up to its hubcaps in puddles. It left a wake behind like a boat.

  While we stood there, I heard a door open. Looking at my house, I saw Mother on the porch, peering through the rain and frowning. "I wondered where you were, Margaret," she said. "Come on home before you catch your death. I bet you're soaked."

  After I'd put on an old pair of Jimmy's overalls, I sat down at the kitchen table. Mother set a cup of steaming Ovaltine in front of me, and I drank it slowly, enjoying the taste of chocolate and the little trace of bitter iron it hid. Outside, drops of rain slid down the windowpane as if they were racing each other. You could hypnotize yourself watching them.

  "Well." Mother's voice broke into my trance. "I suppose you know about the goings-on yesterday at the Smiths' house."

  I stared at her solemnly over the rim of my cup. The clock ticked cheerfully, and the rain drummed against the glass, making the kitchen safe and warm. Mentally, I contrasted our house with the Smiths' house, where no one was safe, not even Mrs. Smith.

  Leaning toward Mother, I said, "Elizabeth and I saw Mr. Crawford take Mr. Smith away in his police car, and then they took Stuart to the hospital in am ambulance. Do you know if Stuart's okay?"

  "According to one of the neighbors, Mr. Smith beat Stuart unconscious. He fractured his skull and broke his arm." Mother looked down at the table and moved her finger along one of the patterns painted on its metal surface.

  "Maybe I should have told Mr. Crawford about the day we went to that house with Gordy and June," Mother said, "but I just turned my back and tried to forget what I'd seen. All my life I've believed you shouldn't interfere in other people's business, but now I feel bad, especially about that poor woman."

  "How about Stuart?" I asked her. "He's the one who's really hurt."

  "Did you know he was hiding in that hut in the woods?" Mother asked. "Is that why you tried to steer me away from it the day we cut the tree down?"

  With her looking me straight in the eye, I couldn't lie. Feeling important, I said, "We were helping Stuart, Elizabeth and me." Defying her to punish me, I added, "He was sick, and we brought him food and medicine. We probably saved his life."

  For a moment Mother didn't say anything. She sat very still, staring at me as if I were a stranger. "You helped a deserter?" she said at last, her face pale. "You went down there in the woods where you are absolutely forbidden to go and helped a deserter? When you own brother was overseas fighting for his country?"

  "Yes," I said, "that's just what I did. And I'm glad of it. Just because Stuart didn't want to go to war and kill people doesn't mean he's bad."

  "He's a coward," Mother said, her voice full of ice. "And I'm ashamed of you!"

  Tears sprang to my eyes. It wasn't till now that I realized I'd wanted Mother to be proud of me for helping Stuart. Hadn't she said she liked him, that he was her favorite paperboy? Now she was behaving as if he weren't even human.

  Ignoring my tears, Mother said, "How do you think Jimmy would feel if he knew his own sister was helping a deserter while he lay dying in Belgium?"

  "It wasn't like that!" I said, stung by the unfairness of her question. "Stuart was sick, he needed me! I wish Jimmy had been down there in the woods, too! Then he'd be alive, not dead!"

  Mother slapped me then, as hard as she could, right in the face. "Never say anything like that again!" she cried. "Never! Your brother died for his country, he paid the price so we could live in a better world when this war is over! Go to your room! And stay there!"

  "You don't understand anything!" I shouted at her, and then I ran up the stairs two at a time. Slamming my bedroom door, I threw myself down on the bed and wept. My heart was full of rage at the unfairness of everything. I hated Mother, I hated Hitler, I hated Mr. Smith.

  I must have cried myself to sleep, because the next thing I knew my room was dark and I was still lying on my bed, shivering in the cold. The only sound was the rain pelting against the windows. Then I heard Mother's footsteps on the stairs. Closing my eyes, I rolled over and faced the
wall. For once, Mother could look at my back and see how she liked being ignored.

  "Margaret?" Mother opened my door, and a ray of light from the hall fell across my bed.

  When I didn't say anything, she sat down beside me. Touching my shoulder, she leaned over me, trying to see my face.

  "Margaret," she repeated, "I know you're not asleep. Please sit up. I want to talk to you."

  Reluctantly, I did as she asked, but I kept my head turned away from her.

  "I'm sorry I hit you," Mother began. "I lost my temper. I know that's no excuse, but I was so mad."

  "Probably Mr. Smith tells Gordy the same thing after he beats him up," I muttered.

  Mother swallowed hard and turned my face toward her, forcing me to look at her. "I'm still angry about your helping Stuart," she said. "Desertion is wrong, Margaret, and if anyone finds out what you did, you could get into a lot of trouble."

  I shrugged. "Even if I go to jail, I'll still be glad I helped Stuart."

  Mother sighed. "You're just a child, Margaret," she said. "If you were older, you'd understand how serious this war is."

  I didn't argue, but in my heart I was sure Mother was wrong. My feelings didn't have anything to do with being a child except I couldn't put them into words. I knew the war was serious, I knew we had to stop Hitler, but if you truly believed killing was wrong, what were you supposed to do?

  "Stuart ran off and hid in the woods," Mother went on. "Did that make the war end any sooner? Did it save any lives except his own?"

  I twisted one of my braids around my finger so tightly it hurt, but I didn't have an answer. It was so confusing. All I could see was Stuart's sad face, pale and thin, almost hidden by his hair and beard, the way he'd looked when I first met him. I could hear him say, "Killing is wrong, I can't do it, I won't shoot anybody." I thought about the poem he'd asked Elizabeth and me to read to him, the one about the soldier who would've preferred to drink a beer with his enemy instead of shooting him.

  "People like Stuart are different," I finally told Mother. "You can't judge him the way you judge other people. Jimmy called him the little poet. He would've wanted me to help Stuart, I know he would have."

  "Don't bring Jimmy into this," Mother said.

  "Why not?" I stared at her. "Jimmy liked Stuart. He took up for him when the other boys teased him. He knew Stuart couldn't defend himself."

  Mother sighed and ran a hand through her hair. In the dim light, her eyes sought the picture of Jimmy on my dresser. She stared at his smiling face as if it might tell her something, but my brother was as silent as my Sonja Henie doll poised on her skates beside the photograph.

  After thinking for a while, Mother said, "Jimmy felt sorry for Stuart. Like you, he wanted me to do something about Mr. Smith, but I never did."

  The rain gusted against the window, and a train blew its whistle down the tracks. Otherwise it was very quiet in my room.

  "Stuart's had a hard life," Mother went on slowly, as if she were finding excuses against her will. "He wasn't rough and tough like his brothers. I still remember him as a little boy crying over a squirrel Donald shot with an air rifle."

  "That's what I mean," I said. "Stuart can't stand to see anything hurt. Not a squirrel, not a person."

  "Neither could Jimmy," Mother reminded me. "But he went to war, he did what he had to do even though it killed him."

  I sighed. We'd gone in a circle, and now we were right back where we'd started from. There was no answer, no firm ground to stand on. Leaning against Mother, I felt her arm close round me, as if she wanted to protect me from the cracks I saw opening everywhere.

  "Come down to dinner," Mother said softly. "Your father's waiting to eat."

  "Did you tell him about me and Stuart?" I asked, suddenly fearful. It was one thing to make Mother mad. She'd get over it. But I wasn't sure about Daddy. He might never forgive me.

  Mother shook her head. "I thought about it," she said, "but he'd be more upset than I am."

  As we started downstairs, she turned and looked back at me. "One thing I've learned from this," she said, "is to pay more attention to you, Margaret. I had no idea what you and Elizabeth were up to. If I hadn't been so preoccupied, I might have noticed."

  Silently, I followed her into the dining room and took my place at the table. Daddy was already seated, the Evening Star spread open beside him. "Look at this," he said, "we've taken two more bridgeheads over the Rhine." His finger stabbed at the headlines, and he smiled at Mother and me. "It won't be much longer now," he said.

  ***

  The next day Mrs. Wagner told our class that Gordy wasn't coming back to school. "His family has moved to North Carolina," she said.

  Elizabeth and I stared at each other, shocked. Gordy had left already? Without even saying good-bye? I looked at his empty desk. His books and papers were there, as untidy as ever. How could Gordy be gone?

  As soon as the dismissal bell rang, Elizabeth and I went to the Smiths' house. The rain had stopped, but we were wearing boots to keep our shoes dry. We slopped through puddles in the road, making muddy waves with our feet. The damp sidewalk was littered with dead pink worms, but here and there a crocus poked up on someone's lawn. It was almost March, the sky was blue, washed clean even of clouds. Despite this, Davis Road still had a dreary winter look.

  The first thing we noticed was the absence of the old Ford. That gave us the courage to push open the rusty gate and approach the house. The shades were drawn, the door was closed, no smoke rose from the chimney. I hung back, but Elizabeth ran lightly up the steps and knocked loudly. After several tries, she looked over her shoulder at me.

  "Nobody's here," she said. Going to the window, she found a tear in the shade and peered inside.

  Cautiously, I joined her. The house was dark, but gradually I made out the room's shape. It was empty except for trash. Old papers, broken toys, dirt and dust, a child's striped sock. Mrs. Wagner was right. The Smiths were gone.

  We stared at each other, lost for words. A few months ago nothing would have made us happier. We would have been dancing in the streets to celebrate Gordy's departure.

  "I always thought we'd see him again," Elizabeth said. "Didn't you?"

  I nodded. Together we walked around the house, taking in the peeling paint, the sagging porch, the worn steps, the grassless yard. The broken swing twisted in the breeze. Of Mittens there was no sign. I hoped they'd taken the cat with them.

  Silently, we opened the gate, taking care to latch it behind us, and trudged home through the puddles on Davis Road. Even now, even knowing he was gone, I expected to see Gordy pedaling toward us on his rusty old bike, his black hair flying back from his face, yelling threats or insults at Elizabeth and me. We'd been fighting Gordy for so long, I couldn't imagine a future without him. He'd come back, I told myself, surely he would.

  28

  Several weeks later, Elizabeth and I were spending a Saturday afternoon in the Trolley Stoppe Shoppe, sitting at the counter and sipping cherry Cokes. A group of college students was feeding nickels to the jukebox, and we were listening to the music and watching them dance. At the moment, Elizabeth was twirling round and round on her stool in time to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." Proud that she knew all the words, she was singing along with the Andrews Sisters and driving me crazy.

  "Quit spinning," I said. "You're making me dizzy."

  She laughed and spun so fast the guy behind the counter told her to stop before she fell off and hurt herself. Elizabeth gave him one of her sassiest looks, but before she could think of a good wisecrack, I nudged her.

  "Look, there's Barbara," I said, pointing through the big plate-glass window. On the other side of the street, Barbara was pulling Brent along the sidewalk in his red wagon.

  Launching herself from her stool, Elizabeth ran to the door, and I dashed after her. We hadn't seen Barbara since the day the ambulance took Stuart away.

  When she saw us running toward her, Barbara smiled and waved. "Well, long time no see," she
said. "Where have you two been?"

  "Mrs. Wagner keeps us busy with so much homework we haven't had time to do anything," Elizabeth said.

  Neither one of us wanted to admit that our mothers had confined us to our own yards for the past three weeks as a punishment for helping Stuart. At first Elizabeth had been furious because my mother had told her mother what we'd done, but after a few days of sulking she'd forgiven me. Today was our first day of freedom, and we were still celebrating.

  "Well, it's good to see you," Barbara said, and Brent clapped his hands and laughed as if he were happy, too.

  "Have you heard anything from Stuart?" Elizabeth asked.

  Barbara smiled again. "So far, I've gotten five letters," she told us. "He's still in the hospital, but he's getting better every day."

  "Are they going to ship him overseas?" Elizabeth asked.

  "They can't," Barbara said. "His father broke his eardrum."

  "You mean he's deaf?" Elizabeth stared at Barbara.

  "Just in one ear," Barbara said. "But that's enough to keep him out of combat."

  "My mother told me the army will court-martial Stuart," Elizabeth said. "She thinks he could be executed or sent to jail."

  "No," Barbara said, "nothing that bad will happen, Elizabeth. As soon as he's strong enough, Stu says he'll have a hearing. My dad thinks the army will take a lot of things into consideration—his family, what his father did to him, his attitude toward war."

  Barbara paused to remove an acorn from Brent's mouth. "Where did you get that?" she asked him. "Dirty, dirty." Making a face, she threw it away and took a teething ring out of her pocket. "Here, isn't this nice?" she asked as the little boy put it in his mouth and grinned.

  Turning back to Elizabeth and me, Barbara said, "If Stu had deserted in Europe, he'd be in serious trouble. Your mother's right—you can be shot for that. But Stu went AWOL before he was sent overseas. The army could put him in jail or give him a dishonorable discharge, but I hope Dad's right and they go easy on him."

  "I bet your folks were sore when they found out Stuart deserted," Elizabeth said.