Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  She couldn’t stop the quivering that started in her stomach, that set up a spasmodic contracting of her throat so that she felt as though her breath had been cut off. The only thing she could do was to go away and never come back, because the best thing that could happen to Bub would be for him never to know that his mother was a murderer. She took half the bills out of the wallet, wadded them into her purse, left the wallet on the sofa.

  Getting back to the foyer door was worse this time. The four corners of the room were alive with silence—deepening pools of an ominous silence. She kept turning her head in an effort to see all of the room at once; kept fighting against a desire to scream. Hysteria mounted in her because she began to believe that at any moment the figure on the sofa might disappear into one of these pools of silence and then emerge from almost any part of the room, to bar her exit.

  When she finally turned the key in the door, crossed the small foyer, and reached the outside hall, she had to lean against the wall for a long moment before she could control the shaking of her legs, but the contracting of her throat was getting worse.

  She saw that the white gloves she was wearing were streaked with dust from the candlestick. There was a smear of blood on one of them. She ripped them off and put them in her coat pocket, and as she did it she thought she was acting as though murder was something with which she was familiar. She walked down the stairs instead of taking the elevator, and the thought recurred.

  When she left the building, it was snowing hard. The wind blew the snow against her face, making her walk faster as she approached the entrance to the Eighth Avenue subway.

  She thought confusedly of the best place for her to go. It had to be a big city. She decided that Chicago was not too far away and it was big. It would swallow her up. She would go there.

  On the subway she started shivering again. Had she killed Boots by accident? The awful part of it was she hadn’t even seen him when she was hitting him like that. The first blow was deliberate and provoked, but all those other blows weren’t provoked. There wasn’t any excuse for her. It hadn’t even been self-defense. This impulse to violence had been in her for a long time, growing, feeding, until finally she had blown up in a thousand pieces. Bub must never know what she had done.

  In Pennsylvania Station she bought a ticket for Chicago. “One way?” the ticket man asked.

  “One way,” she echoed. Yes, a one-way ticket, she thought. I’ve had one since the day I was born.

  The train was on the track. People flowed and spilled through the gates like water running over a dam. She walked in the middle of the crowd.

  The coaches filled up rapidly. People with bags and hatboxes and bundles and children moved hastily down the aisles, almost falling into the seats in their haste to secure a place to sit.

  Lutie found a seat midway in the coach. She sat down near the window. Bub would never understand why she had disappeared. He was expecting to see her tomorrow. She had promised him she would come. He would never know why she had deserted him and he would be bewildered and lost without her.

  Would he remember that she loved him? She hoped so, but she knew that for a long time he would have that half-frightened, worried look she had seen on his face the night he was waiting for her at the subway.

  He would probably go to reform school. She looked out of the train window, not seeing the last-minute passengers hurrying down the ramp. The constricton of her throat increased. So he will go to reform school, she repeated. He’ll be better off there. He’ll be better off without you. That way he may have some kind of chance. He didn’t have the ghost of a chance on that street. The best you could give him wasn’t good enough.

  As the train started to move, she began to trace a design on the window. It was a series of circles that flowed into each other. She remembered that when she was in grammar school the children were taught to get the proper slant to their writing, to get the feel of a pen in their hands, by making these same circles.

  Once again she could hear the flat, exasperated voice of the teacher as she looked at the circles Lutie had produced. “Really,” she said, “I don’t know why they have us bother to teach your people to write.”

  Her finger moved over the glass, around and around. The circles showed up plainly on the dusty surface. The woman’s statement was correct, she thought. What possible good has it done to teach people like me to write?

  The train crept out of the tunnel, gathered speed as it left the city behind. Snow whispered against the windows. And as the train roared into the darkness, Lutie tried to figure out by what twists and turns of fate she had landed on this train. Her mind balked at the task. All she could think was, It was that street. It was that god-damned street.

  The snow fell softly on the street. It muffled sound. It sent people scurrying homeward, so that the street was soon deserted, empty, quiet. And it could have been any street in the city, for the snow laid a delicate film over the sidewalk, over the brick of the tired, old buildings; gently obscuring the grime and the garbage and the ugliness.

  The Narrows

  This book is for

  Mabel Louise Robinson

  . . . I tell you, captain, if you look in the maps of the ’orld, I warrant you sall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth: it is called Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both.

  FLUELLEN,

  King Henry V, Act IV, vii.

  1

  * * *

  ABBIE CRUNCH began to walk slowly as she turned into Dumble Street, market basket over her arm, trying not to look at the river; because she knew that once she saw it with the sun shining on it she would begin to think about Link, to worry about Link, to remember Link as a little boy. A little boy? Yes, a little boy. Eight years old. Diving from the dock. Swimming in the river.

  She could hear the lapping of the water against the piling close at hand; and faint, far off, borne inshore on the wind, the crying of the gulls, the hoot of a tugboat; and she could smell the old familiar dampness from the river. And so, as usual on a sunny morning, she could see herself and Frances Jackson standing on Dock Street, a pushcart at the curb half concealing them, so they were peering over mounds of potatoes and kale and bunches of carrots and countless round heads of cabbage. She was short and fat, no, plump. Frances was tall and thin and bony.

  Frances was saying, “Look! Look over there!” and pointing, forcing her to look.

  She remembered how she had resented that dark brown forefinger, long, supple, seemingly jointless, which directed her glance, commanding her to look, and she not wanting to look, but her eyes following the stretched-out arm and the commanding forefinger.

  She saw Bill Hod standing on the dock, wearing dark trunks, short dark swimming trunks and nothing else. His chest, shoulders, arms, white by contrast with the trunks, shockingly naked because of the trunks. His straight black hair was wet, and he was running his hands through it, flattening it, making it smooth, sleek. She remembered too how she had thought, I have lost my mind, lost it, no control over it any more. Because she was genuinely surprised that his hair should lie so flat—she had somehow convinced herself that there would be horns on his head—something, anyway, that would show, would indicate— She closed her eyes. The sunlight was unbearable. She was accustomed to darkness, window shades always pulled down in the house, draperies drawn, no lights turned on at night because she preferred darkness.

  Frances Jackson seemed all elbow that morning, tall, elbows everywhere. She poked at her, “Open your eyes. Abbie, Abbie, Abbie—”

  Sunlight on the river, sunlight on Bill Hod, sunlight on her own face, or so she thought, hurting her eyes, hurting her face, so she kept her eye
s closed. She heard Link’s voice, a child’s voice, light, high in pitch, excitement in his voice and something else—affection.

  She opened her eyes and saw Link dive from the dock, dive down into the river. She wanted to stop him. It wasn’t safe. He didn’t know how to swim. She couldn’t stand any more sudden shocks. He was so little. The river was so wide and so deep, so treacherous. Then he was swimming, going farther and farther away, his head like the head of a small dog, head held up out of the water, moving farther and farther away. She said, “No!”

  Bill Hod yelled, “Hey—you—come on back—” Bass voice, arrogant, domineering voice, the tone of his voice, just the tone, was an insult, voice that she could never forget, could hear, even in her sleep—

  The head, the small head kept moving away, always moving away, farther and farther out toward the middle of the river, growing smaller, like the head of a newborn puppy now. Then out of sight. No, still there, but still moving away.

  Bill Hod shouted, wind carrying the voice back toward the pushcart, back toward Frances Jackson and Abigail Crunch, rage in the voice, “If I—have to—haul you—out of there—come back—”

  Was that small head still there? Yes, coming back now, but so slowly. She thought he’d never—why didn’t that man—

  Then, finally, Bill Hod reached down and pulled Link up on the dock. Bill Hod slapped him across the face. She could hear the sound of the blow, slapped him again, again, said, “If you ever”—slap—“do that again”—slap—“I’ll fix you”—slap—“for keeps”—slap.

  No one had ever struck Link. Neither she nor the Major. She started to cross the street, thinking, By what right, that man, face of a hangman. Frances Jackson’s hand held her back, strength in the bony thin hand, determination in the hand holding her there behind the pushcart, behind the potatoes and the cabbages and the kale.

  Frances said, “Abbie—don’t. You’ve lost the right to interfere. Link’s been living in that saloon for three months—for three months. Abbie, listen to me—”

  That afternoon when they went in The Last Chance to get Link, he ran and hid under the bar, crying, “I won’t go back there. I won’t go back there.”

  She could see herself and Frances Jackson down on their hands and knees, pleading with Link, trying to pull him out from under the bar in The Last Chance. And Bill Hod stood watching them, saying nothing, watching, his hands on his hips. His face? She couldn’t look at his face. How then did she know that he was laughing inside, why was she so certain that he was thinking, The old maid undertaker and the widow are here in my saloon. She supposed it was the way he leaned against the bar watching them. He made her conscious of the ridiculous picture they must have made: a short plump woman and a tall thin one trying to pull an eight-year-old boy out from under a bar when they couldn’t reach any part of him; down on their hands and knees, reaching, reaching, trying to grab anything—pants, legs, sneakers, shirt; and he kept scrambling back away from them.

  It was Frances who gave the whole thing up as impossible. She stood up, brushed off her hands, said, “Mr. Hod, I want to talk to you.”

  Frances was in the habit of giving orders, in the habit of dealing with the bereaved and the sorrowful, with the hysterical and the frightened; and so she knew better than Abbie when to retreat and when to advance and could do either with dignity. But when Frances stood up she looked down at her skirt, surprised. Abbie knew why. There was no dirt, no dust on the dark skirt. The floor behind the bar in The Last Chance was dustfree, dirtfree.

  Link was eight years old then. He was twenty-six now and he worked in The Last Chance. Behind the bar. Bill Hod had won—effortlessly, easily.

  Whenever she turned into Dumble Street, she always asked herself the same question, If Link had been her own child instead of an adopted child, would she, could she, have forgotten about him for three months, three whole months?

  Sometimes she tried to blame this street which, now, in the mellowness of an October morning, looked to be all sunlight and shadow—intricately patterned shadow from the young elm trees, denser shadow and a simpler pattern where the old maple stood near the end of the block; shadow softening the harsh outlines of the brick buildings, concealing the bleakness of the two-story frame houses; sunlight intensifying the yellow­green of the elms, the redorange of the maple, adding a sheen to the soft gray of the dock. No, she thought, not this street. It was the fault of Abbie Crunch. If she hadn’t said to herself, Murderer, murderer; if she hadn’t been chief witness against herself, condemning herself to death, willing her own death, so that she forgot Link, forgot about him as though he had never existed, she wouldn’t have lost him.

  She hadn’t meant to look at the river but she had glanced at the dock and so her eyes moved on to the river. She stood still looking at it. In the sunlight, the River Wye was the blue of bachelor buttons, of delphinium; small frothy waves, edged with white, kept appearing and disappearing on the blue surface—a sparkling blue river just at the foot of the street, a beautiful river.

  Even the street was beautiful. It sloped gently down toward the river. But the signs on the buildings dispelled the illusion of beauty. The red neon sign in front of The Last Chance was a horrible color in the sunlight—Link already there at work. Then there were all the other signs: Room For Rent, Lady Tenant Wanted, Poro Method Used, Get Your Kool-Aid Free, Tenant Provide Own Heat, Rooms Dollar and Half A Night. Rooms. Rooms.

  She could remember when Mrs. Sweeney changed the sign in her window from Room To Let to Rooms For White, explaining, apologetically, that so many of the colored stopped to ask about rooms that she couldn’t get her work done for answering the bell. “It’s just to save time,” she had said, “my time and theirs.”

  Mrs. Sweeney’s sign had long since been replaced by a much larger and very different sign: “Masters University—Church of Metaphysics and Spiritual Sciences—Revealing the Strange Secrets of the Unseen Forces of Life Time and Nature. Divine Blessings—Healings of Mind and Body. I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. Hear the Voice of the Master: Dr. H. H. Franklin Longworth, F.M.B. Minister, Psychologist, Metaphysician. Everyone Is Welcome.”

  Yes, she thought, Dumble Street has changed. The signs tell the story of the change. It was now, despite its spurious early-morning beauty, a street so famous, or so infamous, that the people who lived in Monmouth rarely ever referred to it, or the streets near it, by name; it had become an area, a section, known variously as The Narrows, Eye of the Needle, The Bottom, Little Harlem, Dark Town, Niggertown—because Negroes had replaced those other earlier immigrants, the Irish, the Italians and the Poles.

  Fortunately, the river hadn’t changed. Nor had the big maple tree. But she, Abbie Crunch, had changed because for the last few years she had been calling the tree The Hangman just like everyone else who lived in The Narrows. It was, she supposed, inevitable. People talked about the tree as though it were a person: “The Hangman’s losin’ his leaves, winter’s goin’ to set in early”; “Spring’s here, The Hangman’s full of buds.” When it was cold, bone-biting cold, wind blowing straight from the river, the sidewalks grown narrower, reduced almost to cowpaths because of the snow piled up at the sides, a coating of ice making walking hazardous, the great branches of the tree swayed back and forth, making a cracking sound. Then passers-by said: “Lissen. The Hangman’s creakin’. Hear him?” or “The Hangman’s talkin’. Hangman’s groanin’ in his sleep,” and shivered as they moved away.

  She had tried, years ago, to find out why the tree was called The Hangman and couldn’t. There would always be something of the schoolteacher’s tiresome insistence on accuracy left in her, so she had searched through all the books on horticulture in the Monmouth Library but she could not find any mention of a hangman’s maple. She decided that some one may once have said that the big maple was the kind of tree a hangman would choose to swing his victim from—tall, straig
ht, with mighty branches; that whoever heard this statement changed it when he repeated it and called the tree a hangman’s maple; that, finally, some imaginative Negro, probably from South Carolina, gave the tree its name. These days she, too, called the maple The Hangman, as easily, and as inaccurately, as the rest of The Narrows.

  This morning The Hangman was like a picture of a tree—a picture on a calendar, the orange-red of the leaves not really believable. Sometimes she wished she had not insisted on buying that old brick house which was Number Six Dumble Street. But not now. Who could regret the purchase of a fine old house when the tree that stood in its dooryard was like a great hymn sung by a choir of matched voices?

  The Hangman had, of course, been the source of many small annoyances, and, possibly, the cause, though indirectly, of one major disaster. The neighborhood dogs were always in the yard, sniffing around the tree, lifting a leg, digging up the lawn with vigor afterwards. During the day lean cats napped in the dense shade made by its branches and at midnight carried on a yowling courtship. On warm summer nights, drunks sprawled under the tree, in a sleep that was more torpor than sleep. She kept a bucket filled with water on the back steps, and, early in the morning, fear making her heart beat faster, fear urging her back toward the house, she would approach the sleeping man, dump the pail of water over him, recoiling from the smell of him, the awful loosejointed look of him, even as she said, “Get out of here. Get out of here or I’ll call a policeman—” There was always the shudder, the stumbling gait, the muttered curses in the thickened speech that came to mean drunkenness, and only drunkenness, as the man lurched to his feet. They always went toward The Last Chance, the saloon across the street, as though by instinct.