'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 the 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;
