just two things pulled him that way, drearily, as they had before. Habit, and Dad's voice that time a while back, slow and easy like always, Dad saying, 'You want to be nice t' your ma, Marty, an' help her all you can, an' don't do nothing to worry her. I know it ain't easy, times, but things ain't easy for her neither. You got to remember she come of folks had a lot more than the Lindstroms, back home-her pa Ole Larsen was a rich man, eleven hundert acres he had all good land too, an' his girls never wanted for nothing. Maybe them Larsens did give theirselves airs, but maybe they had reason to, an' anyways your ma never had cause to makeshift an' scrims on nothing, till she married me-an' it ain't exactly been a easy row to hoe for her, not noways. I know she gets cross-tongued once in a while, but you got to remember things is hard for her too.'
That had been before-anything happened. If it had.
Marty went up the stairs of the apartment building slow, hanging onto the shaky railing. He felt another thing he'd got to feeling almost all the time lately, and that was as if there were two of him: one was a little kid whose ma was right whatever she said or did, just naturally because she was Ma-and the other was, well, nearest he could come was Marty-separate-from-Ma, who knew Ma might be wrong about some things. He tried to push that Marty away, because he didn't want to really know that, but seemed like that Marty was getting stronger and stronger in him. At the same time there were two other Martys, the one that was just a wicked little boy making up stories-and the one that knew different.
That one was scared, deep and cold inside. Because it was all his fault, must be, even if he'd never meant, never known, if he'd just sort of forgot for a while.
And the bad feeling had begun maybe when Dad went away, but what had made it so bad ever since was- that first time, back there on Tappan Street on a breathless night in late September.
He'd had to tell her. Things happened that were too big for you, frightening and confusing, that you couldn't do anything about yourself-you told your ma or dad, and they knew what to do. Only Dad hadn't been there.
And there was a third place the real bad feeling started, after she wouldn't believe, wouldn't listen-when she did something she'd never done before, ever: when she went out and bought a newspaper, and read about-It. And said like to herself in a funny kind of whisper, 'Only some nigger girl, anyways. Prob'ly trash-just trash.'
And the next day she'd gone and found this place for them to move, account it was cheaper, she said.
He got to the dark top of the stairs, and he thought frantically, I got to tell her. I got to try. Because He was sick and shaking with fear, with guilt, with the weight of a thing thirteen couldn't bear alone. The door was locked like always and he knocked and she said sharp, 'Who is it?'
'It's me, Ma, let me in.' And there wasn't any other way to say it than he did, then: 'Ma, it's happened again! Ma-please listen-I didn't mean to-I never meant nothing to happen-but it must've, because-'
She just stood and stared at him.
'-Because it was blood on my coat's morning.' He gulped and went on through the lump in his throat, 'And- and the place they found-it-it was right where I-'
The fear pulled her face all tight and cross looking for a minute, but then it changed to being mad at him, and she said quick, 'I don't listen to a boy tells lies!'
He looked at her dumbly. He knew what else she'd say, like she had before; but this time he knew something else-that what she said wasn't just at him, it was at that place she had way inside her where she knew it was so-it was to shut the door to that place and forget it was there at all. And now she was asking him to help her, seemed like, not mad any more but asking.
'You get washed an' eat your supper while it's hot, an' then you set right down to that schoolwork you shoulda done last night-I'm allus tellin' you, don't want to end up like your dad, not enough schoolin' for a decent job-you're a real smart boy, Marty, you take after my folks, an' last thing I do I see you get educated good, maybe even college. But you got to remember you don't know ever'thing yet, see, an'-an' kids get mixed up in their minds, like, that's all-'
He whispered, 'I'm not awful hungry, Ma.'
And all the while the secret was there in the room with them, neither of them daring to look at it open: that she wouldn't see for what it really was, that he was getting more and more afraid of-that they had to live with somehow.
Danny stood there by the drugstore awhile after Marty left. On top of his mind he thought, That big lummox of a Lindstrom kid, sure a dumb one. But most of him was occupied with the job he was on, and he felt kind of tensed-up because it was the first time his dad had taken much notice of him, acted like he was a person with any sense, and he wanted to do this right.
It had been a big surprise to him to feel the way he did. Asked him last week, he'd have said it wasn't nothing to him, whatever his dad did or said-been three and a half years since he'd laid eyes on him, anyways-and that went other way round too, they'd always just sort of stayed out of each other's way. Same as with his mother, but she was just a nothing, like a handful of water, and there was at least something to his dad. And he'd felt a new, funny feeling when his dad said that: Kind of a sharp kid, you can maybe be some use to me.
Besides, this was different from hooking little stuff off store counters or stripping cars at night. This was a big job.
When the man came, he spotted him right off from what his dad had said he looked like; but he waited awhile, just went on looking in the drugstore window. The guy stopped and stood there too, waiting, under the store canopy. Nobody came past after him, and when Danny walked down the block there weren't any cops watching from alleys, nobody at all. It was all going just like his dad had planned, but of course you had to play it smart. Danny walked back to the drugstore; he didn't stop by the guy waiting there, just slowed down, and he said, 'He's changed his mind, mister, he says meet him at the Paradise Bar on Second, right now.'
The man said, 'What?' sort of dumb and surprised, and then he made as if to grab for him, but Danny slid away in the dark, into the alley round the corner, and waited. After a minute the man started to walk up toward Second Street, not very fast; he looked back a couple of times, but once away from the corner lights it was dark and Danny stayed close up against the buildings.
On Second Street there were more lights, but people on the sidewalk, too, to hide him; he stayed farther behind, but he could still see the guy when he turned in under the pink neon sign that said PARADISE. So that was O.K. And no cops.
Danny turned and sauntered back to the corner; another man stood there, looking in the window of the liquor store. 'O.K.,' said Danny.
'He's in, and no cops.'
'You sure?'
'You think I can't smell a cop?'
The man relaxed a little, grinned. 'Maybe you ain't so smart as you think, but I guess you're not so dumb neither. Chip off the ole block like they say, huh? O.K., you go along. Now I just let the guy stew awhile an' get real worried.' He went back to looking in the window.
Inside the bar a jukebox was pounding, and the blood-hammer in Morgan's head began to keep time with it. He went all the way in to the last of the little booths opposite the bar, and sat down; the waiter who came up gave him a sour look for taking a booth instead of going to the bar, but he didn't say anything and he'd come over promptly because Morgan was a lot better dressed than the usual customer in here and might be drinking something besides beer or wine.
Morgan asked for whiskey, but when it came he just left it there on the table; he'd never been much of a drinker and not at all the last eight years, since- Which was a useless gesture, maybe: morbid.
He sat there and waited. The place wasn't crowded on a rainy night, only ten or a dozen men at the bar. It was stuffy, too hot after the street, and he realized he still had his coat on, slid out of the booth to take it off, fold it beside him. The clock on one side of the bar said half-past six, but Morgan knew he'd better keep his eye off the clock-the man wanted him to sweat, and might not show up for hours. In his mind he knew that, while all the rest of him was tense and agonizing to get to it, have it done, the ultimate doom arranged.
