He felt even more unsure of himself now.
“Well,” he said finally, “I can’t think of anything about Philadelphia that would make people down there much different from us. I don’t see how they could have missed setting up some kind of organization. Maybe it works a little different from ours, because of some local factor, but it’s bound to be basically the same.” He stopped uncertainly. “I’m not making myself clear, am I?” he asked.
“It’s all right so far, Ted. Go on,” Garvin said, betraying no impatience.
“Well, it seems to me,” Ted went on, some of his inward clumsiness evaporating, “that you’d have a tough time spotting our kind of organization if you just took a boat into the harbor, like we did in Philly. Chances are, you wouldn’t run across our radio frequency. If you landed on the West Side, you’d run into the small outfits in the warehouses. Even if you happened to pick the organized territory—I don’t know; if somebody came chugging up the river, I wouldn’t be much likely to trust him, no matter what he tried to say. It’s the same old story. You can’t join up with anybody, anymore, unless it’s on your own terms. There’s been too much of our hard work and fighting done to keep our organization going. It doesn’t really matter whether they’ve had to do the same for themselves. Each of us is in the right, as far as we’re separately concerned. And it’d be a lot nicer, for us, if we were the ones who came out running things, because that’s the only way we could be sure all that work of ours hadn’t been for nothing.”
He stopped, thinking he’d finished, but as he did, another thought came to him.
“It’d be different, if there were a lot of things to negotiate about. Then there’d be room to talk in. I guess, maybe, if we keep organizing, we’ll work our way up to that point. But right now, it’s a pretty clear-cut thing, one way or the other. Nobody’s any better off than anybody else—if somebody was, we’d of heard from them by now. Looking at it from our viewpoint, then, it’s a lot better for our organization if we do all the deciding on who joins up with us. So, if somebody from outside comes nosing around, the best thing to do is just discourage him.” He broke off long enough to grin crookedly. “They sure discouraged us down at Philly.
“All we ever saw of Philadelphia itself was the waterfront. I’d say that almost anything could be going on down there, and we couldn’t spot it. You’d have to go deep into the town itself, into the residential area. The same way that somebody coming into Manhattan would have to get to the lower East Side. And I guess we’re pretty sure no stranger’s going to get that chance.”
“Hmmm.” Garvin was grinning at Jack, and Holland was smiling back. Ted stood awkwardly, looking from one to the other.
“All right, Ted,” Garvin said, turning back to him. “Looks to me like you kept your eyes open and your brain working.”
Faintly surprised, Ted acknowledged to himself that he probably had. But he’d devoted no special effort to it, and he’d certainly done nothing else to distinguish himself. The brief engagement in Philadelphia’s harbor had offered none of the many hoped-for opportunities to shed his adolescence. All in all, he didn’t know how to answer Matt now, and he was deeply grateful that no answer seemed to be expected.
“I guess that’s it, Ted. You might as well go home. Margaret’ll have supper going by now. Tell her I’ll be along in a while, will you? You and Jack take it easy for a day or two. I’ll be giving you something else to do pretty soon.”
“Right, Matt. See you tonight.” That, too, he thought, had been too crisply casual. He noticed that Jack had started to say something himself—probably the same thing, in effect, and had stopped abruptly, with that same half-concealed, knowing smile at Garvin. Damn, damn, God damn!
“Well, that’s that,” Holland said outside Matt’s headquarters. He stretched luxuriously, his eyes grinning. He slapped Ted’s shoulder lightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and walked off, his stride catlike, easily holding his slung rifle straight up and down with the heel of his hand against its butt.
Ted smiled. Jack had been cooped up on the boat for a month. The adjective “catlike” was as easily applied to his frame of mind as to his walk. Ted smiled again. Ruefully.
He hitched his own rifle sling higher up on his shoulder and walked determinedly toward the Garvins’ apartment.
Ever since his father’s death, Ted and his mother had more or less been staying with the Garvins. Their apartments adjoined, and up to the time that Ted had earned the right to carry his own rifle, both families had been equally under Matt’s protection. Ted had been raised with Jim and Mary Garvin—discounting Bob, who was five years younger than Ted, and therefore even more useless than Mary as a companion. Recently, of course, Mary had been acquiring greater significance, even if she was only thirteen. She seemed to him admittedly more mature of mind than other girls her age, most of whom Ted ignored completely.
He bent over and tightened the mounting screws on his rear sight with careful concentration.
“You mean they had a machinegun?” Mary asked breathlessly.
“Ahuh.” He shrugged casually, and made sure the windage adjustment was traveling freely but precisely. “Had a bad time for a couple of minutes there.” He pulled out the bolt assembly and squinted at the already immaculate walls of the chamber.
“What did you do then? I’d have been awfully scared.”
He shrugged again. “Turned around and ran. It looked like only a couple of guys, but it smelled like more. No telling what they might have backing them up.” He slipped the bolt back in and worked it a few times, spreading the lubricant evenly. “Tell you the truth, I kept thinking about those mortars Matt’s got down by the river. No reason for them not to be set up the same way. Anyway, we pulled out. Ryder was on the portside turret—that’s the left—and he hosed them down a little. Knocked them out, I guess, because we were still in range and they didn’t do anything about it.” He ran the lightly oiled rag over all of the rifle’s exposed metal, set the safety, and slid in a freshly loaded clip. As he looked up, Jim caught his eye and winked, looking sidelong at Mary. Ted’s cheeks reddened, and he shot a steely glance at his friend.
“Well, I guess I’ll turn in,” he said lightly. His mother had gone inside a few moments before. He stretched and yawned. He slung the rifle on his shoulder. “Good night, everybody.”
“Good night, Ted,” Mrs. Garvin smiled, looking up from her sewing. “G’nite, Ted,” Jim said cuttingly.
“Good night, Ted,” Mary said. He raised his hand in a short, casual wave to her and walked through the connecting doorway, the heel of his hand resting easily against his rifle’s butt.
“Ted?”
He winced faintly as he closed the door behind him. “Yes, Mom,” he said quickly, before the apprehension in her voice could multiply itself.
She came into the room, standing just inside. “Of course it’s you,” she said with a nervous smile. “I don’t know who I thought it’d be.”
“Well, there’s the bogeyman, and then there’s ghoolies and ghosties…” He let his mock gravity trail off into a smile, and her face smoothed a little.
“Can I get you some tea or something?” he asked, putting the rifle up on the rack he’d hung beside the door.
“Why, yes, thanks. Are you going to sleep now?”
“I guess so. I’m pretty tired,” he said on his way to the kitchen.
“I made your bed. Your room’s just the way you left it.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he said, letting himself smile with tolerant tenderness, in the kitchen where no one could see him.
He brought the cupful of tea out to her, and she took it with a grateful smile. “It’s good to have you home again,” she said. “I rattled around in here, all by myself.”
“There’s all those Garvins next door,” he pointed out.
She smiled lightly. “Not as many for me as there are for you. The kids get a little noisy sometimes, for my taste. Matt’s busy all day, and he goes to sleep almost as soon as he eats. And Margaret’s not as good company as she used to be.” Her smile grew worried. “She’s getting awfully gloomy, Ted. Matt’s in his forties, and he’s still carrying his rifle with the rest of the men. What would happen if he died?”
“I guess he’s got to, Mom. It’s his responsibility. If he couldn’t handle it, somebody else would be running things. He’s doing a good job, too. I haven’t heard many complaints about it.”
