bulging on his arms—a raging bull instead of a chicken-skinny boy. He would have flattened them on the ground right there at The Whole Hog. Then he would stomp on them until they begged for mercy.

As for Hawker, simply throwing him to the ground and kicking him was too good for him. Robin, the raging bull, would ram him and ram him until he was nothing but a bloody pulp. Tearing his eyes out might also be considered. Anything that would make him howl with pain and beg Robin’s forgiveness. For after all, it was because of what Hawker had told them that made the men say the things they had. Hawker wanting what he could not have, and when he got it, having to “live with it.” Where could that have come from but Hawker himself? It was if winning Mama after Papa died was a punishment for having wanted her in the first place.

Hawker seemed to have been captivated by her from the very beginning. From the time he had met Robin’s papa at the docks where they both worked and been invited to visit the family in their home. Papa enjoyed it when anyone was taken with his pretty wife, for he was proud of her sparkling smile and dancing green eyes. He liked having them admired. And how different Hawker was back then when he had come calling. For all his roughness, he was a gentleman, Mama and Papa both felt. But it was all put on, as she was to learn to her sorrow.

Why had Mama ever married Hawker Doak? Why? Actually Robin needed no one to give him the answer, for like it or not, he already knew it. For his mama had told him.

Late one night, after he and Mama had had a taste of Hawker’s violence, and Hawker was snoring in bed, Robin had awakened to hear the sound of someone sobbing softly in the kitchen. Creeping from his cot in the tiny room next to it, he had found Mama at the kitchen table with her head buried in her arms. Robin had quietly sat down beside her and put a hand over hers. Then, at long last, he had asked the question that he always believed was not for him, a young boy, to ask.

“Mama, why did you marry him?”

She looked up at him, the cold moonlight that came through the window glistening on her tear-stained cheeks. “Oh, Robin, I always thought you understood why. You must remember how terrible it was for us when your papa was so suddenly taken from us by that cruel accident at the docks?”

“I do remember!” Robin had replied earnestly. For how could he ever forget what, until that time, had been the worst memory of his life?

“Well, then,” she continued, “you must also think of how it was for me to lose him, and at the same time to realize I was left alone to take care of not only you, but of the infant I had just learned was to come. I knew I could never earn enough from the sewing I take in, so I would have had to go into the factories. The baby would have to be farmed out, and you would be left on your own all day.”

“I could have worked,” Robin had said. “I could have given up school.”

“Never! Your papa was never more than a dock worker, in London as well as here. We took what little we had to cross the ocean, hoping to find a better life someday. But when your papa was a lad, he had his schooling,” Mama had said proudly. “And when I was a lass, so did I. Never would I let you give that up. So going into the factories was what it was to be for me. And then Hawker asked me to marry him. Right away, he said, so all would believe the baby was his when it came.

“I think he feared he might lose me to someone else, if you can believe it,” she added with a sad smile. “But he seemed a good man, Robin. I had no call to think otherwise. Then soon after, I didn’t look as good to him as when I belonged to someone else, and he turned into what I believe he always had been, a cruel and hard man. And now do you understand it all?”

“Yes, Mama,” Robin had said. “But he never cared for me, even when he came visiting you and Papa. I knew from his eyes. And you know how when I tried calling him ‘Pa,’ as you asked me to do, he hit me across the mouth. And you see how he hits me all the time.”

“I know,” she replied. “I’ve been afraid to say anything for fear he would treat you even worse. He has threatened me as well, and some day I know he will make good his threats. The very thought of him frightens me, Robin, especially now.”

“Why especially now?” Robin had asked, scared by the look on her face.

“Because of something I must tell you,” she replied. “I’ve put it off, but I fear I can put it off no longer.”

And what Robin learned was that, even though he already knew she had been ailing even before the baby came, the doctor had now told her she had little time left in this world. It was why, she said, she had been showing Robin how to care for the baby. She had pleaded with Hawker to let Robin continue in school and help her when he came home, though Hawker had wanted to send him to work. She had thought so far ahead as to hide for him the few coins she could save, carefully laying them flat under the linoleum that lined the kitchen cupboard. That, in truth, was where he had found the fifty cents.

“Robin,” Mama had said at last, “you are young to have this burden, but you

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