But a more horrifying memory than that was of Hawker’s big, beefy hand raised threateningly over Danny s crib, with little mistaking where it was destined to come down. Robin had felt that hand on various parts of himself, and knew the strength and anger behind it. If he had not snatched Danny up, would the hand have come down on him in the same manner? How many times could a tiny baby survive such blows as that?
Robin stared into the darkness, seeing again and again the picture of Hawker’s hand coming down over Danny s crib. And then slowly, as if he were a wind-up toy unable to stop moving once its key had been turned, Robin pulled aside his blanket, put one leg, and then the other onto the floor. Finding his clothes in the dark, he dressed himself, but was careful to leave off his shoes. In his stockinged feet, he padded softly into the kitchen and lit a candle, setting it on the windowsill in the farthest corner. Lifting down from a peg in the wall the cloth shopping bag his mama had made for herself, he set it on the kitchen table.
Then he crept back into his and Danny’s room, where he gathered all the diapers he could find, Danny’s shirts and two little worn sweaters, once Robin’s. Back in the kitchen, he carefully wrapped Danny’s four clean baby bottles in the diapers, as well as two he filled with milk and teaspoonfuls of sugar syrup, a tiny tin spoon and a tin bowl, a paper sack of cereal, and a bottle of sugar syrup. All of these, together with the shirts and sweaters, Robin packed in the shopping bag.
This done, he cautiously slid a chair over to the cupboard and climbed onto it. Pushing aside a small stack of dishes, he lifted up the linoleum liner, and one by one picked up the coins under it, laying them on the counter. Then he replaced the linoleum and pushed back the dishes.
The next thing he did was put on his patched jacket, and put the coins into the inside pocket where he had carried the rent money. Then what he did was enter the dark room where Hawker lay snoring. Crossing over to the chest of drawers, he reached behind the mirror for a key, and with it unlocked and opened one top drawer. It was a drawer Hawker allowed no one to open except himself. But Robin’s mama had had a very good idea of what was in it. And so did Robin.
For Hawker, part-time dock worker, part-time rent collector for landlords, was also a part-time dealer in stolen goods, jewelry not excepted. But it almost seemed as if he kept little or no accounting of what he had in that department. For often when he entered the apartment on unsteady legs, he would simply toss one thing or another carelessly into the drawer. On several occasions, he had even left a pin or two, several rings, or a string of beads on a table for anyone to see.
Now, in the dark, Robin dipped a hand into the drawer. But even in his curiously dreamlike state, he knew that he should not raise Hawker’s suspicion that the drawer has been raided. So he took only the two things his fingers encountered, a pin and something small, flat, and round attached to a chain. Thrusting both of these into his jacket pocket, he closed and locked the drawer, hung the key back behind the mirror, and padded from the room.
Next, he gathered up the shopping bag and his shoes, then quietly opened the front door and laid the bag and shoes on the floor just outside it. Now, at last, after stuffing two candles and a box of matches into his pocket, he pulled on his cap, which hung on a kitchen peg, and went to fetch Danny.
It was then Robin realized he could not risk waking Danny by trying to put on his bonnet and cape, so he stuffed the bonnet into his own pocket and threw the cape over his own shoulder. Then, praying as hard as he had ever prayed in his life, he wrapped Danny s blanket around him, leaving only a small space for his face to peek through, and gently lifted him from the crib. Danny, now pleasantly filled with milk, stayed sound asleep.
After snuffing the candle burning in the kitchen, Robin was guided to the front door by the dim light of a wall lamp that flickered all night in the hallway of the building. After closing the door, he carefully laid Danny on the floor while he packed the cape into the shopping bag and kneeled to pull on and tie his shoes. Then he picked up Danny, snugly wrapped in his blanket cocoon, and the shopping bag, and crept from the building.
Until then, Robin had been moving as if he were in a trance, as if he were, in truth, a wind-up toy, as if someone else inside him were giving him orders that he was simply obeying. Was he only dreaming? None of what he had just done even seemed real to him.
But when the cold night air struck his face, the spell was broken. He was shocked into realizing that he had been so intent on the escape from Hawker, he had given no thought as to what to do after the escape. Now here he was in the street with his tiny baby brother, and he had no idea where to go, or what to do next. Not a single idea in the whole world!
Chapter V
A Desperate Measure
Pressing Danny more closely to himself
