“What comes after millions?” he asked at noon, when Will came home from school. “An’ how d’ye work ’em?”
That afternoon finished his task. Each day, but without paper and pencil, he returned to the stoop. He was greatly absorbed in the one tree that grew across the street. He studied it for hours at a time, and was unusually interested when the wind swayed its branches and fluttered its leaves. Throughout the week he seemed lost in a great communion with himself. On Sunday, sitting on the stoop, he laughed aloud, several times, to the perturbation of his mother, who had not heard him laugh for years.
Next morning, in the early darkness, she came to his bed to rouse him. He had had his fill of sleep all the week, and awoke easily. He made no struggle, nor did he attempt to hold on to the bedding when she stripped it from him. He lay quietly, and spoke quietly.
“It ain’t no use, ma.”
“You’ll be late,” she said, under the impression that he was still stupid with sleep.
“I’m awake, ma, an’ I tell you it ain’t no use. You might as well lemme alone. I ain’t goin’ to git up.”
“But you’ll lose your job!” she cried.
“I ain’t goin’ to git up,” he repeated in a strange, passionless voice.
She did not go to work herself that morning. This was sickness beyond any sickness she had ever known. Fever and delirium she could understand; but this was insanity. She pulled the bedding up over him and sent Jennie for the doctor.
When that person arrived, Johnny was sleeping gently, and gently he awoke and allowed his pulse to be taken.
“Nothing the matter with him,” the doctor reported. “Badly debilitated, that’s all. Not much meat on his bones.”
“He’s always been that way,” his mother volunteered.
“Now go ’way, ma, an’ let me finish my snooze.”
Johnny spoke sweetly and placidly, and sweetly and placidly he rolled over on his side and went to sleep.
At ten o’clock he awoke and dressed himself. He walked out into the kitchen, where he found his mother with a frightened expression on her face.
“I’m goin’ away, ma,” he announced, “an’ I jes’ want to say goodbye.”
She threw her apron over her head and sat down suddenly and wept. He waited patiently.
“I might a-known it,” she was sobbing.
“Where?” she finally asked, removing the apron from her head and gazing up at him with a stricken face in which there was little curiosity.
“I don’t know—anywhere.”
As he spoke, the tree across the street appeared with dazzling brightness on his inner vision. It seemed to lurk just under his eyelids, and he could see it whenever he wished.
“An’ your job?” she quavered.
“I ain’t never goin’ to work again.”
“My God, Johnny!” she wailed, “don’t say that!”
What he had said was blasphemy to her. As a mother who hears her child deny God, was Johnny’s mother shocked by his words.
“What’s got into you, anyway?” she demanded, with a lame attempt at imperativeness.
“Figures,” he answered. “Jes’ figures. I’ve ben doin’ a lot of figurin’ this week, an’ it’s most surprisin’.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” she sniffled.
Johnny smiled patiently, and his mother was aware of a distinct shock at the persistent absence of his peevishness and irritability.
“I’ll show you,” he said. “I’m plum’ tired out. What makes me tired? Moves. I’ve ben movin’ ever since I was born. I’m tired of movin’, an’ I ain’t goin’ to move any more. Remember when I worked in the glasshouse? I used to do three hundred dozen a day. Now I reckon I made about ten different moves to each bottle. That’s thirty-six thousan’ moves a day. Ten days, three hundred an’ sixty thousan’ moves. One month, one million an’ eighty thousan’ moves. Chuck out the eighty thousan’ ”—he spoke with the complacent beneficence of a philanthropist—“chuck out the eighty thousan’, that leaves a million moves a month—twelve million moves a year.
“At the looms I’m movin’ twic’st as much. That makes twenty-five million moves a year, an’ it seems to me I’ve ben a movin’ that way ’most a million years.
“Now this week I ain’t moved at all. I ain’t made one move in hours an’ hours. I tell you it was swell, jes’ settin’ there, hours an’ hours, an’ doin’ nothin’. I ain’t never ben happy before. I never had any time. I’ve ben movin’ all the time. That ain’t no way to be happy. An’ I ain’t going to do it any more. I’m jes’ goin’ to set, an’ set, an’ rest, an’ rest, and then rest some more.”
“But what’s goin’ to come of Will an’ the children?” she asked despairingly.
“That’s it, ’Will an’ the children,’ ” he repeated.
But there was no bitterness in his voice. He had long known his mother’s ambition for the younger boy, but the thought of it no longer rankled. Nothing mattered any more. Not even that.
“I know, ma, what you’ve ben plannin’ for Will—keepin’ him in school to make a bookkeeper out of him. But it ain’t no use, I’ve quit. He’s got to go to work.”
“An’ after I have brung you up the way I have,” she wept, starting to cover her head with the apron and changing her mind.
“You never brung me up,” he answered with sad kindliness. “I brung myself up, ma, an’ I brung up Will. He’s bigger’n me, an’ heavier, an’ taller. When I was a kid, I reckon I didn’t git enough to eat. When he come along an’ was a kid, I was workin’ an’ earnin’ grub for him too. But that’s done with. Will can go to work, same as me, or he can go to hell, I don’t care which. I’m tired. I’m goin’ now. Ain’t you goin’ to say goodbye?”
She made no reply. The apron had gone over her head again, and she was crying. He paused a moment in the doorway.
“I’m sure I
