The next day, Saturday, the last day of the carnival, Jimboy carried the Reinharts’ clothes home for Hager, since Sandy was crippled and Jimmy Lane’s mother was down in bed. But after delivering the clothes Jimboy did not come home for supper. When Annjee and Hager wanted to leave for the revival in the early evening, they asked Harriett if she would stay home with the little boy, for Sandy’s heel had swollen purple where the rusty nail had penetrated and he could hardly walk at all.
“You been gone ever’ night this week,” Hager said to the girl. “An’ you ain’t been anear de holy tents where de Lawd’s word is preached; so you ought to be willin’ to stay home one night with a po’ little sick boy.”
“Yes’m,” Harriett muttered in a noncommittal tone. But shortly after her mother and Annjee had gone, she said to her nephew: “You aren’t afraid to stay home by yourself, are you?”
And Sandy answered: “Course not, Aunt Harrie.”
She gave him a hot bath and put a new piece of fat meat on his festering heel. Then she told him to climb into Annjee’s bed and go to sleep, but instead he lay for a long time looking out the window that was beside the bed. He thought about the carnival—the Ferris wheel sweeping up into the air, and the minstrel show. Then he remembered Benbow’s dance a few weeks ago and how his Aunt Harriett had stood sullenly the next morning while Hager whipped her—and hadn’t cried at all, until the welts came under her silk stockings. … Then he wondered what Jimmy Lane would do if his sick mother died from the T.B. and he were left with nobody to take care of him, because Jimmy’s stepfather was no good. … Eu‑uuu! His heel hurt! … When school began again, he would be in the fifth grade, but he wished he’d hurry up and get to high school, like Harriett was. … When he got to be a man, he was going to be a railroad engineer. … Gee, he wasn’t sleepy—and his heel throbbed painfully.
In the next room Harriett had lighted the oil-lamp and was moving swiftly about taking clothes from the dresser-drawers and spreading them on the bed. She thought Sandy was asleep, he knew—but he couldn’t go to sleep the way his foot hurt him. He could see her through the doorway folding her dresses in little piles and he wondered why she was doing that. Then she took an old suitcase from the closet and began to pack it, and when it was full, she pulled a new bag from under the bed, and into it she dumped her toilet-articles, powder, vaseline, nail-polish, straightening comb, and several pairs of old stockings rolled in balls. Then she sat down on the bed between the two closed suitcases for a long time with her hands in her lap and her eyes staring ahead of her.
Finally she rose and closed the bureau-drawers, tidied up the confusion she had created, and gathered together the discarded things she had thrown on the floor. Then Sandy heard her go out into the backyard towards the trash-pile. When she returned, she put on a tight little hat and went into the kitchen to wash her hands, throwing the water through the back door. Then she tiptoed into the room where Sandy was lying and kissed him gently on the head. Sandy knew that she thought he was asleep, but in spite of himself he suddenly threw his arms tightly around her neck. He couldn’t help it.
“Where you going, Aunt Harriett?” he said, sitting up in bed, clutching the girl.
“Honey, you won’t tell on me, will you?” Harriett asked.
“No,” he answered, and she knew he wouldn’t. “But where are you going, Aunt Harrie?”
“You won’t be afraid to stay here until grandma comes?”
“No,” burying his face on her breast. “I won’t be afraid.”
“And you won’t forget Aunt Harrie?”
“Course not.”
“I’m leaving with the carnival,” she told him.
For a moment they sat close together on the bed. Then she kissed him, went into the other room and picked up her suitcases—and the door closed.
X
Punishment
Old white Dr. McDillors, beloved of all the Negroes in Stanton, came on Sunday morning, swabbed Sandy’s festering foot with iodine, bound it up, and gave him a bottle of green medicine to take, and by the middle of the week the boy was able to hobble about again without pain; but Hager continued to apply fat meat instead of following the doctor’s directions.
When Harriett didn’t come back, Sandy no longer slept on a pallet on the floor. He slept in the big bed with his grandma Hager, and the evenings that followed weren’t so jolly, with his young aunt off with the carnival, and Jimboy spending most of his time at the pool hall or else loafing on the station platform watching the trains come through—and nobody playing music in the backyard.
They went to bed early these days, and after that eventful week of carnival and revival, a sore heel, and a missing Aunt Harriett, the muscles of Sandy’s little body often twitched and jerked in his sleep and he would awaken suddenly from dreaming that he heard sad raggy music playing while a woman shouted for Jesus in the Gospel tent, and a girl in red silk stockings cried because the switches were cutting her legs. Sometimes he would lie staring into the darkness a long time, while Aunt Hager lay snoring at his side. And sometimes in the next room, where Annjee and Jimboy were, he could hear the slow rhythmical creaking of the bedsprings and the low moans of his mother, which he already knew accompanied the grown-up embraces of bodily love. And sometimes through the window he could see the moonlight glinting on the tall, tassel-crowned stalks of corn in the garden. Perhaps he would
