“See,” said Annjee. “There’s room enough for us both, and we’ll be saving rent. There’s no closet, but we can drive a few extra nails behind the door. And with the two windows we can get plenty of air these hot nights.”
“It’s nice, mama,” Sandy said, but he had to repeat his statement twice, because another L train thundered past so that he couldn’t hear his own words as he uttered them. “It’s awful nice, mama!”
He took off his coat and sat down on the trunk between the two windows. Annjee came over and kissed him, rubbing her hand across his crinkly brown hair.
“Well, you’re a great big boy now. … Mama’s baby—in long pants. And you’re handsome, just like your father!” She had Jimboy’s picture stuck in a corner of the washstand—a postcard photo in his army uniform, in which he looked very boyish and proud, sent from the training-camp before his company went to France. “But I got no time to be setting here petting you, Sandy, even if you have just come. I got to get on back to the hairdressing-parlor to make some money.”
So Annjee went to work again—as she had been off only long enough to meet the train—and Sandy lay down on the bed and slept the hot afternoon away. That evening as a treat they had supper at a restaurant, where Annjee picked carefully from the cheap menu so that their bill wouldn’t be high.
“But don’t think this is regular. We can’t afford it,” she said. “I bring things home and fix them on an oil-stove in the room and spread papers on the trunk for a table. A restaurant supper’s just in honor of you.”
When they came back to the house that evening, Sandy was introduced to Mrs. Harris, their landlady, and to her husband, the elevator-starter, who was to give him the job at the hotel.
“That’s a fine-looking boy you got there, Mis’ Rodgers,” he said, appraising Sandy. “He’ll do pretty well for one of them main lobby cars, since we don’t use nothing but first-class intelligent help down where I am, like I told you. And we has only the best class o’ white folks stoppin’ there, too. … Be up at six in the mornin’, buddy, and I’ll take you downtown with me.”
Annjee was tired, so they went upstairs to the back room and lit the gas over the bed, but the frequent roar of the L trains prevented steady conversation and made Sandy jump each time that the long chain of cars thundered by. He hadn’t yet become accustomed to them, or to the vast humming of the city, which was strange to his small-town ears. And he wanted to go out and look around a bit, to walk up and down the streets at night and see what they were like.
“Well, go on if you want to,” said his mother, “but don’t forget this house number. I’m gonna lie down, but I guess I’ll be awake when you come back. Or somebody’ll be setting on the porch and the door’ll be open.”
At the corner Sandy stopped and looked around to be sure of his bearings when he returned. He marked in his mind the signboard advertising Chesterfields and the frame-house with the tumbledown stairs on the outside. In the street some kids were playing hopscotch under the arc-light. Somebody stopped beside him.
“Nice evening?” said a small yellow man with a womanish kind of voice, smiling at Sandy.
“Yes,” said the boy, starting across the street, but the stranger followed him, offering Pall Malls. He smelled of perfume, and his face looked as though it had been powdered with white talcum as he lit a tiny pocket-lighter.
“Stranger?” murmured the soft voice, lighting Sandy’s cigarette.
“I’m from Stanton,” he replied, wishing the man had not chosen to walk with him.
“Ah, Kentucky,” exclaimed the perfumed fellow. “I been down there. Nice women in that town, heh?”
“But it’s not Kentucky,” Sandy objected. “It’s Kansas.”
“Oh, out west where the girls are raring to go! I know! Just like wild horses out there—so passionate, aren’t they?”
“I guess so,” Sandy ventured. The powdered voice was softly persistent.
“Say, kid,” it whispered smoothly, touching the boy’s arm, “listen, I got some swell French pictures up in my room—naked women and everything! Want to come up and see them?”
“No,” said Sandy, quickening his pace. “I got to go somewhere.”
“But I room right around the corner,” the voice insisted. “Come on by. You’re a nice kid, you know it? Listen, don’t walk so fast. Stop, let me talk to you.”
But Sandy was beginning to understand. A warm sweat broke out on his neck and forehead. Sometimes, at the pool hall in Stanton, he had heard the men talk about queer fellows who stopped boys in the streets and tried to coax them to their rooms.
“He thinks I’m dumb,” thought Sandy, “but I’m wise to him!” Yet he wondered what such men did with the boys who accompanied them. Curious, he’d like to find out—but he was afraid; so at the next corner he turned and started rapidly towards State Street, but the queer fellow kept close beside him, begging.
“… and we’ll have a nice time. … I got wine in the room, if you want some, and a vic, too.”
“Get away, will you!”
They had reached State Street where the lights were bright and people were passing all the time. Sandy could see the fellow’s anxious face quite clearly now.
“Listen, kid … you …”
But suddenly the man was no longer beside him—for Sandy commenced to run. On the brightly lighted avenue panic seized him. He had to escape this
