The Complete Stories (70 page)

Neither of them made a sound. Norton stared at the chair cushion. Johnson peered closer at some fine print in the encyclopedia. Sheppard was looking at the tops of their heads. He smiled. After all, he had won. The boy was staying. He reached out and ruffled Norton's hair and slapped Johnson on the shoulder. “Now you fellows sit here and get acquainted,” he said gaily and started toward the door. “I'm going to see what Leola left us for supper.”

When he was gone, Johnson raised his head and looked at Norton. The child looked back at him bleakly. “God, kid,” Johnson said in a cracked voice, “how do you stand it?” His face was stiff with outrage. “He thinks he's Jesus Christ!”

II

Sheppard's attic was a large unfinished room with exposed beams and no electric light. They had set the telescope up on a tripod in one of the dormer windows. It pointed now toward the dark sky where a sliver of moon, as fragile as an egg shell, had just emerged from behind a cloud with a brilliant silver edge. Inside, a kerosene lantern set on a trunk cast their shadows upward and tangled them, wavering slightly, in the joints overhead. Sheppard was sitting on a packing box, looking through the telescope, and Johnson was at his elbow, waiting to get at it. Sheppard had bought it for fifteen dollars two days before at a pawn shop.

“Quit hoggin it,” Johnson said.

Sheppard got up and Johnson slid onto the box and put his eye to the instrument.

Sheppard sat down on a straight chair a few feet away. His face was flushed with pleasure. This much of his dream was a reality. Within a week he had made it possible for this boy's vision to pass through a slender channel to the stars. He looked at Johnson's bent back with complete satisfaction. The boy had on one of Norton's plaid shirts and some new khaki trousers he had bought him. The shoe would be ready next week. He had taken him to the brace shop the day after he came and had him fitted for a new shoe. Johnson was as touchy about the foot as if it were a sacred object. His face had been glum while the clerk, a young man with a bright pink bald head, measured the foot with his profane hands. The shoe was going to make the greatest difference in the boy's attitude. Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes. When Norton got a new pair, he walked around for days with his eyes on his feet.

Sheppard glanced across the room at the child. He was sitting on the floor against a trunk, trussed up in a rope he had found and wound around his legs from his ankles to his knees. He appeared so far away that Sheppard might have been looking at him through the wrong end of the telescope. He had had to whip him only once since Johnson had been with them—the first night when Norton had realized that Johnson was going to sleep in his mother's bed. He did not believe in whipping children, particularly in anger. In this case, he had done both and with good results. He had had no more trouble with Norton.

The child hadn't shown any positive generosity toward Johnson but what he couldn't help, he appeared to be resigned to. In the mornings Sheppard sent the two of them to the Y swimming pool, gave them money to get their lunch at the cafeteria and instructed them to meet him in the park in the afternoon to watch his Little League baseball practice. Every afternoon they had arrived at the park, shambling, silent, their faces closed each on his own thoughts as if neither were aware of the other's existence. At least he could be thankful there were no fights.

Norton showed no interest in the telescope. “Don't you want to get up and look through the telescope, Norton?” he said. It irritated him that the child showed no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. “Rufus is going to be way ahead of you.”

Norton leaned forward absently and looked at Johnson's back.

Johnson turned around from the instrument. His face had begun to fill out again. The look of outrage had retreated from his hollow cheeks and was shored up now in the caves of his eyes, like a fugitive from Sheppard's kindness. “Don't waste your valuable time, kid,” he said. “You seen the moon once, you seen it.”

Sheppard was amused by these sudden turns of perversity. The boy resisted whatever he suspected was meant for his improvement and contrived when he was vitally interested in something to leave the impression he was bored. Sheppard was not deceived. Secretly Johnson was learning what he wanted him to learn—that his benefactor was impervious to insult and that there were no cracks in his armor of kindness and patience where a successful shaft could be driven. “Some day you may go to the moon,” he said. “In ten years men will probably be making round trips there on schedule. Why you boys may be spacemen. Astronauts!”

“Astro-nuts,” Johnson said.

“Nuts or nauts,” Sheppard said, “it's perfectly possible that you, Rufus Johnson, will go to the moon.”

Something in the depths of Johnson's eyes stirred. All day his humor had been glum. “I ain't going to the moon and get there alive,” he said, “and when I die I'm going to hell.”

“It's at least possible to get to the moon,” Sheppard said dryly. The best way to handle this kind of thing was with gentle ridicule. “We can see it. We know it's there. Nobody has given any reliable evidence there's a hell.”

“The Bible has give the evidence,” Johnson said darkly, “and if you die and go there you burn forever.”

The child leaned forward.

“Whoever says it ain't a hell,” Johnson said, “is contradicting Jesus. The dead are judged and the wicked are damned. They weep and gnash their teeth while they burn,” he continued, “and it's everlasting darkness.”

The child's mouth opened. His eyes appeared to grow hollow.

“Satan runs it,” Johnson said.

Norton lurched up and took a hobbled step toward Sheppard. “Is she there?” he said in a loud voice. “Is she there burning up?” He kicked the rope off his feet. “Is she on fire?”

“Oh my God,” Sheppard muttered. “No no,” he said, “of course she isn't. Rufus is mistaken. Your mother isn't anywhere. She's not unhappy. She just isn't.” His lot would have been easier if when his wife died he had told Norton she had gone to heaven and that some day he would see her again, but he could not allow himself to bring him up on a lie.

Norton's face began to twist. A knot formed in his chin.

“Listen,” Sheppard said quickly and pulled the child to him, “your mother's spirit lives on in other people and it'll live on in you if you're good and generous like she was.”

The child's pale eyes hardened in disbelief.

Sheppard's pity turned to revulsion. The boy would rather she be in hell than nowhere. “Do you understand?” he said. “She doesn't exist.” He put his hand on the child's shoulder. “That's all I have to give you,” he said in a softer, exasperated tone, “the truth.”

Instead of howling, the boy wrenched himself away and caught Johnson by the sleeve. “Is she there, Rufus?” he said “Is she there, burning up?”

Johnson's eyes glittered. “Well,” he said, “she is if she was evil. Was she a whore?”

“Your mother was not a whore,” Sheppard said sharply. He had the sensation of driving a car without brakes. “Now let's have no more of this foolishness. We were talking about the moon.”

“Did she believe in Jesus?” Johnson asked.

Norton looked blank. After a second he said, “Yes,” as if he saw that this was necessary. “She did,” he said. “All the time.”

“She did not,” Sheppard muttered.

“She did all the time,” Norton said. “I heard her say she did all the time.”

“She's saved,” Johnson said.

The child still looked puzzled. “Where?” he said. “Where is she at?”

“On high,” Johnson said.

“Where's that?” Norton gasped.

“It's in the sky somewhere,” Johnson said, “but you got to be dead to get there. You can't go in no space ship.” There was a narrow gleam in his eyes now like a beam holding steady on its target.

“Man's going to the moon,” Sheppard said grimly, “is very much like the first fish crawling out of the water onto land billions and billions of years ago. He didn't have an earth suit. He had to grow his adjustments inside. He developed lungs.”

“When I'm dead will I go to hell or where she is?” Norton asked.

“Right now you'd go where she is,” Johnson said, “but if you live long enough, you'll go to hell.”

Sheppard rose abruptly and picked up the lantern. “Close the window, Rufus,” he said. “It's time we went to bed.”

On the way down the attic stairs he heard Johnson say in a loud whisper behind him, “I'll tell you all about it tomorrow, kid, when Himself has cleared out.”

*   *   *

The next day when the boys came to the ball park, he watched them as they came from behind the bleachers and around the edge of the field. Johnson's hand was on Norton's shoulder, his head bent toward the younger boy's ear, and on the child's face there was a look of complete confidence, of dawning light. Sheppard's grimace hardened. This would be Johnson's way of trying to annoy him. But he would not be annoyed. Norton was not bright enough to be damaged much. He gazed at the child's dull absorbed little face. Why try to make him superior? Heaven and hell were for the mediocre, and he was that if he was anything.

The two boys came into the bleachers and sat down about ten feet away, facing him, but neither gave him any sign of recognition. He cast a glance behind him where the Little Leaguers were spread out in the field. Then he started for the bleachers. The hiss of Johnson's voice stopped as he approached.

“What have you fellows been doing today?” he asked genially.

“He's been telling me…” Norton started.

Johnson pushed the child in the ribs with his elbow. “We ain't been doing nothing,” he said. His face appeared to be covered with a blank glaze but through it a look of complicity was blazoned forth insolently.

Sheppard felt his face grow warm, but he said nothing. A child in a Little League uniform had followed him and was nudging him in the back of the leg with a bat. He turned and put his arm around the boy's neck and went with him back to the game.

That night when he went to the attic to join the boys at the telescope, he found Norton there alone. He was sitting on the packing box, hunched over, looking intently through the instrument. Johnson was not there.

“Where's Rufus?” Sheppard asked.

“I said where's Rufus?” he said louder.

“Gone somewhere,” the child said without turning around.

“Gone where?” Sheppard asked.

“He just said he was going somewhere. He said he was fed up looking at stars.”

“I see,” Sheppard said glumly. He turned and went back down the stairs. He searched the house without finding Johnson. Then he went to the living room and sat down. Yesterday he had been convinced of his success with the boy. Today he faced the possibility that he was failing with him. He had been over-lenient, too concerned to have Johnson like him. He felt a twinge of guilt. What difference did it make if Johnson liked him or not? What was that to him? When the boy came in, they would have a few things understood. As long as you stay here there'll be no going out at night by yourself, do you understand?

I don't have to stay here. It ain't nothing to me staying here.

Oh my God, he thought. He could not bring it to that. He would have to be firm but not make an issue of it. He picked up the evening paper. Kindness and patience were always called for but he had not been firm enough. He sat holding the paper but not reading it. The boy would not respect him unless he showed firmness. The doorbell rang and he went to answer it. He opened it and stepped back, with a pained disappointed face.

A large dour policeman stood on the stoop, holding Johnson by the elbow. At the curb a patrol car waited. Johnson looked very white. His jaw was thrust forward as if to keep from trembling.

“We brought him here first because he raised such a fit,” the policeman said, “but now that you've seen him, we're going to take him to the station and ask him a few questions.”

“What happened?” Sheppard muttered.

“A house around the corner from here,” the policeman said. “A real smash job, dishes broken all over the floor, furniture turned upside down…”

“I didn't have a thing to do with it!” Johnson said. “I was walking along minding my own bidnis when this cop came up and grabbed me.”

Sheppard looked at the boy grimly. He made no effort to soften his expression.

Johnson flushed. “I was just walking along,” he muttered, but with no conviction in his voice.

“Come on, bud,” the policeman said.

“You ain't going to let him take me, are you?” Johnson said. “You believe me, don't you?” There was an appeal in his voice that Sheppard had not heard there before.

This was crucial. The boy would have to learn that he could not be protected when he was guilty. “You'll have to go with him, Rufus,” he said.

“You're going to let him take me and I tell you I ain't done a thing?” Johnson said shrilly.

Sheppard's face became harder as his sense of injury grew. The boy had failed him even before he had had a chance to give him the shoe. They were to have got it tomorrow. All his regret turned suddenly on the shoe; his irritation at the sight of Johnson doubled.

“You made out like you had all this confidence in me,” the boy mumbled.

“I did have,” Sheppard said. His face was wooden.

Johnson turned away with the policeman but before he moved, a gleam of pure hatred flashed toward Sheppard from the pits of his eyes.

Sheppard stood in the door and watched them get into the patrol car and drive away. He summoned his compassion. He would go to the station tomorrow and see what he could do about getting him out of trouble. The night in jail would not hurt him and the experience would teach him that he could not treat with impunity someone who had shown him nothing but kindness. Then they would go get the shoe and perhaps after a night in jail it would mean even more to the boy.