The Complete Stories (71 page)

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The next morning at eight o'clock the police sergeant called and told him he could come pick Johnson up. “We booked a nigger on that charge,” he said. “Your boy didn't have nothing to do with it.”

Sheppard was at the station in ten minutes, his face hot with shame. Johnson sat slouched on a bench in a drab outer office, reading a police magazine. There was no one else in the room. Sheppard sat down beside him and put his hand tentatively on his shoulder.

The boy glanced up—his lip curled—and back to the magazine.

Sheppard felt physically sick. The ugliness of what he had done bore in upon him with a sudden dull intensity. He had failed him at just the point where he might have turned him once and for all in the right direction. “Rufus,” he said, “I apologize. I was wrong and you were right. I misjudged you.”

The boy continued to read.

“I'm sorry.”

The boy wet his finger and turned a page.

Sheppard braced himself. “I was a fool, Rufus,” he said.

Johnson's mouth slid slightly to the side. He shrugged without raising his head from the magazine.

“Will you forget it, this time?” Sheppard said. “It won't happen again.”

The boy looked up. His eyes were bright and unfriendly. “I'll forget it,” he said, “but you better remember it.” He got up and stalked toward the door. In the middle of the room he turned and jerked his arm at Sheppard and Sheppard jumped up and followed him as if the boy had yanked an invisible leash.

“Your shoe,” he said eagerly, “today is the day to get your shoe!” Thank God for the shoe!

But when they went to the brace shop, they found that the shoe had been made two sizes too small and a new one would not be ready for another ten days. Johnson's temper improved at once. The clerk had obviously made a mistake in the measurements but the boy insisted the foot had grown. He left the shop with a pleased expression, as if, in expanding, the foot had acted on some inspiration of its own. Sheppard's face was haggard.

After this he redoubled his efforts. Since Johnson had lost interest in the telescope, he bought a microscope and a box of prepared slides. If he couldn't impress the boy with immensity, he would try the infinitesimal. For two nights Johnson appeared absorbed in the new instrument, then he abruptly lost interest in it, but he seemed content to sit in the living room in the evening and read the encyclopedia. He devoured the encyclopedia as he devoured his dinner, steadily and without dint to his appetite. Each subject appeared to enter his head, be ravaged, and thrown out. Nothing pleased Sheppard more than to see the boy slouched on the sofa, his mouth shut, reading. After they had spent two or three evenings like this, he began to recover his vision. His confidence returned. He knew that some day he would be proud of Johnson.

On Thursday night Sheppard attended a city council meeting. He dropped the boys off at a movie on his way and picked them up on his way back. When they reached home, an automobile with a single red eye above its windshield was waiting in front of the house. Sheppard's lights as he turned into the driveway illuminated two dour faces in the car.

“The cops!” Johnson said. “Some nigger has broke in somewhere and they've come for me again.”

“We'll see about that,” Sheppard muttered. He stopped the car in the driveway and switched off the lights. “You boys go in the house and go to bed,” he said. “I'll handle this.”

He got out and strode toward the squad car. He thrust his head in the window. The two policemen were looking at him with silent knowledgeable faces. “A house on the corner of Shelton and Mills,” the one in the driver's seat said. “It looks like a train run through it.”

“He was in the picture show downtown,” Sheppard said. “My boy was with him. He had nothing to do with the other one and he had nothing to do with this one. I'll be responsible.”

“If I was you,” the one nearest him said, “I wouldn't be responsible for any little bastard like him.”

“I said I'd be responsible,” Sheppard repeated coldly. “You people made a mistake the last time. Don't make another.”

The policemen looked at each other. “It ain't our funeral,” the one in the driver's seat said, and turned the key in the ignition.

Sheppard went in the house and sat down in the living room in the dark. He did not suspect Johnson and he did not want the boy to think he did. If Johnson thought he suspected him again, he would lose everything. But he wanted to know if his alibi was airtight. He thought of going to Norton's room and asking him if Johnson had left the movie. But that would be worse. Johnson would know what he was doing and would be incensed. He decided to ask Johnson himself. He would be direct. He went over in his mind what he was going to say and then he got up and went to the boy's door.

It was open as if he had been expected but Johnson was in bed. Just enough light came in from the hall for Sheppard to see his shape under the sheet. He came in and stood at the foot of the bed. “They've gone,” he said. “I told them you had nothing to do with it and that I'd be responsible.”

There was a muttered “Yeah,” from the pillow.

Sheppard hesitated. “Rufus,” he said, “you didn't leave the movie for anything at all, did you?”

“You make out like you got all this confidence in me!” a sudden outraged voice cried, “and you ain't got any! You don't trust me no more now than you did then!” The voice, disembodied, seemed to come more surely from the depths of Johnson than when his face was visible. It was a cry of reproach, edged slightly with contempt.

“I do have confidence in you,” Sheppard said intensely. “I have every confidence in you. I believe in you and I trust you completely.”

“You got your eye on me all the time,” the voice said sullenly. “When you get through asking me a bunch of questions, you're going across the hall and ask Norton a bunch of them.”

“I have no intention of asking Norton anything and never did,” Sheppard said gently. “And I don't suspect you at all. You could hardly have got from the picture show downtown and out here to break in a house and back to the picture show in the time you had.”

“That's why you believe me!” the boy cried, “—because you think I couldn't have done it.”

“No, no!” Sheppard said. “I believe you because I believe you've got the brains and the guts not to get in trouble again. I believe you know yourself well enough now to know that you don't have to do such things. I believe that you can make anything of yourself that you set your mind to.”

Johnson sat up. A faint light shone on his forehead but the rest of his face was invisible. “And I could have broke in there if I'd wanted to in the time I had,” he said.

“But I know you didn't,” Sheppard said. “There's not the least trace of doubt in my mind.”

There was a silence. Johnson lay back down. Then the voice, low and hoarse, as if it were being forced out with difficulty, said, “You don't want to steal and smash up things when you've got everything you want already.”

Sheppard caught his breath. The boy was thanking him! He was thanking him! There was gratitude in his voice. There was appreciation. He stood there, smiling foolishly in the dark, trying to hold the moment in suspension. Involuntarily he took a step toward the pillow and stretched out his hand and touched Johnson's forehead. It was cold and dry like rusty iron.

“I understand. Good night, son,” he said and turned quickly and left the room. He closed the door behind him and stood there, overcome with emotion.

Across the hall Norton's door was open. The child lay on the bed on his side, looking into the light from the hall.

After this, the road with Johnson would be smooth.

Norton sat up and beckoned to him.

He saw the child but after the first instant, he did not let his eyes focus directly on him. He could not go in and talk to Norton without breaking Johnson's trust. He hesitated, but remained where he was a moment as if he saw nothing. Tomorrow was the day they were to go back for the shoe. It would be a climax to the good feeling between them. He turned quickly and went back into his own room.

The child sat for some time looking at the spot where his father had stood. Finally his gaze became aimless and he lay back down.

The next day Johnson was glum and silent as if he were ashamed that he had revealed himself. His eyes had a hooded look. He seemed to have retired within himself and there to be going through some crisis of determination. Sheppard could not get to the brace shop quickly enough. He left Norton at home because he did not want his attention divided. He wanted to be free to observe Johnson's reaction minutely. The boy did not seem pleased or even interested in the prospect of the shoe, but when it became an actuality, certainly then he would be moved.

The brace shop was a small concrete warehouse lined and stacked with the equipment of affliction. Wheel chairs and walkers covered most of the floor. The walls were hung with every kind of crutch and brace. Artificial limbs were stacked on the shelves, legs and arms and hands, claws and hooks, straps and human harnesses and unidentifiable instruments for unnamed deformities. In a small clearing in the middle of the room there was a row of yellow plastic-cushioned chairs and a shoe-fitting stool. Johnson slouched down in one of the chairs and set his foot up on the stool and sat with his eyes on it moodily. What was roughly the toe had broken open again and he had patched it with a piece of canvas; another place he had patched with what appeared to be the tongue of the original shoe. The two sides were laced with twine.

There was an excited flush on Sheppard's face; his heart was beating unnaturally fast.

The clerk appeared from the back of the shop with the new shoe under his arm. “Got her right this time!” he said. He straddled the shoe-fitting stool and held the shoe up, smiling as if he had produced it by magic.

It was a black slick shapeless object, shining hideously. It looked like a blunt weapon, highly polished.

Johnson gazed at it darkly.

“With this shoe,” the clerk said, “you won't know you're walking. You'll think you're riding!” He bent his bright pink bald head and began gingerly to unlace the twine. He removed the old shoe as if he were skinning an animal still half alive. His expression was strained. The unsheathed mass of foot in the dirty sock made Sheppard feel queasy. He turned his eyes away until the new shoe was on. The clerk laced it up rapidly. “Now stand up and walk around,” he said, “and see if that ain't power glide.” He winked at Sheppard. “In that shoe,” he said, “he won't know he don't have a normal foot.”

Sheppard's face was bright with pleasure.

Johnson stood up and walked a few yards away. He walked stiffly with almost no dip in his short side. He stood for a moment, rigid, with his back to them.

“Wonderful!” Sheppard said. “Wonderful.” It was as if he had given the boy a new spine.

Johnson turned around. His mouth was set in a thin icy line. He came back to the seat and removed the shoe. He put his foot in the old one and began lacing it up.

“You want to take it home and see if it suits you first?” the clerk murmured.

“No,” Johnson said. “I ain't going to wear it at all.”

“What's wrong with it?” Sheppard said, his voice rising.

“I don't need no new shoe,” Johnson said. “And when I do, I got ways of getting my own.” His face was stony but there was a glint of triumph in his eyes.

“Boy,” the clerk said, “is your trouble in your foot or in your head?”

“Go soak your skull,” Johnson said. “Your brains are on fire.”

The clerk rose glumly but with dignity and asked Sheppard what he wanted done with the shoe, which he dangled dispiritedly by the lace.

Sheppard's face was a dark angry red. He was staring straight in front of him at a leather corset with an artificial arm attached.

The clerk asked him again.

“Wrap it up,” Sheppard muttered. He turned his eyes to Johnson. “He's not mature enough for it yet,” he said. “I had thought he was less of a child.”

The boy leered. “You been wrong before,” he said.

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That night they sat in the living room and read as usual. Sheppard kept himself glumly entrenched behind the Sunday New York
Times.
He wanted to recover his good humor, but every time he thought of the rejected shoe, he felt a new charge of irritation. He did not trust himself even to look at Johnson. He realized that the boy had refused the shoe because he was insecure. Johnson had been frightened by his own gratitude. He didn't know what to make of the new self he was becoming conscious of. He understood that something he had been was threatened and he was facing himself and his possibilities for the first time. He was questioning his identity. Grudgingly, Sheppard felt a slight return of sympathy for the boy. In a few minutes, he lowered his paper and looked at him.

Johnson was sitting on the sofa, gazing over the top of the encyclopedia. His expression was trancelike. He might have been listening to something far away. Sheppard watched him intently but the boy continued to listen, and did not turn his head. The poor kid is lost, Sheppard thought. Here he had sat all evening, sullenly reading the paper, and had not said a word to break the tension. “Rufus,” he said.

Johnson continued to sit, stock-still, listening.

“Rufus,” Sheppard said in a slow hypnotic voice, “you can be anything in the world you want to be. You can be a scientist or an architect or an engineer or whatever you set your mind to, and whatever you set your mind to be, you can be the best of its kind.” He imagined his voice penetrating to the boy in the black caverns of his psyche. Johnson leaned forward but his eyes did not turn. On the street a car door closed. There was a silence. Then a sudden blast from the door bell.