The Children (8 page)

S
LOWLY, WEIGHING HIS CHANCES, OLLIE ADVANCED TO
the battle. Now for Ollie, this was no new thing. Life was, always, eat or be eaten. No law existed beyond the strength of your body, the quickness of your fists. This land he lived in was the land of fang and claw. A man stood in himself; the weak perished and the strong became stronger. And if you were strong enough, you became king. Now he was king.

They were going to fight. In neither's mind was there any doubt about that. Nevertheless, in the way of those who live by fang and claw, they could not advance to the fight immediately. Perhaps their challenges and blustering hearkened back to something deep in the human makeup, that civilization has successfully bred out. The trained killer can strike like a snake. They were children of battle; but they were not trained killers.

Ollie advanced without hate, but he knew how necessary hate was to successful fighting, and, inside of himself, he fanned his rage, thinking of all the vile things that had ever been attributed to Negroes. Wary, perched upon the balls of his feet, his eyes shot about him. Dangerous land this. He tried not to think of that, tried to think only of what he would do to Blackbelly.

“Hey, yuh dirdy nigger,” he called.

Blackbelly eyed him from between thick, dark lids. Blackbelly's eyes were slits of yellow and brown. He stood like a brown stump on the sun-baked street.

“Run off, white boy,” he said.

“I ain' runnin' from no nigger.”

“I'll break yer ass, white boy.”

“Jus' try it!”

“Boy—yuh wanna fight?”

“I ain' fightin' no yella niggers!”

“Yer yella.”

“Who's yella?” demanded Ollie. Then he glanced down at Ishky, who was now sitting up, drawing himself over to one side. Ishky knew what was coming, and he watched eagerly. And Ollie—here in enemy country, with the fight close upon him, Ollie drew quickly upon some fancied kinship of skin. Or perhaps it was the old instinct of the feudal lord to protect his serf. Anyway, he threw a finger at Ishky.

“Whatcha hittim fer, Blackbelly?”

“Doncha call me Blackbelly.”

“I'll call any goddam nigger what I wan'.”

“Doncha call me dat agin,” Blackbelly warned.

“Whatcha wanna hittim fer?”

“Nunna yer goddam business.”

“Whoya cussin'?”

“You.”

“Den eat it!”

“Make me.”

Ollie leaped at him. Blackbelly crouched, his arms working like pistons, his feet moving slowly and steadily. Blackbelly was the heavier by a good fifteen pounds, but Ollie moved like a cat, leaping in and out, swaying upon the balls of his feet, pounding always at Blackbelly's face. Sometimes, they closed, standing toe to toe, beating each other as well as they could. Then they would leap apart, stare at each other, panting. Ollie's blond skin was splotched and bruised. A thin trickle of blood ran from his nose.

Blackbelly wanted to beat the other down. Closer to earth than Ollie, he could see himself standing as he was through all time, and presently the white boy would be gone. Instinctively, perhaps, he knew that there was nothing lasting about Ollie. He himself was too solid to be destroyed, too solid.

And Ollie fought with red rage in his heart, feeling nothing—unless it was the stretching of time. Minutes appeared to be hours, until it seemed to him that he had been fighting forever. And he would go on fighting forever. Tears streamed down his face, soft curses wrenching themselves from between his clenched lips.

“Goddamit—dat!”

“White basted!”

“Lousy—”

“Yella—”

Ishky was screaming, “Ollie—Ollie, kill duh lousy nigger, killim, Ollie!”

Sharp pains in his hands, lights before his eyes, and battle, and battle. The yellow hair was stained with blood; to Ishky he appeared to be the son of some warrior god.

Then they closed, rolling over and over on the ground, battering, biting, kicking, and clawing. But the strength was going out of their blows, and they were both sobbing with rage and hate. Ollie found Blackbelly's ear, biting deep into it. Blackbelly tore half the shirt from Ollie's back.

Then, hardly knowing why, Ishky began to kick Blackbelly wherever he could. Blackbelly screamed, roared with rage, and Ishky brought his fist squarely into the colored boy's face. For a moment, he loosened his hold on Ollie, and Ollie slammed his head back onto the concrete. Ishky stamped down on his belly.

Blackbelly roared with rage. “I'll killa bot'!” he screamed.

Then Ollie slammed his head onto the concrete again. Ishky drove a shoe into his thigh.

“Goddamm ya!”

“Killim!” Ishky yelled hysterically.

By main strength, Blackbelly struggled to his feet, tore himself loose, and all three stood panting and staring at each other. Then Ollie saw two more colored boys running toward them, their hands full of ashes and bottles.

“Beatit, Ishky!” he cried.

Together, the two of them fled up the street, the colored boys after them. Sobbing and laughing, they ran until they had reached Ollie's house, where they plunged into the hallway. No safety there. On into the cellar, into the coalbin, where, panting and crying, they perched on top of a pile of coal.

“Whatta fight!” Ollie sobbed.

“Geesus!”

“I beatis ass offana him!”

“Sure.”

“Geesus—”

“Geesus—”

Ishky gulped to halt his sobs, and then he whispered, “Tink dey'll come down here?”

“Naw.”

“Dey dunno where we are?”

“Naw.”

Ishky began to laugh, almost hysterically. “Boy-o-boy,” he chuckled, “whatta fight dat was! Geesus, I jus' hope dey come down here, wid all dis coal, Geesus, I'd liketa swat dat nigger in duh eye wid a lumpa coal.”

Ollie appeared to be lost in thought, absently rubbing the blood from his face with his arm. Through the dusk of the coal bin, he was staring at Ishky—thinking. Perhaps it was there that he first concretely thought of the gang.

“Hey, Ishky,” he said.

“What?”

“How dya jump offana duh roof?”

“Oh—jus' like dat.”

“Geesus—”

“Yeah.”

“Betcha it took a lotta guts.”

“I dunno,” Ishky said.

“Betcha it did. I wouldn' have duh guts.”

“Well, I was scared at first.”

“Was ya?”

“Yeah. But now I'd do it agin jus' like dat.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure.”

M
AYBE
you can understand how I felt, sitting there with Ollie like that. I had forgotten Marie; I had forgotten the garden and dreams, and everything else—because I was happy. Oh, you can hardly understand how happy I was.

I hurt. Oh yes, but what are hurts, when they pass so quickly? And Ollie is my friend. I know that. And if you ask me how I know it, I won't be able to tell you. But I have lived here on the block all the time, and this is the first time Ollie has ever been my friend. Maybe you will think that I hated Ollie, but that is wrong. Who can hate Ollie?

I sit in the coal bin, and I tell Ollie how I leaped from the roof. I can see that it impresses him. Well, we are friends, and who knows what we can't do together. Anyway, it is better than being a friend of Shomake's.

THIRTEEN

I
F THERE WAS HATE, WAS THERE NOTHING ELSE IN THE
world? Why had Ishky refused to speak to him? Shomake wandered up the block, lost in a misery that was as deep as the sewers under his feet. He had no friend, no companion, nothing at all; and why live?

He went into the store. Dim and soft and quiet, smelling of the fresh-cut leather, the store always seemed to welcome him. His father did not even look up. How the old man sat there, hammering and hammering! No fears there, nothing but a great confidence in the repairing of shoes. Shomake envied him.

And the back room was even darker than the store, all pungent and smelling of Italian food. The spaghetti lay in soft coils in the pot on the stove. Tiptoeing over, Shomake put his finger into the warm water, tasting a bit. Ah, it was good! He looked for his mother—but she had gone somewhere.

He took out the fiddle, holding it in his arms. Beautiful fiddle, of red and brown wood, gleaming with the soul inside of it. He caressed it, smoothed it over with his fingertips. But he didn't want to play—not now.

He sat in the dark, moving his fingers back and forth, quiet and comfortable. Here—no one would bother him, ever. If he could stay here all the time—

He thought of the garden. Surely some way to get into it; there were ways and ways. If you were to speak anxiously enough, wouldn't a door open in the fence? Perhaps a very small door. Then you could creep through, carefully, and you would be in the garden—for good. Oh, why had Ishky ever told him of the garden? Now he would have no peace, and if the garden were only a story of Ishky's? What then?

Ishky—well, maybe when Ishky was tired of Marie, he would come back. There was no one quite like Ishky.

On his way out of the store, Shomake stopped again to look at his father. What was there about shoes that could make a man aware of nothing else in the world? Once, he had asked his mother, and she said to him, “In the old country—it was different.”

He went out of the house, walking slowly up the block toward the avenue. Already, he was forgetting what had happened before, yet he had thought that he would never forget.

Two blocks east there were open fields and lots, and beneath them and away were the misty houses of the city. Shomake went down, climbing slowly, until he came to a field that was full of grass and tall weeds. Before him, the water tower stood up like a narrow giant, and beyond the water tower the elevated trains crawled slowly into their barns.

He lay upon his back, chewing the stems of grass, and he forgot without ever knowing that he was forgetting.

FOURTEEN

A
S MARIE RAN AWAY FROM THE FIGHT, SHE BEGAN TO
sob, and by the time she had reached the security of her stoop, she was crying bitterly. She ran into the hall.

She was afraid of the hall. When she went down into a cellar, for the terrible thrill of bad, she was afraid, but it was nothing like this fear of the hall. The hall was dark-green, lit by one single jet of gas. When she opened the door, the jet leaped, and shadows danced toward her and away. Crying, she crouched just inside of the door. Then she crept toward the stairs, crept up them. When her mother opened the door for her, she fell into her arms, lay there, sobbing and twitching.

Her mother was a thin Italian woman, with dark eyes and dark stringy hair. She spoke no English at all. Now, her eyes closed, the soft and beautiful Italian was a comfort to Marie.

“What is it, my little one?”

“I'm afraid.”

“Of what? Of what?”

She took Marie into a front room, where there was more light. She sat with her in an old rocking chair, rocking back and forth and back and forth.