Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

  Seconds later, almost at once, a woman bent over him, having come from behind him. “I saw that!” she said.

  She was trying to help him up, and Andrew got on his knees, hampered by the jacket which still bound his arms. The woman—her head wrapped in a blue scarf, her shopping bag on the sidewalk—held his arm out and pulled up his jacket collar so that the jacket was on his shoulders again. He took her extended hand, and then he was up, on his feet.

  “I do thank you,” Andrew said, “very much.”

  “You think you’re all right?” She looked in her forties, anxious now, and hair curlers showed under the scarf.

  Andrew was much relieved to find that he could stand on his legs without pain. He had feared a hip fracture. “I thank you,” he repeated, and realized he was dazed.

  “Those animals! If I could just see a cop—” She looked all around, gave it up for the moment. “I’ll make sure you get home. Where do you live? Want a taxi?”

  “No, no, very near.”

  They began to walk. The nice woman held his arm. She went on talking:

  “. . . ’course you never see a cop when you need one . . . one of the old people in my house just last week. Do they think they can take over this neighborhood? Hah! They’d better think again . . . And what do they want, when you come down to it, recreation halls they’ve already got, unemployment pay, welfare, a salary if they just go to a training school! . . . Public libraries! But do you see ’em in the library here? No, they’d rather spend their time robbing . . . Do these apes think we didn’t work for what little we’ve got? . . . Got a son. He talks about us getting guns the way they do in San Francisco or is it Los Angeles? . . . Lookit this, no cop yet!”

  “Here’s where I live,” Andrew said when they came to a two-story red brick and creamy cement house.

  The woman offered to help him up the stairs, but Andrew said he could make it alone.

  “How much did you lose by the way?” she asked.

  Andrew tried to think. “Not more than ten dollars. I don’t—” He stopped and began again. “It’s identification cards and such. I’ll write for some more. Got the numbers—”

  “If you tell me your name, I’ll report this to the police. I saw that tall boy—”

  “Oh, no, no. Thank you,” said Andrew rather firmly, as if her reporting the matter might be somehow in his disfavor.

  “Take care. Bye-bye,” said the woman, and went off in the direction they had come from.

  Andrew made his way upstairs, fished keys from his trousers pocket, entered, relocked his door, and slowly prepared a pot of tea. Tea was always the best after a shock. He had to admit he’d had a shock. Yes. Even though this was the second or third time, the last having been more than a year ago—But this one in broad daylight, high noon! Andrew put two spoonfuls of sugar in his tea, and sat down at the kitchen table. At least his groceries were here at home safe. And his hip was not hurting much, just a little pain like a bruise. Just suppose he’d broken his hip, couldn’t walk for the next two or three months, dependent on Kate to buy his food? Now that would’ve been catastrophic! Andrew felt grateful to fate.

  He made a peanut butter sandwich, could eat only half of it, and suddenly realized that he needed to lie down. He pushed off his shoes and lay down on the living room couch, pulled up the crocheted coverlet that Sarah had made. It seemed to Andrew that he’d hardly begun to doze off, when the telephone rang. Probably Kate.

  And Kate it was, saying the funeral for the Schroeders was Saturday at 11 A.M., and would Andrew like to come, because there was a small bus that several of the neighbors intended to take to go to the cemetery.

  “Why, yes—sure,” Andrew said, feeling it was a neighborly duty to go, a sign of his respect that he would be glad to make.

  “Fine, Andy. I’ll ring your bell around ten-fifteen Saturday because you’re on the way. How you feeling? There’s a documentary on TV tonight that might interest you. Nine o’clock, if that isn’t too late. Till ten but—We could meet half way and sort of walk each other, but I suppose it’s silly to take a chance just for a TV program.”

  It was silly, was Andrew’s opinion at the moment, though he said nothing.

  “Still there, Andy?—Are you okay?”

  “Well, since you ask,” Andrew replied, “I just got mugged, sat down on the—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me right away? I knew something would happen today! Did they hurt you?”

  “Just one boy. No, I’m all right, Kate.”

  “Which one was it? D’you get a look at him?”

  “Oh, yes. Tall black fellow with a little red in his hair.”

  “Maybe I know the one you mean. Not sure though. You went out again, Andy?”

  “Forgot that piece of glass. Had to go back for it.”

  They agreed that Andrew shouldn’t go out again today after dark, because lightning did sometimes strike the same place twice.

  Then Andrew went back to the living room couch which, sagging though it was, he had always loved to snooze on. He quickly became drowsy again, but his half-sleep was troubled. He felt melancholic too, because he did not want to go out again, and this evening he would not have the glass he needed to frame the photograph of Sarah. What would happen to all those glass shards on the sidewalk which he’d been too upset to pick up? Would some other kids pick them up, make use of them against the local people? Andrew squirmed on the couch. The boys mostly carried knives, easier to handle. The first time Andrew had been ripped off, the time they got his leather wallet (after that he used plastic wallets), a younger boy had stood in front of him with a knife at the level of Andrew’s eyes as he sat on the pavement, while an older boy had lifted his wallet. From beyond his apartment door, Andrew heard the clicking of locks, the slide of a bolt. Mrs. Wilkie was going out.

  Tomorrow he’d acquire another piece of glass, and tomorrow evening or even afternoon he’d have the pleasure of hanging the photograph, and of seeing Sarah’s gently smiling face as she had looked at twenty-five or -six—when Eddie had been about two—wearing the summer dress that was cut low in front with ruffles, and the coral necklace Andrew had given her. Andrew felt old. When he thought of all those years! To feel old was mainly to feel tired, he supposed. Maybe it was inevitable, for everyone. He had been lucky in the sense of being healthier than most people, free of rheumatism and the usual complaints. What depressed him, he realized, was the prospect of the grave, of death soon. Death would be perhaps merely a moment, maybe quite painless, but it was also a mystery. Was it just like fainting? Andrew still found life interesting enough to want to go on living. Day after tomorrow, he’d attend the funeral of Herman and Minnie Schroeder, and in a few years from now, maybe very few years, other neighbors like Kate and Helen Vernon would be attending his funeral. People like Kate would mention him in the months that followed, say perhaps that they missed him, and then they would stop mentioning him, as people would the Schroeders finally. What was life all about? It seemed to Andrew that there ought to be something more to hang onto, more to represent a man, even the humblest, than a few sticks of furniture, a few dollars in the bank, some old books and photographs, when he died. Dust unto dust, Andrew thought and turned over on his side, whereupon his bruised hip began to hurt, but he lay still, too tired to change his position. Of course there was his son Eddie, and his son Andy, a grown-up man of twenty-eight now himself. But what Andrew was thinking about was something personal and individual to him: what was he worth, as a human being?

  So Andrew did not go to Kate’s that evening, but made a supper of macaroni and cheese (not frozen, it was cheaper to make it himself) and a green salad. After his supper, he pulled out a kitchen drawer and reached behind the plastic tray, which contained knives, forks, and spoons, for his spare money, lest he go out and be down on the street tomorrow before he realized that he hadn’t money.
Andrew took four singles, which left a fiver in the drawer, and put them into his trousers pocket. Then he wrote his letters of notice of stolen cards to his bank and to the Social Security office.

  The next morning, a lovely sunny morning, Andrew went again to the hardware store and put in his order for a piece of glass measuring twenty-four by eighteen inches. Andrew had expected the young man to say, “Broke it?” or something like that, in which case Andrew would have smiled and said yes, but the young man was too busy to say anything but “Fifteen minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes could pass quickly for Andrew in a hardware shop, so he browsed among hammers and wrenches, potato-peelers, coffee-makers which kept the pot warm on a little platform after it was done, fancy hooks for bathroom walls, bags of peat and supercharged humus for the garden, charcoal broilers of various heights and diameters, and then the young man was standing by him with the glass all wrapped again, and looking the same as yesterday’s package. Andrew again paid two dollars and eighty-eight cents to the girl cashier. Andrew thought he would frame the picture before lunch. The picture might inspire him to call up Kate and invite her to tea. Kate liked tea with dainty but substantial ham and mayonnaise sandwiches, for instance, followed by a cake. Andrew might shop for all that after lunch.

  Andrew had entered the second block of his three-block walk home, when he saw the same black boy in the same blue denim jacket approaching him, hands in his back pockets, whistling, swinging his feet out like a sailor.

  Andrew stiffened. Did the boy recognize him? But the boy wasn’t even looking at him. Same reddish black kinky hair, over six feet tall, yes, same boy. What had he bought with the ten dollars, Andrew wondered, at the same time noticing that the unbuttoned denim jacket sparkled with what seemed to be bottle caps fixed up and down the front. Who was he going to rip off next, this noon or later? These thoughts or impressions flashed through Andrew’s mind in seconds, and then the big, freckled eyes of the boy met Andrew’s, sharp but empty of recognition, and his figure came on, sure that Andrew would step aside for him. His hands and arms swung free now, maybe ready to give Andrew a shock by spreading out, as if he intended to crash into Andrew.

  Now Andrew’s right hand clenched the bottom of his package more firmly, tilted a corner forward as if it were a lance, and Andrew did not step aside. He simply kept his course—as the boy’s arms flew out to make him jump—braced his body for an impact, and saw the point of the package hit near the white buttons on the pale blue shirt.

  “Ow!”

  The jolt sent Andrew backward, but he kept his footing.

  “Oooh,” the boy groaned more gently, and folded his hands over his stomach. “Son of a bitch!” Blood oozed over his clasped fingers.

  A man appeared on the sidewalk behind Andrew. A woman with a shopping carrier like Kate’s had come from the opposite direction and hesitated with her mouth slightly open.

  “He stab me!” the boy whined in falsetto. He was bent double, leaning against a fire hydrant.

  The man, who carried a lot of cardboard sheets under one arm, looked more curious than concerned. “What happened? Another boy?” he asked Andrew.

  “He stab me!”

  Neither the man nor the woman paid any attention to that.

  “. . . find a doctor?” the woman was saying vaguely to the man.

  “Better find one. Yeah. Maybe,” said the man, and went on his way.

  The woman made a sound like “Tschuh!” and took two drifting steps away, plainly wanting to quit the scene. “They live like that,” she said to Andrew, flinging out one hand for emphasis. “They do it to us and once in a while they get it.” She hurried off, but turned back to say, “If I see a policeman . . .” She went on.

  The boy looked at Andrew, muttered something that sounded like a threat, and here came his chums, two or three of them, Andrew walked on towards his house. The padding of sneakers, of leaping feet crossed the street, and Andrew saw one of the figures dodge a passing car. A corner of Andrew’s glass package hung limp. He had really given the boy a slash. Andrew thought of rapes in his neighborhood (not always reported in the newspapers, he and Kate had noticed), in which the girl had suffered a knife wound in the cheek lest she scream, plus the insult of rape. He realized that his heart was thumping with anger, with fear too. He had meant to strike back. Well, he had. Let the police come, let them accuse him, charge him. Maybe they would. Andrew thought they might.

  It was not until he had set the glass package down and was tackling his apartment door’s three locks that Andrew noticed the fingers of his right hand were bleeding on the inside. Part of the brown paper was sodden with blood. Andrew went into his apartment and locked his door from inside again, letting the blood fall on the brown package which he had laid flat on the floor. Then carefully, so as not to drip on the hall carpet, Andrew held his right wrist and got to the kitchen which was closer than the bathroom. He ran cold water over his hand. The cuts were not bad, he thought, wouldn’t need stitches anyway, just a few Band-Aids. He pushed the crate of books and magazines back against the door.

  By two o’clock that afternoon Andrew was feeling better, though around noon he had had some bad moments. One finger had refused to stop bleeding for quite a while, then Andrew had made some lunch, and had lain down on the living room couch, feeling weak. Just after two he put on his jacket and went out again to buy his piece of glass. This time the same young man—who knew Andrew slightly because of Andrew’s purchases of glass for pictures in the past—did make a remark, smiling a little, and Andrew, not having caught every word of what he said, replied, “Yes—got a couple of pictures same size to do.” Andrew again waited, and when he got the glass, proceeded to the main avenue, where there was a bakery between the subway entrance and the public library. Andrew wished he had brought his books, not yet due, but he had read them and might have changed them. At the bakery, he bought a three-layer chocolate cake with white icing plus some brown-edged cookies. Then he walked home the way he had come, his usual route, past the spot where he had encountered the boy today, though he did not glance to his left where he might have seen blood stains. Andrew did not look around him at all, though he imagined, he felt sure, that the tall boy’s chums were going to be on the lookout for him. From now on, to go out of his house would be to take more of a risk than usual.

  At home again, he was conscious of taking another small risk when he telephoned Kate before he had framed the photograph, because the photograph in its frame was part of his tea invitation. Kate was in and said she would love to come over around four.

  Andrew got busy. He had wrapped a clean rag around his right hand, which made him a little clumsy, but he worked carefully. One sweep of blood, crescent-shaped, got on the brown paper that Andrew had neatly sealed on the back of the frame, but that couldn’t be helped, because he hadn’t wanted to spend time changing the bandage. He put in the screw eyes and attached the brass picture wire for hanging. Then Andrew did change the bandage, keeping the Band-Aids on, and with his left hand hammered the nail into the wall for the picture, and put the picture up.

  Now that looked beautiful! He straightened the picture delicately with one finger. Sarah brightened his whole living room, made a tremendous change. She smiled out at him, her head slightly turned but her eyes direct, and he imagined he could hear her saying, “Andy.” Andrew smiled back at her, and for several seconds felt young, felt as if he were breathing the crisp air that one breathed on hills in the country. Ah, well! Tea!

  Andrew got out cups and saucers and plates, making sure he took ones that weren’t nicked. Sugar and a little pitcher of milk. By the time he had things ready and had lit the gas under the kettle, his doorbell rang.

  “Hello, Andy, and how’re you feeling today?” Kate asked as she came in, puffing a little from the stairs.

  For the moment, Andrew was keeping his right hand behind his back. “Well enough
, thank you, Kate. And yourself?” He relocked the door.

  “Oh-h—” Kate was unbuttoning her coat over her rather vast front, turning round as she usually did to survey the living room. She spotted the new picture on the wall. “Why, that’s lovely, Andy!” She went closer. “Sarah’s just lovely there! And that bird’s-eye maple!”

  Andrew had waxed the frame. He felt a glow of satisfaction. Kate chattered on, recalling when they were younger, when all four of them had shared Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners and once in a while had gone out to a nearby Polish restaurant (long closed) where couples of all ages had used to dance rather sedately between courses, having a grand time. But before he had poured the tea, Kate noticed his hand.

  “Cut it framing the photograph,” Andrew said. “Clumsy of me. It’s not serious.” If he told the truth, Kate would say something alarming—Andrew didn’t know exactly what, but it would have to do with the gang’s hitting back, maybe all the roving gangs and there were three, one Hispanic, one black, one sort of mixed with an odd white or two. Kate might insist that he stay in for the next days while she brought him whatever he might need.

  “You’re sure we shouldn’t look at it again while I’m here?” Kate asked through a mouthful of chocolate cake. “I can do a neat bandage for you. You can’t tie a bandage with one hand. Have you got antiseptic? Alcohol?”

  “Oh, Kate!”

  Then inquiries about his papers, if he had written for new cards. Andrew said he had. He heated more water.

  Kate insisted, before she left, on changing his bandage and tying a clean one properly. “It’s just silly to stay all night with that one damp already.” She had washed up the tea things, so Andrew would not get his hand wetter.