“Maybe,” Gertie said, hunting words of reassurance, “your youngens seems so good an strong he’s a tryen to save you money by not putten em in a hospital.”
“That’s what hurts,” Sophronie said. “We got hospitalization. Had it ever since Gilbert got knocked down by a car an they wouldn’t let us bring him home till we paid up. He’d broke one bone in his leg an hadda stay three weeks. We hadda git more on the mortgage, quick. But now th hospital could keep all th youngens one er two nights apiece, an they’d be safe if they started bleeden an—oh, Lordy.” Her hand shook so her cigarette hit her cheek. “An now it wouldn’t cost us a cent.”
Whit, still in his work clothes, had just opened the storm door, and now he smiled, his eyes sparkling up in his grimy face. “An then that Doc Edwards couldn’t git a mink coat fer his missus out a what he makes off a three tonsils and splitten two nights’ hospitalization apiece with th hospital. They’ll send a big bill to th insurance company an collect an then split.”
Gertie had hardly got Clovis fed and to bed and the kitchen straight when she saw that the battered Meanwell car was back. She saw Whit go alone up the walk in a kind of staggering run, as if drunk. She hurried out to help, and Sophronie, pale but no longer shaking, explained that the overpowering fumes of ether in the closed car had made Whit sick to his stomach. Gertie carried in both boys, squinching her eyes a little against the dripping blood, the strong smell of ether, the vomit-spewing, blue-lipped mouths.
Sophronie turned a shade whiter each time one spat blood, and if either lay stiff an instant she was bending over him, listening to the heartbeat, and holding her own breath, the better to hear his breathing. However, they seemed gradually to improve, and breathed more slowly and spat less blood, though when time came for Sophronie to go away to work, she lingered with them too long, and then had to run, looking over her shoulder, entreating Gertie, “You’ll watch em good, now, won’tcha?”
Whit had drunk two bottles of beer to settle his stomach, and gone to bed. He had not slept since coming off his shift, and must, like Clovis, leave again for work before midnight, so that it was Gertie who stayed through the afternoon and tended the boys. Clovis came to see how she was making out, and then with Clytie and Cassie went to the big store for the weekly load of staple groceries.
When he had gone, Gertie wished she had told him to round up all the children and take them. She had been too busy with Claude Jean and Gilbert to watch her own boys. She had hardly seen Enoch since breakfast, and now Amos was out of sight, and where was Reuben? The snow and the pale sunshine had tempted even him outside; though there was in him no meanness and he’d never been one to pick a quarrel, his bigness and his silence with that seeming sullen way of his, made it harder for him to take care of himself in the alley than for Enoch.
Max ran in with a package of pink ice cream for the Meanwells, but hadn’t seen anything of Gertie’s boys. She was on her way to work and hurrying, so that Gertie didn’t ask her to stay with the sick children a moment while she hunted. Not long after Maggie Daly came, but she hadn’t seen the boys, she said. She asked about Gilbert and Claude Jean, then held out a little board with holes. “Buy a chance on this beautiful rayon taffeta bedspread. It costs forty dollars, and yucan perhaps get it almost for free, onie one dime. Yu can’t lose. Your dime will help u good sisters build up our liberry.”
Gertie’s mouth went thin and straight, but still she took a dime from her pocket. Maggie was writing her name on the little slip that came off when she punched the hole Gertie had picked, when Mrs. Anderson came. She had a white shirt on one arm, the baby on the other, and her face was steamy red and weary. She asked about the “tonsillectomies,” but hardly listened to Gertie’s reply. She kept shaking her head and declaring that Sophronie should have managed somehow to get money to keep the children at least one night in a hospital. But before she could wait for Gertie’s explanation, she remembered her own troubles. She held up the shirt, and begged: “Oh, Mrs. Nevels, do you know how to get a scorched spot off a shirt front? Oh, if he’d only wear colored shirts like he used to.” Gertie thought she was going to cry as she looked at the shirt, a beautiful thing of fine white cotton cloth. “And right in the front it had to be.
“His bosses wear white shirts,” she went on, getting still more angry, “and so he feels he should. I can’t see the sense of it—and I have to do up the things.”
Maggie, finished with Gertie’s punch, looked up in wonder. “But he’s gotta butter his bosses a little, don’tcha know? Yu oughta be glad he don’t hafta get drunk with em. Pop knows a cop that drunk his way up to a sergeant’s place, but he knowed plenty dirt onu inspector, and that helped him.” She bent to study the spot. “Try Roman Cleaner. If it don’t come off right away, soak it. Yu got any?”
Mrs. Anderson shook her head. “My husband is allergic to bleaches.”
Maggie was already going through the door. “He won’t be allergic if he don’t know about it.” She called over her shoulder, “Yu wanta beautiful bedspread?”
Mrs. Anderson sighed, looked at the punchboard with disgust, but at last picked it up. She punched four holes with sharp, vicious jabs. “I hate this,” she burst out, “but worse than anything I hate and detest doing Homer’s shirts. Back home we always had a hired girl. The laundering of shirts, alas, was not included in my education. But Homer thinks I should do the laundry. I suppose what he says is true. Many women whose husbands are in even higher income brackets than he is do the laundry, but if I could find a laundress, just for these cursed shirts, who could—well, why don’t I say it? Slip it over on him.”
Gertie sat silent, aware of her expectant waiting. She had never taken in washing. Clovis wouldn’t like it. But a dollar was—She heard Maggie’s feet on the steps, and nodded.
The company was hardly gone before first Gilbert and then Claude Jean started vomiting again. She was so busy for the next half-hour that she had no time to worry over her own in the alley. Claude Jean, quivering with nausea, was leaning over the bed, blood dribbling down his chin, when his glance swept past the window that opened on the alley. His eyes, dulled with pain and nausea, were suddenly fixed, like the eyes of one dying, Gertie thought with fright. However, he managed to rise on his elbow, crane his head, and gargle, “S’fight.”
Satisfied that the child was in no immediate danger, Gertie turned and looked through the window. She saw one of the bigger Dalys, bloody-faced, bare-headed, and with a torn coat, dashing for his door. He was followed at once by three of his younger brothers. Not far behind them came a snowsuited figure surrounded by a crowd of children. The boy came on with a sober high-stepping gait, like a woman in her finery walking slowly on her way to church so as to deprive no neighbor of the privilege of seeing her. It was Enoch, Gertie realized. She soon saw Amos, one in a swarm of little children, all looking up at Enoch as if he were God. Wheateye was racing for the coalhouse, and Cassie’s friend, with Mable in his arms, came on more slowly.
The Daly door was flung open, and the bigger Dalys dashed back into the alley. The smaller ones, just getting home, turned and jumped on their coalhouse. There, they began hurling epithets toward Wheateye, now jumping up and down and screaming on her coalshed roof.
Then, his head rising above the swarming children, Gertie saw Reuben turn into the alley. There was blood dribbling down the side of his face; but from the way his shoulders humped and his hands twisted and clenched by his side, and the set look of his jaws, she knew the hurt inside him was worse than that on his head. The Daly door, as if waiting just for him, flew open as he came opposite it. A chunky man in suit clothes rushed down the walk, shaking his fist. His heavy jaw was outthrust, and he looked as if he had but one thought, and that to kill Reuben.
Gertie glanced once at the Meanwell boys to make certain they were all right, then hurried to the kitchen door. She was jerking it open when Whit, who seemed to have been watching through the glass, said: “Now don’t be a runnen out. He won’t hurt th kid,”
he reassured her as she pushed open the storm door. “He’s too smart fer that.”
Gertie stopped when she had her head around the door enough to see Reuben and hear Mr. Daly’s loud command of, “Hey, youse, wait a minute!” Reuben only came on at a faster pace. This forced Mr. Daly to run in order to get in front of him. When he did manage to stop the boy near the end of the Meanwell walk, almost in front of Gertie, he yelled: “Stop, youse hillbilly. Wotta yu mean beating up on a little kid half yu size? I oughta see to ut that youse is put in u can fudu rest a yu life.”
Reuben stepped back from the waving fist. His eyes blazed, and anger bleached his face. His voice was a choked mumble. “I never hit yer youngens.”
“Yu know yu did, yu lying hillbilly bastard.” Mr. Daly’s anger seemed suddenly to leave him. He smiled, and there were dimples in his smoothly shaven cheeks, going in and out like Maggie’s. “Youse is in Detroit now, mu boy. We’ve got law an order fudu likes a youse. Yu come up here an fudu first time in yu life you gitcha bellies full and shoes on yu feet, and it goes tuyu head.” Conscious of the watching alley, he made a grotesque and exaggerated motion of looking at Reuben’s feet. He bent far over, shook his head in disbelief. “So help me, yu’ve got shoes. How does ut feel tu have shoes on dem tough feet?”
A child’s laugh rose shrilly from the ever thickening crowd of listeners. Mr. Daly’s blue eyes, so much like Maggie’s, sparkled still more brightly when the laughter swelled into a mighty burst of whooping as a snowball, flung by someone in the crowd, landed with a splattering plop by Gertie’s feet. Fragments of its dirty heart spotted her clean starched apron, but she, on her stoop now, did not look down at it. The cracking sound from the agonized pulling of her twisting fingers was unnoticed in the uproar, like Whit’s hissing whisper behind her: “Don’t go a mixen in it, now. Keep shut. He’ll call th cops.”
Reuben looked up, saw her, and started up the Meanwell walk. Mr. Daly sprang in front of him, and stood, his outthrust stomach almost touching Reuben. Reuben stopped, and looked beseechingly at his mother. The crowd pressed close around him. The Daly boys were nearest, their bloody heads objects of observations, many delighted: “Boy, dey fixed um.” Others were disgusted: “Babies crappen onu old man thataway”; and not a few were aggrieved: “Wotta’s that big kid think he is, taken all u credit? It was a free-fer-all. He didn’t do nutten.”
More children, and even adults, came running, drawn from distant alleys by catcalls and cries of: “Dey’s gonna be a real fight”; “I’ll bet her could lick um.” Word must have gone out that a little Daly girl had been beaten up by hillbilly boys and carried off to the hospital, for two boys came running around Max’s end of the alley, screaming: “Didu cops git um? Where’s u ambulance? Is her bad hurt? Show me du blood. Lemme seedu blood.”
Wheateye jumped up and down on the coalshed roof and screamed: “Maggie Daly is a liar. She told her father she was dead. They ain’t no other Daly girl. Maggie Daly told her father she was dead. Liar, liar, yellow bastard bitch!”
Mr. Daly, smiling ever more broadly as the crowd thickened, continued to stand in front of Reuben. Gertie moved to the edge of the stoop, though Whit’s warning whisper was shrill behind her. She stopped again and twisted her sweat-slippery hands. It would be easier to stand and see him beaten. He wouldn’t look at her the way he looked now. She could fling that flabby-bellied—She saw Reuben’s right fist shove hard into his jacket pocket, then the ripple of the cloth as the hand opened. She sprang down the steps, and in two strides had reached Reuben, just as he stepped away from Mr. Daly, and stood, his eyes fixed on the man’s chest, on the left side about where the overall buckle would be, had he worn overalls. It was like the game of mumblety-peg Henley had taught him. She had played it, too. You stood, your eyes on the target, opening the knife with one hand in your pocket; and at the word “Go,” the knife came out in a hard swift whirl that carried the point deep into the target.
She caught his wrist just as it jerked upward. “Reuben!” Her insistent, agonized cry rang out until even Mrs. Bommarito, who had been watching behind her storm door, came onto her stoop. Mr. Anderson, half in, half out his storm door, looked up from the pad and pencil in his hands. Gertie saw them, because she had suddenly remembered that she mustn’t let her glance go again to Reuben’s hand in his pocket. Only a city fool wouldn’t know he was opening a knife. Up here there was a law against carrying knives. They might put him in jail for years, just for the carrying. Reuben struggled to get his hand out of his pocket. She held it down, and fought now with her eyes to make him look at her. But he’d only look at the smiling Mr. Daly, his own jaws set, his cheeks white over the clenched muscles.
Reuben might hate her forever for this, but it was better than jail—and maybe a dead Mr. Daly. “Git in th house, son,” she said, and with one hand on his wrist, the other on his shoulder, she dragged him up the walk and over the steps. He struggled, his heels plowing through the snow shovelings, his blazing anger now for her instead of Mr. Daly, whose belly rippled with laughter.
Somewhere a child exclaimed, “Golly, her’s strong.” It didn’t matter what they said, for Whit, understanding at last, was opening the storm door. His voice was still a whispering, but worried now.
“Git in, boy,” he said, and grabbed Reuben’s shoulder.
Reuben struggled against the hands trying to get him through the door, until Gertie caused another burst of laughter by picking him up bodily and shoving him across the threshold. He turned then and screamed at Mr. Daly, his voice shrill and broken, unlike his own: “I didn’t tetch a one a yer youngens. They tried to gang up on my brother an some more little youngens. I tuck a rock away—”
Whit and Gertie together had managed to close the door, but Gertie was still outside. She looked once at Mr. Daly, licked her lips, her palms rubbing on her apron. She remembered Whit’s advice, and reached for the doorknob. A sigh of disappointment went up from the alley, then Mr. Daly, by her bottom step now, was saying loudly: “Listen, yu overgrown hillbilly; yu kid’s lyen. He did too beat up on mu little kid. My kids don’t lie—see.”
Gertie’s hand dropped from the door, and she turned and looked at him. “Th very first mornen mine went to school, yer youngen—”
“Huh? Youngen, whatcha mean youngen? In Detroit youse gotta learn to speak English, yu big nigger-loven communist hillbilly. Yu gotta behave. I, Joseph Daly, will see to ut yu do. I’m a dacent, respectable, religious good American. See?” Gertie opened her mouth, but shut it as he went on, laughing a little, one ear cocked for the audience behind him: “Detroit was a good town till da hillbillies come. An den Detroit went tu hell.”
Somewhere down the alley a voice cried, “Oh, yeah?”
Mr. Daly gave it no heed. He came onto the bottom step, and looked up at Gertie, shaking his fist to emphasize his words: “If one a youse touches one a mine, I’ll have youse all inu clink, see. Du cops listen tu Joseph Daly, see. I letcha git by wit too much awready.” He straightened his shoulders, attempted to make his chest stick out further than his stomach, failed, but continued in his injured-good-citizen tone: “An why for because didjas beat up mu wife, a great big overgrown hillbilly like youse on a little woman like mu wife? Why, because she barred da evil doctrine a communism from her door—yu call yuself a Christian, I prasume.”
Gertie gave a slow headshake. “I recken I try tu be, but,” she went on in a low, choked voice, “whether I’m a Christian or not is somethin’ fer God to decide, not me.”
“So yu don’t know, huh.” He laughed again, and the alley laughed with him.
The laughter somehow loosened her tongue. “I didn’t hit yer wife. I kept her frum hurten a woman she’d already haf blinded. Th woman was jist tryen to spread some kind a religion, an th Constitution says, ‘Congress shall make no—’”
“Communist,” he was screaming, waving his fist, and for an instant so choked with wrath he could not go on. “Yu communists allatime yu gotta spout u Constitution. Don’tcha k
now they’s a war? Oh, if u good Father Moneyhan could be President. He’d settle u likes a youse. Yu an yu Constitution, yu commies an heathen hill—”
A soft but dirty snowball splattered the side of his face. He whirled toward Sophronie’s coalhouse, now covered with children, including Amos, Enoch, and Wheateye. “Who true dat?” he cried, his grandstand manners lost in fury.
Wheateye screamed: “I done it, Mr. Daly. I done it. I’m sorry. S’it agin u law to throw snowballs? I didn’t mean to hitcha.”
“She’s jist a little girl an cain’t throw straight,” Enoch said.
Daly strode toward the coalshed. “Yu true dat, yu little liar.”
“Oh, yeah?” Enoch said.
“Yu need whatcha mudder needs an yu—”
Another snowball caught him on the ear. Gertie, sensing rather than hearing movement below the stoop, glanced down and saw Cassie’s friend by the house wall. He was just bending to pick up his little sister Mable. He looked up at Gertie and smiled. “Don’t mind that great big liar, lady,” and Gertie saw the black snowball in his down-hanging right hand. He shoved it quickly behind Mable so that when Mr. Daly sent a suspicious glance in his direction he saw nothing but a boy minding a baby.
Mr. Daly whirled to face the alley when Wheateye began to scream: “It was a little girl, Joseph Daly, another little girl like me; a little bitsy girl in a red dress, run run—Lookit, th cops. Lookit.”
Wheateye was already racing down the alley toward the Japanese unit, past Mr. Daly’s door. Other children had seen the scout car even before Wheateye, and all were running now or leaping from coalhouses and trash cans. Wheateye’s cry had risen to a chorus, happy and excited: “Da cops. Da cops is come. Dey’re gonna take um to jail.” Gertie saw the black scout car coming slowly up the big alley that ran at right angles to her own. But she continued to stand, her back against the door.