The Complete Short Stories

  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. “Someday 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 someday 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 spaceship.” 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. Kindne
ss 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.

  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 someday 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.