With her mouth to the telephone’s mouth, close like kissing, wet, she said, “I told you this would happen, I told that Mister Poteen, the man, he’s breaking in, he—” This is the police, Sergeant Deora, rasped the telephone scratchily, tinnily, too loud. I can’t hear you. Who’s calling, please? “Oh, sh! Shh!!” Little Sister whispered explosively. “Not so loud, he’ll hear you. I called this afternoon—” May I have your name?
Angrily, she told him. The knock came again. Out in the hall, a voice, “I got to see you a minute. Come on, I got to talk to you.” Little Sister hugged the phone, turned her back to the door. Her eyes were wide and turned so far over to the side that they hurt. “I called this afternoon and told that detective, that Mister Poteen—” Your address, please. “Oh!” she cried, but still cried whispering, “Oh! Oh! A man’s trying to break in right now, I told you he would!” Yes mam. Now if you will please give me your address.
Like cursing, she gave her address. “This afternoon—” We’ll check on it. “But, but, this afternoon—” she said into the phone, the dead phone, he had gone and left her alone, now of all times.
A knock again, only one, but hard; not a knock, a blow. “Come on, I ain’t going to hurt you. I got to talk to you a little.”
Holding the phone still, she panted, and panted, and suddenly filled her lungs and screamed No!
“Cut it out!” said the voice quietly, urgently, close to the crack of the door. “Cut it out, will you? Somebody’ll hear. Just open up, let me in a minute, will ya?”
Then she had screamed, and screamed again, and screamed and screamed. Walled in by her own screams, she saw rather than heard the door being pounded on; it trembled; then the knob turned and it shook; then it opened, oh God, it opened. He was there, with his shoulders hunched, his mouth twisted. He hurled himself … something struck her across the shoulder-blades; her canned-goods shelf—Then she must have risen, turned, backed away.
“Shut up, wait, be quiet, don’t yell like that, don’t—” He seemed almost to be pleading. She ducked under the shelf and slid sidewise and turned to flee to—oh, her bed. The sight of her own bed filled her with a new and terrible fear, and she screamed a new scream, a new kind of scream from a new kind of fear.
He touched her.
After that things were misty, swirling. The room was full of people. Somebody turned on the big overhead light and it hurt her eyes. The man from the roof looked some smaller, and a whole lot younger, with three policemen holding him. Younger, well, of course, these days.
Then the parade down the stairs and out on the street, the heads popping out of doors, the crowd around the three radio cars with their scything red lights, and a drumming white ambulance, all helter-skelter in the narrow street, and traffic stopped and car doors open with the people out and crowding around, crowding around. All the eyes, the eyes, gloating over her, over him.
Coming down the brownstone steps, a woman spat right in his face. In the car, sobbing, and a big policeman saying she was all right now, all right now.
Then questions in a bare bright room, with people coming in and out—and more questions. Once it was him, with only two policemen holding him this time; she did not, could not, look at his face, but she knew him all right, and said so; he tried to speak but they told him to shut his mouth. Someone brought her a paper cup of lukewarm tea.
Then the courtroom, and flashbulbs and the smell of dust and old sweat—nothing clean but the flag. Stand up! somebody shouted and the judge came in and almost everybody sat down again. It was difficult to follow the proceedings and she did not try. She did not have to.
Her turn came and she was led to the right place to stand and touch the Book, and then to the right place to sit; seated, she was still led; she was asked questions which could only be answered Yes and Yes and No and Yes; they thanked her.
He took the stand. She averted her eyes. It was soon over. Home then in a police car, through an avenue of flash-bulbs, on the arm of a policewoman. All a blur, all nothing, really; the real thing was the next thing, the day, the next day.
First there were the papers, the two tabloids with her picture weeping on the front page, and Story on Page 3 and More pictures in Centerfold. The headline on one was NAB ATTACKER IN ASSAULT ACT and the other one said RAPIST NABBED SENT UP 5 1/2 HRS.
The first one had the story she liked best. It had the reporter’s name on it and began “A living nightmare burst upon a lonely lady late last night when …” The other one, though it was about her, wasn’t so much about her. It was mostly about the judge. Her judge and another judge had been having a sort of race.
So many of these terrible attack things coming up had made them revive the old Night Court, and it seems that her Judge had heard and sentenced an attacker in less than twelve hours, so this other judge beat him to it by almost three hours, so this time her judge had packed the convict off to wherever it was he went, just five and a half hours after he had knocked on her door. And serve him right, too, said the paper, and all others like him. They had to learn that justice in Our Town was swift and certain.
She wasn’t on the front page of the other papers, but she was in them all somewhere. And all that day at the market, people came to see her, to talk to her. People she had worked with for years spoke to her—really spoke to her—for the first time. And some of the men just couldn’t get enough of her. Well, they cared.
That was the day everyone began to call her Little Sister. And when she walked back from the bus stop in the afternoon; they called out to her—“You okay, Little Sister?” Well, if it took such a terrible thing to show that way down deep people cared.… Still, it was a terrible thing, terrible. Everyone said so.
And in about three weeks, that same Detective Poteen came to see her. He had called first, made it convenient, had been very polite and understanding. He was a man who listened a great deal more than he talked. He had that skin that always looks tanned, and glossy black hair and a young face with old pouches under the eyes.
He asked her about the whole thing all over again, right from the beginning. She told it to him, just the way it had been written in the papers. Maybe, she had thought, a police detective is too busy to read the papers. She had asked him why the police were still interested, and he said they weren’t, but he was. He was off duty at the time. She thought, at the time, that it was kind of nice.
Then the year went by, and while it was warm, and when it was warm again, she used to sit sometimes in her wicker chair by the window, invisible behind the square of gauze, and gaze out across her unseen barrier—sixty feet, straight down—to the roof. And in her memory’s gaze she would see him again, the whole thing … unseen by him, remote and safe. “You all right, Little Sister?” the people said as she passed. “Watch yourself, now—be careful …”
The year went by, and this afternoon Poteen called again. She’d been a little slow in responding to him … that was funny … it wasn’t because she didn’t recognize his voice. She did. It was just that for some reason she couldn’t believe it. And then with his soft polite voice he had drawn the curtain of terror over her: “I thought I ought to tell you—Clewie Richardson got out yesterday.”
“Who’s Louie Richardson?”
“Clewie. Clewton W. Richardson. The boy who was sent up on your complaint last year.”
She had, of course, seen the name; it just hadn’t stayed with her. “I forgot his name. I … wanted to forget everything,” she said pathetically. Then the full impact of the news struck her. “Got out? You mean he’s back?”
“He lives here,” said Poteen’s voice gently. Then, very soothing, he said, “Now don’t you get excited or worried or anything. There’s no danger for you. I just felt I ought to tell you, in case you should see him on the street or something. It’s all over, so just don’t worry.”
“Oh,” she said, worried, terribly worried. “Oh dear.” While she was saying it he said goodbye quietly and hung up.
That was about three t
his afternoon; now it was nearly ten, and dark; but for a hazy sliver of moon, peeping and hiding, it was dark, too dark. Yet she would not turn on her light. As night was born, so her worry turned to fright; as the night grew around her and all the world, so her fright turned to terror, until at last it was a haze about her like the one in the sky.
And like the fragile stick of moon out there, all she could do was peep and hide in it, peep and hide, and the blur of her fear filtered common sounds into breathings by her door, and ordinary shifts of moonlight into movement on the roof.
Call the police, she kept telling herself, and No, what would I say? I thought I saw, I thought I heard …? Then, Go! she would tell herself, and answer, go where?… and then, since no passion, even the ecstasies of fear, can continue indefinitely, but must ebb and peak, the haze of terror would fitfully clarify and she could get her breath and bearings. Detective Poteen had told her there was nothing to fear. And he—Louie or Clewie?—surely he’d have learned his lesson, he wouldn’t try to …
But then, he would. She knew he would. She knew it so well that she was waiting for him. This is what she kept coming back to as the night grew tight around her, strong and dark, and each time she came back to it, the terror peaked higher. And off again on the climbing spiral: Call the police. (No, what would I—) Then, Go! Go where?… Oh! someone’s breathing out there! Something’s moving out there … Oh!
Something was indeed—someone in the moonlight. Little Sister peered and peered through the gauze, then, because she could not bear to be uncertain, no, not for another second, she took the flimsy panel and held it to one side.
And he, he stood there! and when he saw the curtain move, he smiled. She could see the gleam of his teeth in the moonlight.
He began again to take off clothes. He took off a jacket and tossed it behind the kiosk. He took off a shirt. He took off his shoes, balancing like a great bird on one foot, then the other, never taking his eyes off her window. And all the while, smiling.
Whether or not he had learned any lesson, she had, and that was, don’t scream. It was only now, this second, that she knew she had learned it, knew what her screams had done last time. She whimpered only, dropped the curtain and fled to the telephone. She lifted it, and, unable to stay away from the window, carried it as close as she could. She took up the receiver—and oh! that blessed hum!—and looking out and back, dialed. And while she was dialing, she saw the dim form outside spring lithely up the side of the kiosk, stand and balance on tiptoe against the flickering sky.
He reached up high over his head, took the faint pencil-line of a wire in his hands, and leapt lightly back to the roof. She heard the twang as the wire parted, and in her hands, like a captured bird, the telephone went dead.
Her breath stopped as the life left the instrument. She thought her heart stopped too. She stood absolutely motionless, gazing at the dead thing, and then she moaned softly, softly replaced the handset, and backed away from the window. And even all the way back, near the bed, she could see him, for he had retired to the middle of the wide roof opposite.
And now he took two springy strides toward her, and now he skipped once like a diver or an acrobat getting his stride, and now he was sprinting, and up the sloping, ramp-like eave he came, and launched himself into the air!
The square black hole of her open upper sash must have seemed a small target indeed—almost too narrow to admit his shoulders. But through it they went, never touching. His whole long body arrowed through the little opening and came at her like a javelin. And as she tensed herself for the crash of his landing, his body curved downward toward the floor. As his hands touched it he snapped his chin down to his collarbones, curled up in a tight ball, turned all his velocity into a roll. And there was no crash at all, only a great soft complex thud which shook her body and the bed, ending with a bump as he came up standing on his stockinged feet.
For a long moment—forever—they stood silently so, again their gazes locked, he smiling and balanced on his wide-planted feet, she pressed back against the edge of the bed. Then she sighed and fell backwards. She screwed up her eyes and her mouth, and through her twisted lips she gasped, “All right! All right!”
“Little Sister. Little Sister!”
Calling, calling … “I told you,” she blubbered, “I told you all right.”
“All right,” the voice echoed her, “You’re all right now. You must have fainted.”
She let her aching eyes open a crack, and cried out; the big overhead light was on, and it hurt her.
An arm slid cleverly behind her, raised her up. She parted her lips to speak, and cold touched them, a cup, cold water … she drank a little and began to tremble. “You’re all right now,” said the voice over the phone—oh God, not over the phone, right here in the room. She opened her eyes again, now ready for the blaze of light, and looked into the bland quiet face of Detective Sergeant Peter Poteen.
Numbly, she let her gaze fall away, and there across the room, hunched into her wicker chair and much too big for it, was he, him, the man on the roof. Louie, Clewie!
Oh!
“I knew he’d try to see you,” said Poteen, deftly fixing her pillow behind her. “I was out in the hall. I thought it might save everybody some trouble if I was with him, at the time. I lost him earlier and figured to meet him on the way to the door. Never dreamed he’d fly in like a bird.”
Unbelievably, the man, this Louie or Clewie or whatever, he grinned briefly, grinned at Poteen, and it was not at all as if he was a prisoner, or even a criminal. Little Sister began to cry.
Poteen left her alone to cry. He stepped away from her and he and the man talked—chatted was the word—friendly as could be—their faces politely averted while she pulled herself together.
When she was able, she whimpered, “What is it? What happened? What are you doing here?”
Poteen returned to her immediately. He looked at her gravely and then pulled up the straight chair. From the shelf above, he got some tissues from her box. He sat down and gave them to her. She crumpled one and sniffled into it. He said, “Tell me what happened that other time. Last year.”
“You know what happened.”
“Tell me all of what happened.”
“That,” she remembered, “is what you asked me when you came here that time, three weeks after.”
He nodded. “And you told me what you told the papers. I just wanted to know the rest of it.”
“There isn’t any rest of it.”
He breathed deeply once, a patient sound, not exactly a sigh. “That first time you called me, to complain of a Peeping Tom making obscene gestures at you from the roof. Was that the first time you had seen this fellow out on the roof?”
She opened her mouth, drew in air—and then hesitated. There was a certain something about Poteen’s bland dark face that was not easy to lie to. “Well,” she said at length, “no, it wasn’t.”
Poteen made no move anyone might describe, but something inside him seemed to relax. “How many times did you see him before?”
“I don’t know,” she said in the beginnings of anger. “How do you expect me to remember, exactly how many times?”
“Ten times? Twenty times? Fifty?”
“Oh, not fifty.”
“More than ten?”
“What right have you got to question me like this?” she shouted.
The thing inside him seemed to tighten up again. He reached in his breast pocket and drew out a thick sheaf of mimeo paper. “Know what this is? This is the transcript of his trial. Listen,” he said in a tone which gave her no choice but to do as she was told.
He read, “ ‘Q. Did you or did you not indecently expose your person to the view of the plaintiff?
“ ‘A. I didn’t even—
“ ‘Q. Answer the question. Did you or did not not—
“ ‘A. But I was only—
“ ‘The Court: The witness will answer the question.
“ ‘Q. Did you—
>
“ ‘A. Yes! Yes! Yes! If that’s what I got to say.’ ”
Poteen held up the transcript so she could see a handwritten line penciled in it. “Here was something off the record but the court stenographer remembered it. His Honor stood up and leaned across the bench and yelled at the witness, ‘You did, did you! You got a fat nerve pleading innocent, wasting everybody’s time!’ Then he said to strike that.”
Poteen paused, then struck the papers softly with his free hand. “Let’s just say that this is my right to question you this way.” He folded the transcript and put it away, and went on in exactly the previous voice, “You’d seen him out on the roof before?”
She whispered, “Yes.”
“More than ten times?”
“… Yes.”
“More than twenty?”
She glared at him. “No.”
“Very well,” he shrugged in a way that took all the strength out of her glare; it just didn’t matter. “Now, as to what was called in court ‘indecent exposure’ and ‘obscene gestures.’ Exactly what was that? Just what did he do? Try to remember.”
Little Sister really and truly blushed. “I … c-can’t say it!”
“All right. Perhaps I can find a way to say it for you. He was relieving himself. Is that about it?”
She put her hands to her cheeks and nodded.
“Very well,” he said clinically, not surprised, angry, shocked, anything. “Now—was this the only occasion when you had seen this?”
She would not answer.
“Well?” And the way he produced that one syllable, she had to answer. She shook her head.
“How many times?” He waited, then said, “More than twice? Ten times?”
“Five times,” she said at last.
“Five times,” he repeated. “All right, let’s get back to what he was doing on the roof in the first place.”
She made a vague gesture.
“Well … tricks.”
He waited, and she said, “You know—like, tricks. Standing on his hands and all. He had some sort of—well, pipes, like.”
The Nail and the Oracle Page 7