The Children

by Howard Fast

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.”

  MAYBE 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

  IF 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

  AS 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.

  “What is there to be afraid of, my little one?” she asked in her soft Italian.

  Marie wept abundantly.

  “You have done nothing, my heart, so what is there to be afraid of?”

  Marie told her—in broken words.

  “In the cellar?”

  “Yes.”

  The Italian woman rocked, back and forth, back and forth, nodding her head stiffly, touching the blonde skin with her fingertips.

  Marie whispered, “In the hall—I saw the devil.”

  No, no.

  “I’ll never go back there … to the street.”

  “Don’t you know, my little one, how God cares for children? God will punish the barbarian; but the laughter of children is music in His ears. You are innocent.”

  “I saw the devil.”

  “No, no. You see, we are in a land of barbarians, my child …”

  Marie saw that her mother was crying too; she saw more than that. She saw past the line that separated her world from her mother’s. And because she knew that she would go down to the cellar again, she wept with her mother.

  FIFTEEN

  I HAVE TOLD YOU A LOT ABOUT THE BLOCK, AND I WILL tell you some more; but not too much. If I tell you too much, you will not believe; if I call my story The Children, you will raise your brows—because there are no such children in the world. But aren’t there? What do you know about children? And what do child
ren know about the other world, where you work—and try to pay your rent? But are the worlds so different? If once all men were what we were then—then have men changed? I don’t know. But in the end, after I have told you all about Shomake’s fiddle, about what happened to Blackbelly, I will tell you of Ollie, and maybe a little about Thomas Edison.

  YOU WILL ADMIT that being a friend of Ollie’s is better than being Shomake’s friend. I don’t have to be afraid any more. But that is not all. Oh no, don’t for a moment believe that I, Ishky, am that dull. You see, I know Ollie. Can anybody know Ollie better than I do? Ollie is a fighting machine, but he is not at all the kind of a machine Blackbelly is; he is all nerves and emotion. And in my way, without thinking too much, I decide that I will play on that. Now this is how it all came about.

  In the dark coal bin, I know Ollie is thinking. I am thinking, too.…

  “Geesus, whatta fight!”

  Ollie says, “Duh whole block’s lousy wid niggers.”

  I agree with Ollie. “Black basteds.”

  “We oughta have a gang.” That’s what Ollie says, and I know he’s not sure of himself. If he were sure of himself, would he confide in me?

  “It oughta be yer gang,” I say.

  “Dam tootin’.”

  “Betcha you could lick anybody,” I say.

  “Dam tootin’.”

  Now my chance has come, and I go about it very craftily; oh, never fear—I am nobody’s fool.

  “Yuh gonna lemme in it, Ollie?” I want to know.

  “You can’ fight.”

  “I could makeya schemes, Ollie. I read a lotta books.”

  “Lookit duh way Blackbelly almost kilt yuh.”

  “Listen, Ollie,” I tell him. “You an’ me could have duh biggest gang aroun’. We could kick duh shid oudda any block.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure, Ollie.”

  “We gotta git a gang.”

  “Yeah.”

  Thomas Edison saw Blackbelly and his gang chase Ollie and Ishky down the cellar. He ran across the street, taking refuge in front of the shoe store until the colored boys had gone. Then he crept into the hallway, down into the cellar, and he lay there, listening to Ishky’s and Ollie’s eager plans. The more they spoke, the more it appealed to him, and finally he could contain himself no longer.

  “Hey, Ollie!”

  “Geesus, who’s dat?”

  “Jus’me.”

  “It’s nuts.”

  “Git oudda here, loony!”

  “Aw—Ollie.”

  “Screw, bughouse.”

  “Lemme in duh gang, Ollie. Ollie—”

  Simultaneously, Ishky and Ollie fell on him, kicking him and beating him up into the hallway. Tearfully, Thomas Edison fell and stumbled up, fled then into the bright sunlight. Still stumbling, nodding his over-large head from side to side, he made his way down to his house.

  The wooden shack where they all lived was always dirty; there were three rooms, in which eight of them lived, Ollie and Thomas Edison, brothers and sisters, mother and father, and the grandmother. Thomas Edison hoped the grandmother would be there, but none of the others.

  She sat knitting, a very old woman, a woman so old that she had forgotten the number of her years. She was good for nothing else now—except knitting. All day long she sat knitting.

  Thomas Edison crept into the kitchen, blinking like a huge owl, his mouth gaping, the dampness of tears still clinging to his cheeks. He saw his grandmother knitting.

  “Hey, Oloman,” he muttered. They all called her that, and if it had meant anything once, they didn’t know what it meant now.

  “Dirt and filth,” she rumbled, in her broad brogue, “and dirt and filth. Who has been beating you now, poor addlebrain? There’s no mercy in them for the wonder God has put on you.”

  “Ollie kicked me.”

  “A swine’s son. Wipe away the tears, poor fool.”

  “Awright, Oloman.”

  “And sit down by me.”

  “Yeah, Oloman.” He sat down next to her, pressing his face to her skirt; and one of her withered hands left her knitting to drop and caress his hair. And all the time she stared straight ahead of her, to a small window where a broad slab of sunlight bit into the room. What an old woman she was, with a fine wrinkled, ancient face! She said:

  “Tell me of it, poor fool.”

  “Dey kicked me. Whatta sock Ollie gimme, right on duh backa my head. He says, git oudda here, loony.”

  “Yes, poor fool.”

  He leaned back, staring up at her with his round face, blinking his eyes. He was straining for thought,, for some sort of deep, wondrous thought that he could put into words. But the words came with difficulty.

  “Oloman—whattam I loony fer?”

  “What?”

  “I’m crazy, huh?”

  “Poor fool—poor fool, it is God’s wish, and nothing; else but that. But I cannot explain that to you. Dirt and filth here, but in the old country it would have been different. You see, God has put His wonderful touch on you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not understanding me, poor fool.”

  “What’s God’s touch?”

  “Madness.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He has made you mad for His own purpose, and for that reason they will torment you—torment you. Dirt and filth.”

  “Goddam em,” he muttered.

  “Yes, my child.”

  “Some day … I’ll kill Ollie.”

  “No.”

  He stared with implicit faith at the old woman’s face, while she nodded and stroked his coarse hair. She nodded, muttered, and told him stories of a land of mountains and trolls. Madness is God’s gift. Take heed of, that then, Thomas Edison. Laugh at Ollie. Laugh at Ishky.

  “My mother was mad,” the old woman said.

  “Yeah?”

  “She roamed the bog, screaming to the birds—”

  “Yeah?”

  “When they torment you too much, poor fool, come back to me, and I will give you comfort, such as I know how.”

  “Yeah, Oloman.”

  SIXTEEN

  WHEN WE GOT OUT OF THE CELLAR, OLLIE AND I HAD ALL our plans made for forming the gang, and Ollie was all swelled up with it. We came out onto the stoop, and Ollie strutted back and forth, sticking out his chest.

  “Geesus …” he said.

  “Yeah, Ollie—oney we gotta git more kids.”

  “Yeah.”

  I sat down on the stoop, and I was feeling important myself, believe me, and I began to think of whom we could get. I was full of ideas about this and that, wondering what I would do in the first fight. Maybe I would be yellow, and maybe I wouldn’t; but, anyway, nobody would beat me up anymore, not with Ollie on my side. Ollie was leaning up against one side of the stoop, rubbing a hand through his yellow hair, when I saw Kipleg.

  Kipleg came down the block, half running, half walking. Mornings, Kipleg worked in a grocery, and he had gotten the job because he looked a lot older than his age. He was big, too, a good deal bigger than Ollie or Ishky.

  Kipleg lived across the street from Ishky. A peculiar thing about Kipleg—he never went up the stairs to his apartment. He had his own way of going home.

  Now Ollie and Ishky watched him. They wanted to call him, to tell him all about the gang, but not for anything would they have attracted his attention until he had gotten into his house. They watched him eagerly.

  He came down the block, hitching up his pants. When he saw Ollie, he whistled to him; but he didn’t stop. His quick walk lengthened into a run, and then a monkeylike bound placed him on top of his stoop. Whistling, he crouched there.

  “Watchim,” Ollie whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  Kipleg leaped for the low ladder that hung from the fire escape, and the moment he caught it, swinging from it by his hands, his mother put her head out of the window. Kipleg’s mother was a large woman, with red hair, and most of the time she was drunk. He had n
o father; nobody knew anything about his father, whether he had died, or whether he had gone off somewhere. But his mother drank, maybe to forget his father. When she wasn’t drunk, she took men into the house. Now she screamed at Kipleg.

  “Git offana dere, yuh liddle bum!”

  “G’wan,” yelled Kipleg.

  “Git off, I say!”

  Kipleg swung up his feet, caught them in the ladder, and then hung swaying. Slowly, he raised his body.

  “Yuh liddle tramp,” his mother screamed, “cantcha come intuh duh house like a gennleman? Yer duh disgrace of my life.”

  “Aw, screw,” Kipleg said. He began to climb up the ladder, sticking out his chest, and hanging back by his hands. When he had crossed the fire escape, come to the window, his mother smacked him soundly. He tried to smack her back, but she caught him by the pants, and drew him through the window, screaming curses at him all the time.

  Ollie and Ishky stared fascinated, their mouths wide open. And everyone else on the block stared too, some laughing and delighted. Through the open window came the sounds of the battle between Kipleg and his mother.

  “Scum! Oh, dat I shoulda had duh pains of labor fer a liddle tramp like you!”

  “Aw, screw, I tol’ yuh!”

  “Talkin’ to yer mudder like dat. Take it!”

  “Ohhh, yuh louse!”

  “Call me a louse!”

  “Lemme go!”

  “Dere—dere—dere!”

  “Whore!”

  “I’ll kill ya.”

  “Lemme go, d’ya hear! Lemmego, yuh lousy ol’ basted! Who d’ya tink yer smackin’?”

  Kipleg came out of the window again, this time backwards. He ran across the fire escape to the ladder, and then turned to look at his mother, who was in the window again.

  “Scum!” she cried.

  But now Kipleg was free, and he hung upon the ladder, screaming at her, and making faces, like a monkey.

  “Hey, Kipleg!” Ollie yelled.

  Seeing Ollie, he dropped quickly down the ladder, hung a moment, and then dropped to the stoop. Putting his hands in his pockets, ignoring his mother who still screamed from the window, he swaggered across the street.

  “Hey, Ollie,” he said.