by Ann Petry
No, a woman living alone really didn’t stand much chance. Landlords took advantage and wouldn’t fix things and landladies became demanding about the rent, waxing sarcastic if it was even so much as a day behind time. With a man around, there was a big difference in their attitude. If he was a strong man like this one, they were afraid to talk roughly.
Besides, when there were two working if one got sick the other one could carry on and there’d still be food and the rent would be paid. It was possible to have a home that way, too—an apartment instead of just one hall room and with the table her money would always be safe.
This was a very strong man. His back muscles bulged as he pushed the cart. She moved closer to him.
“Say,” she said, and there was a soft insinuation in her voice, “you know anywhere a single lady could get a room?” Then she added hastily, “But not on this street.”
Chapter 16
* * *
JONES LAID the big calcimine brush down on top of the ladder, pulled his watch out of the pocket of his overalls. It was two-thirty, way past the time when he usually ate. He climbed slowly down the ladder, feeling for each step. He was so damn tired that even his feet hurt.
He’d gone up and down the stairs until he’d lost track of how many times it was and all because he’d been fool enough to stick a note in the bell “Super Painting in 41,” and it looked like everybody in the house had immediately discovered something wrong that had to be fixed right away—sinks and faucets on the third floor, a stopped-up tub on the second floor. He mimicked the old woman who lived on the second floor, “Clothes in the tub soakin’, soakin’, soakin’, and the water ain’t runnin’ out, and what am I goin’ to do with them wet pieces that need rinsin’?” On top of that, he’d gone down in the basement to fire the furnace.
He slammed the door of the apartment behind him, then turned and locked it. He’d better catch a breath of air before he fixed himself something to eat, because the smell of the paint was in his nose, looked like it had even got in his skin.
Min was home today. She was in the apartment right now. His steps slowed on the stairs as he remembered how he’d almost got his hands on her this morning. Had she made the sign of the cross or had he imagined it? Even now he didn’t really know. There must be some way he could get over his fear of that cross just long enough to choke her good; and she’d leave so fast it wouldn’t be funny. And she had to get out, because even without the cross being involved, he couldn’t bear to look at her any more. Much as he hated Lutie Johnson, every time he looked at Min he thought of Lutie.
Once in the hall downstairs he walked swiftly past the door of his apartment, forcing his thoughts away from Min and Lutie, concentrating on how good the air would feel once he was out on the street.
The first thing he noticed when he got outside was that the sun had come out. He leaned against the building, breathing deeply, watching the people who walked past. He sniffed the air appreciatively. It was cold, but it smelt fresh and clean after the paint smell. Not much warmth in the sun, though, and the sky was grayish as though there was snow building up in it. Yes, it would snow tonight or tomorrow.
“Min’s gone,” Mrs. Hedges said blandly.
He clenched his fists as he turned toward her window. She was always interfering with him. He had been quietly studying the sky and enjoying the clear, cold air, and then that voice of hers had to interrupt him. He took another step toward the window and stood still, remembering the white man Junto who protected her, the white man who had a drag with the police and who had taken Lutie Johnson away from him. Some day he would get so mad he would forget that she had protection and he would pull her over that window sill and big as she was, he would beat her and go on beating her until she was all pulp and screams and then—— His mind echoed her words. She had said something about Min.
He looked directly at her. “What?” he said.
“Min’s gone, dearie,” Mrs. Hedges repeated.
“Gone?” He walked closer to the window, not understanding. “What you mean she’s gone? Gone where?”
“She’s moved out. Took her table and the canary and left about eleven o’clock.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I hope she don’t come back. If she tried to come back I’d—I’d——” The words twisted in his throat and he stopped talking.
“She won’t be back, dearie.” Mrs. Hedges’ voice was calm, placid. “She’s gone for keeps.” She leaned toward him, established her elbows in a comfortable position on the window ledge. “Now what was it you said you was going to do if she tried to come back?”
He turned away without answering her and went inside the house. It could be that she was lying, had made the whole thing up to see what he was going to say. It was probably a trap, some kind of trap, and the quicker he found out what it was all about the better.
The instant he opened the door, he knew that Mrs. Hedges had told the truth. Min had gone. The living room was deserted, empty. She was never home at this time of day, and he looked around him wondering what it was that made him so sharply aware that she had gone; trying to determine what the difference was in the room.
The wall in front of him was bare, blank. That was it—that long empty space was where the table used to stand. He pushed the easy-chair over against the wall and stared at it, dissatisfied. It couldn’t begin to take the place of the table; instead it emphasized the absence of the gleam and shine of the table’s length; made him remember how majestic the claw feet had looked down near the floor. He hadn’t realized how familiar he had become with all the detail of that table until it was gone. It was only natural he should miss it, because he had stared at it for hours on end when he sat there on the sofa.
He would put his desk there instead. That’s where it was before Min moved in. Immediately he began pushing and pulling the desk across the room, and while he struggled with it he wondered why he bothered, tired as he was.
The room still didn’t look right. The wood of the desk was dull oak. It was grimy. It had no shine to it. He shrugged his shoulders. In a coupla hours or so he would be used to it. Meanwhile, he’d go into the bedroom and see if she took anything that didn’t belong to her.
He was turning away when his eyes fell on the torn envelopes on top of the desk. How could he have moved the desk and not noticed them? Where had they come from? He brushed his hand across his face in an effort to clear his mind because it was as cloudy as though it were full of cobwebs. He picked the letters up and looked at them. They were the same ones he was tearing up this morning when Min came back into the house, the letters that thieving little kid had brought to him last night. He’d stuck them in his pocket and forgotten about them until this morning.
Min had seen them, seen him tearing them, probably examined them after he went out of the house. And he didn’t know where she’d gone, and as long as she was alive, he wasn’t safe, because she undoubtedly thought he’d stolen them and she’d tell on him.
He should have killed her this morning, only he couldn’t because of that cross, and he didn’t know whether she’d really made the outline of it over her body or whether his eyes had been playing tricks on him again. He ought to get out of here in a hurry, go somewhere else where the police couldn’t find him.
There were parts of an envelope over near the bedroom door, too. Or was it his imagination? No, they were partly torn and they were real. Two of them. Had they fallen off the desk when he was moving it or had Min dropped them and left them there, so he would know that she had seen them?
He walked up and down the room. There must be some way he could figure this thing out. This way he was left holding the bag and the kid would go free, and Lutie Johnson would go on sleeping with that white bastard. Only he mustn’t think about that, he got all confused whenever he did, got so he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even move, just like he was paralyzed.
After
all, it was only Min’s word against his. She was the one who got the key made and there couldn’t be much longer to wait before the kid got caught. All he had to do was bide his time, and if Min said anything, why, he would say that she was the one who’d done the stealing.
That was it. He could see himself now in front of the Judge. “I tell you that woman hated me.” He’d point right at her. He could see her eyes blink and she would crouch away from him all down in a heap, so that she looked like a bag of old clothes. “Yes, sir, she hated me. And so she moved out and tried to get me in trouble. She was the one who done the stealin’ and she done it because she was dead set on gettin’ even with me. All she ever caused me was trouble. Used to take my money every time I turned around. I saw them letters for the first time when she left.”
That would be his story, and it was a good one. There wasn’t any point in his getting himself all worked up. He was still safe, and there wasn’t a thing she could do that would really harm him, and if she actually did start any trouble, why, his story would land her behind jail bars. He’d leave those torn letters right there where they were. They would show he was innocent, because if he’d been guilty, why, the first thing he would have done would have been to burn them up.
Now that was settled, he’d look in the bedroom and see how she left things. With a woman like her there was no telling what she’d take that wasn’t hers.
He glanced around the room, carefully avoiding the place where the cross had hung over the bed. The furniture was all here. He looked in the closet. It was empty. There was nothing—no bit of dust, no worn-out shoe or old discarded hat—nothing to indicate that Min had ever used it. The floor boards were scrubbed so clean and white they re-emphasized the closet’s emptiness. The coat hangers dangling from the hooks in the back of the closet had been dusted. They looked as though they had never been used.
“I oughtta put some clothes on ’em,” he said, aloud.
He turned away from the closet. The dresser was bare and clean, too. Min’s worn hairbrush and toothless piece of comb had always been on the right-hand side; and a long-handled celluloid mirror used to be on the opposite cover. They were gone, and so was the towel she kept on top of the dresser. The bare, ugly wood was exposed.
He looked at himself in the mirror and then, with no intention, no conscious effort, his eyes went toward the bed, hunted for the cross. He gave a start. She had left it behind.
“God damn her,” he said. “She left it here to haunt me.”
He looked again. No. The cross was gone, but while it hung there the walls had darkened with grime and dust, so when it was removed its outline was left clear and sharp on the wall—an outline the exact size and shape of the cross itself.
It was everywhere in the room. He saw it again and again plain before his eyes. She had conjured him with it—conjured him and the apartment and gone. He left the room hastily and slammed the door shut behind him.
He walked restlessly through the living room, the kitchen, in and out of the bathroom, listening to the empty echo of his own footsteps. He could see the cross on the floor in front of his feet; it appeared suddenly over the kitchen stove; he had to look twice before he saw that it wasn’t actually suspended from the center of the ceiling in the narrow confine of the bathroom.
Min had done this to him. And if he went on like this, seeing crosses all about him and never being certain whether they were real or figments of his imagination, he would go to pieces. But he didn’t have to stay here. He paused in the middle of the living room to enumerate all the reasons why he should live somewhere else. He’d be away from the constant, malicious surveillance of Mrs. Hedges. He wouldn’t have to see Lutie Johnson going back and forth to work with her head up in the air, never glancing in his direction, looking straight ahead as though he were a piece of dirt that would soil her eyes.
Nobody liked him much here, either. The folks weren’t friendly. Well, when the white agent came around next week, he’d tell him he was quitting. The thought of leaving made him feel free. He could still have his revenge, too. Because wherever he went he’d make it a point to keep in with Bub and eventually the little bastard would get caught.
This place was too small, anyway. He’d find a house where the Super’s apartment looked out on the street, a place that had a front window where he could sit down when he had any spare time and see what was going on outside.
The thought of a front window made him suddenly hungry for the sight of people, eager to watch their movements. He would go outside and stand awhile. And he’d get well out of sight of Mrs. Hedges’ window, around near the front of the building where she couldn’t look at him.
It was mighty cold standing outside. The people who went by moved along at a brisk pace. He picked out young women and watched them closely, thinking that now that he was free, now that Min was gone, he could get himself any one of these girls who swung past. It was too bad it was winter and they had on thick concealing coats, because it was difficult to get an accurate picture of just what they looked like.
They moved past without glancing at him or, if they did glance at him, they looked away before he could catch their eyes. He shifted his attention across the street where a group of men talked and laughed together in the thin sunlight.
If he should join them, try to get into the conversation, they would stop talking. He’d never acquired the knack of small talk and after a while his silence would weigh on them so heavily that the conversation would slow up, grow halting, and then die completely. The men would drift away. It always happened.
Maybe if he could think of a story, something to hold their attention, they would stay put. It was a jolly little group. He could catch phrases here and there. “Man, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” and then the voice of the man who spoke would grow fainter and the little group draw closer to the one who talked.
He started talking to himself, softly, under his breath, rehearsing what he would say. “Man, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” he said.
It sounded so good that he repeated it. “Man, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet. You oughtta work in one of them houses”—he’d gesture toward this house. “You don’t never know what a fool woman is goin’ to think of next. Why, one time one of ’em come runnin’ down the stairs, hollerin’ there was a mouse in the dumb-waiter and what was I goin’ to do about it. Well, man, I told her——”
He was so intent on the slow unfolding of his story that he was completely unaware of the two white men who had stopped in front of him until the shorter of the two spoke.
“You the Super in this building?”
“What’s it to you?” He hadn’t had time to look them over and he was instantly on the defensive because they had caught him off guard.
“Post-office investigators.” The pale sunlight glinted on a badge.
This was what he’d been waiting for. His eyes followed the badge until it disappeared inside the man’s coat pocket. “Yeah,” he said. His voice was thick, not quite intelligible, because there was a beating inside his head from the blood pounding there and the same beating was inside his throat, blurring his voice. “Yeah,” he repeated, “I’m the Super.”
“Any of the tenants complain about letters being stolen?”
“Nope.” He had to be careful what he said. He had to go slow. Take it easy. “I’m around too much for anybody to do any stealin’.”
“That’s funny. There’ve been complaints from almost every house in the block except this one.” They were turning away.
“Say, listen,” he said. He talked slowly as though the idea had just come to him, and he was feeling it out in his mind. “There’s a kid lives in this house”—he indicated the building in back of him with a motion of his head. “He’s always runnin’ in and out of the hallways up and down the street. I seen him every afternoon after school and wondered what he was doin’. Could be him.”
The men exchanged dubious glances. “Might as well hang around. If you see him go past, call him over to you and put your hand on his shoulder.”
“Okay.”
Jones waited impatiently as he watched the kids swarming into the street. School was out and Bub ought to be coming along. Maybe he wouldn’t come. Just when everything was fixed, he probably wouldn’t come, just to spite him. That was the way everything turned out.
Then Bub came running through the crowded street. His school books were swinging from a strap. He ducked and dodged through the crowd, never allowing anyone to impede his progress, never slackening his pace, twisting, turning, coming swiftly.
“Hi, Bub,” Jones called.
The boy stopped, looked around, saw the Super. “Hi, Supe,” he said eagerly. He walked over to him. “How come you’re out on this side today?”
“Air’s better over here,” Jones said. Bub grinned appreciatively. Jones placed a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder, kept it there. Yes. The men were watching. They were standing a little way off, near the curb. “You oughtta start work right now,” he said.
“Okay, Captain.” Bub lifted his hand in salute.
He darted across the street, lingered on the sidewalk for a moment, and then disappeared through the doorway of an apartment house.
The white men followed him. “Listen,” the shorter one said. “If we catch this kid, we got to get him in the car fast. These streets aren’t safe.”
The other man nodded. They, too, disappeared into the building. Jones, watching from across the street, licked his lips while he waited. A few minutes later, he saw the men come out of the house with Bub between them. One of them held a letter in his hand. The white envelope showed up clearly. The boy was crying, trying to pull away from them.
There was a short, sharp struggle when they reached the sidewalk. Bub wriggled out of their hands and for a fraction of a second it looked as though he would get away.