Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the
things that came to me.
They were real to me. They never touched me, but they had a little boy.
He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to
him.
Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and
I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got
smart enough to keep the beasts to myself.
My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed
up with flowers and cookies and winter fires. I remember she hugged me
on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my
awkward hand that she found, calling her names I didn't understand.
Sometimes there were drawings. I didn't write those notes or make those
drawings.
My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform
school after my thirteenth birthday party, the one no one came to.
The reform school was nicer. There were others there who'd had it about
like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or
ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams
at night.
It was home.
My trouble there was that I was always being framed for stealing. I
didn't take any of those things they located in my bunk. Stealing
wasn't in my line. If you believe any of this at all, you'll see why it
couldn't be me who did the stealing.
There was reason for me to steal, if I could have got away with it. The
others got money from home to buy the things they needed--razor blades,
candy, sticks of tea. I got a letter from Mom or Dad every now and then
before they were killed, saying they had sent money or that it was
enclosed, but somehow I never got a dime of it.
When I was expelled from reform school, I left with just one idea in
mind--to get all the money I could ever use for the things I needed and
the things I wanted.
* * * * *
It was two or three years later that I skulked into Brother Partridge's
mission on Durbin Street.
The preacher and half a dozen men were singing _Onward Christian
Soldiers_ in the meeting room. It was a drafty hall with varnished
camp chairs. I shuffled in at the back with my suitcoat collar turned
up around my stubbled jaw. I made my hand shaky as I ran it through my
knotted hair. Partridge was supposed to think I was just a bum. As
an inspiration, I hugged my chest to make him think I was some wino
nursing a flask full of Sneaky Pete. All I had there was a piece of
copper alloy tubing inside a slice of plastic hose for taking care of
myself, rolling sailors and the like. Who had the price of a bottle?
Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew
people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred
hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched
eagle beak toward us. "Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the
good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received.
Amen."
Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat,
amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for--somewhere he had
received a fix.
"Brothers," Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a
beaming smile, "you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup
prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and
dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city,
and all the coffee you can drink. Let us march out to _The Stars and
Stripes Forever_, John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song."
I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me,
scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned
up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to
order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and
send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some
executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself,
"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon,
sir--" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines
that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter.
I was marching. Man, was I ever marching, but the secret of it was I
was only marking time the way we did in fire drills at the school.
They passed me, every one of them, and marched out of the meeting
room into the kitchen. Even Partridge made his way down from the
auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through
his private door.
I was alone, marking time behind the closed half of double doors. One
good breath and I raced past the open door and flattened myself to the
wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had
paid any attention to me. That was pretty odd. People usually watch my
every move, but a man's luck has to change sometime, doesn't it?
Following the wallboard, I went down the side of the room and behind
the last row of chairs, closer, closer, and halfway up the room again
to the entrance--the entrance and the little wooden box fastened to the
wall beside it.
The box was old and made out of some varnished wood. There was a slot
in the top. There wasn't any sign anywhere around it, but you knew it
wasn't a mailbox.
My hand went flat on the top of the box. One finger at a time drew up
and slipped into the slot. Index, fore, third, little. I put my thumb
in my palm and shoved. My hand went in.
There were coins inside. I scooped them up with two fingers and held
them fast with the other two. Once I dropped a dime--not a penny,
milled edge--and I started to reach for it. No, don't be greedy. I knew
I would probably lose my hold on all the coins if I tried for that one.
I had all the rest. It felt like about two dollars, or close to it.
Then I found the bill. A neatly folded bill in the box. Somehow I knew
all along it would be there.
* * * * *
I tried to read the numbers on the bill with my fingertips, but I
couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid
Row collection box? But still there were tourists, slummers. They might
leave a fifty or even a hundred. A hundred!
Yes, it felt new, crisp. It had to be a hundred. A single would be
creased or worn.
I pulled my hand out of the box. I _tried_ to pull my hand out of the
box.
I knew what the trouble was, of course. I was in a monkey trap. The
monkey reaches through the hole for the bait, and when he gets it in
his hot little fist, he can't get his hand out. He's too greedy to let
go, so he stays there, caught as securely as if he were caged.
I was a man, not a monkey. I knew why I couldn't get my hand out. But I
couldn't lose that money, especially that century bill. Calm, I ordered
myself. _Calm._
The box was fastened to the vertical tongue-and-groove laths of the
woodwork, not the wall. It was old lumber, stiffened by a hundred
layers of paint since 1908. The paint was as thick and strong as the
boards. The box was fastened fast. Six-inch spike nails, I guessed.
Calmly, I flung my whole weight away from the wall. My wrist almost
cracked, but there wasn't even a bend in the box. Carefully, I tried to
jerk my fist straight up, to pry off the top of the box. It was as if
the box had been carved out of one solid piece of timber. It wouldn't
go up, down, left or right.
But I kept trying.
While keeping a lookout for Partridge and somebody stepping out of the
kitchen for a pull on a bottle, I spotted the clock for the first
time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as
I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor
inside like a chicken having its neck wrung.
The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by.
My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box.
"This," Brother Partridge said, "is one of the most profound
experiences of my life."
My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The
pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me.
"A vision of you at the box projected itself on the crest of my soup,"
the preacher explained in wonderment.