A Death in the Family - James Agee [103]
What’s the matter with them, he wondered, and still watched them; and even now, far down the street, Arthur kept turning his head, and for several steps Alvin walked backwards.
What are they mad about?
Now they no longer looked around, and now he watched them vanish under the hill.
Maybe they don’t know, he thought. Maybe the others don’t know either.
He came out to the sidewalk.
Maybe everybody knew. Or maybe he knew something of great importance which nobody else knew. The alternatives were not at all distinct in his mind; he was puzzled, but no less proud and expectant than before. My daddy’s dead, he said to himself slowly, and then, shyly, he said it aloud: “My daddy’s dead.” Nobody in sight seemed to have heard; he had said it to nobody in particular. “My daddy’s dead,” he said again, chiefly for his own benefit. It sounded powerful, solid, and entirely creditable, and he knew that if need be he would tell people. He watched a large, slow man come towards him and waited for the man to look at him and acknowledge the fact first, but when the man was just ahead of him, and still did not appear even to have seen him, he told him, “My daddy’s dead,” but the man did not seem to hear him, he just swung on by. He took care to tell the next man sooner and the man’s face looked almost as if he were dodging a blow but he went on by, looking back a few steps later with a worried face; and after a few steps more he turned and came slowly back.
“What was that you said, sonny?” he asked; he was frowning slightly.
“My daddy’s dead,” Rufus said, expectantly.
“You mean that sure enough?” the man asked.
“He died last night when I was asleep and now he can’t come home ever any more.”
The man looked at him as if something hurt him.
“Where do you live, sonny?”
“Right here”; he showed with his eyes.
“Do your folks know you out here wandern round?”
He felt his stomach go empty. He looked frankly into his eyes and nodded quickly.
The man just looked at him and Rufus realized: He doesn’t believe me. How do they always know?
“You better just go on back in the house, son,” he said. “They won’t like you being out here on the street.” He kept looking at him, hard.
Rufus looked into his eyes with reproach and apprehension, and turned in at his walk. The man still stood there. Rufus went on slowly up his steps, and looked around. The man was on his way again but at the moment Rufus looked around, he did too, and now he stopped again.
He shook his head and said, in a friendly voice which made Rufus feel ashamed, “How would your daddy like it, you out here telling strangers how he’s dead?”
Rufus opened the door, taking care not to make a sound, and stepped in and silently closed it, and hurried into the sitting room. Through the curtains he watched the man. He still stood there, lighting a cigarette, but now he started walking again. He looked back once and Rufus felt, with a quailing of shame and fear, he sees me; but the man immediately looked away again and Rufus watched him until he was out of sight.
How would your daddy like it?
He thought of the way they teased him and did things to him, and how mad his father got when he just came home. He thought how different it would be today if he only didn’t have to stay home from school.
He let himself out again and stole back between the houses to the alley, and walked along the alley, listening to the cinders cracking under each step, until he came near the sidewalk. He was not in front of his own home now, or even on Highland Avenue; he was coming into the side street down from his home, and he felt that here nobody would identify him with his home and send him back to it. What he could see from the mouth of the alley was much less familiar to him, and he took the last few steps which brought him out onto the sidewalk with deliberation