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By Root 2774 0

Heaven, and his father said: ‘Listen. God is talking.’ She had known him in the mornings of that far-off country when his father turned on his bed and opened his eyes, and she had looked into those eyes, seeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. She had seen him baptized, kicking like a mule and howling, and she had seen him weep when his mother died; he was a right young man then, Florence said. Because she had looked into those eyes before they had looked on John, she knew that John would never know—the purity of his father’s eyes when John was not reflected in their depths. She could have told him—had he but been able form his hiding-place to ask!–how to make his father love him. But now it was too late. She would not speak before the judgment day. And among those many voices, the stammering with his own, John would care no longer for her testimony.

When he had finished and the room was ready for Sunday, John felt dusty and weary and sat down beside the window in his father’s easy chair. A glacial sun filled the streets, and a high wind filled the air with scraps of paper and frost dust, and banged the hanging signs of stores and store-front churches. It was the end of winter, and the garbage-filled snow that had been banked along the edges of pavements was melting now and filling the gutters. Boys were playing stickball in the damp, cold streets; dressed in heavy woolen sweaters and heavy trousers, they danced and shouted, and the ball went crack as the stick struck it and sent I speeding through the air. One of them wore a bright-red stocking cap with a great ball of wool hanging down behind that bounced as he jumped, like a bright omen above his head. The cold sun made their faces like copper and brass, and through the closed window John heard their coarse, irreverent voices. And he wanted to be one of them, playing in the streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, but he knew this could not be. Yet, if he could not play their games, he could do something they could not do; he was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. But this brought him little in the way of consolation, for to-day he was terrified of his thoughts. He wanted to be with these boys in the street, headless and thoughtless, wearing out his treacherous and bewildering body.

But now it was eleven o’clock, and in two hours his father would be home. And then they might eat, and then his father would lead them in prayer, and then he would give them a Bible lesson. By and by it would be evening and he would go to clean the church, and remained for tarry service. Suddenly, sitting at the window, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in John a flood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, fists clenched against the window-pane, crying, with teeth on edge: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’

Then his mother called him; and he remembered that she was in the kitchen washing clothes and probably had something for him to do. He rose sullenly and walked into the kitchen. She stood over the wash-tub, her arms wet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on her brow. Her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wet where she had been leaning over the scrubbing-board. As he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on the edge of the apron.

‘You finish your work, John\?’ she asked

He said: ‘Yes’m,’ and thought how oddly she looked at him; as though she were looking at someone else’s child.

‘That’s a good boy,’ she said. She smiled a shy, strained smile. ‘You know you’re your mother’s right-hand man?’

He said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched her, wandering to what task this preamble led.

She turned away, passing one damp hand across her forehead, and went to the cupboard. Her back was to him, and he watched her while she took down a bright, figured vase, filled with flowers only on the most special occasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. He heard the chink of money, which meant that she was going to send him to the store. She put the vase back and turned to face him, her palm loosely folded before