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By Root 3741 0

more children, boy named Flint and gal named Laurajean, I should say I know you -- me and your mama and your papa useta -- And me saying, I'm all right now, really all right. And her saying, And looking like that, you must be worse off even than you look, and pulling me now saying, Here's my house right here, hep me git him up the steps and inside, you needn't worry, son, I ain't never laid eyes on you before and it ain't my business and I don't care what you think about me but you weak and caint hardly walk and all and you look what's more like you hungry, so just come on and let me do something for you like I hope you'd do something for ole Mary in case she needed it, it ain't costing you a penny and I don't want to git in your business, I just want you to lay down till you rested and then you can go. And the fellow taking it up, saying, You in good hands, daddy, Miss Mary always helping somebody and you need some help 'cause here you black as me and white as a sheet, as the ofays would say -- watch these steps. And going up some steps and then some more, growing weaker, and the two warm around me on each side of me, and then inside a cool dark room, hearing, Here, here's the bed, lie him down there, there, there now, that's it, Ralston, now put his legs up -- never mind the cover -- there, that's it, now go out there in the kitchen and pour him a glass of water, you'll find a bottle in the ice-box. And him going and her placing another pillow beneath my head, saying, Now you'll be better and when you git all right you'll know how bad a shape you been in, here, now taka sip of this water, and me drinking and seeing her worn brown fingers holding the bright glass and a feeling of old, almost forgotten relief coming over me and thinking in echo of her words, If I don't think I'm sinking, look what a hole I'm in, and then the soft cool splash of sleep.

I SAW her across the room when I awoke, reading a newspaper, her glasses low across the bridge of her nose as she stared at the page intently. Then I realized that though the glasses still slanted down, the eyes were no longer focused on the page, but on my face and lighting with a slow smile.

"How you feel now?" she said.

"Much better."

"I thought you would be. And you be even better after you have a cup of soup I got for you in the kitchen. You slept a good long time."

"Did I?" I said. "What time is it?"

"It's about ten o'clock, and from the way you slept I suspects all you needed was some rest . . . No, don't git up yet. You got to drink your soup, then you can go," she said, leaving.

She returned with a bowl in a plate. "This here'll fix you up," she said. "You don't get this kind of service up there at Men's House, do you? Now, you just sit there and take your time. I ain't got nothing to do but read the paper. And I like company. You have to make time in the morning?"

"No, I've been sick," I said. "But I have to look for a job."

"I knowed you wasn't well. Why you try to hide it?"

"I didn't want to be trouble to anyone," I said.

"Everybody has to be trouble to somebody. And you just come from the hospital too."

I looked up. She sat in the rocking chair bent forward, her arms folded at ease across her aproned lap. Had she searched my pockets?

"How did you know that?" I said.

"There you go getting suspicious," she said sternly. "That's what's wrong with the world today, don't nobody trust nobody. I can smell that hospital smell on you, son. You got enough ether in those clothes to put to sleep a dog!"

"I couldn't remember telling you that I had been in the hospital."

"No, and you didn't have to. I smelled that out. You got people here in the city?"

"No, ma'm," I said. "They're down South. I came up here to work so I could go to school, and I got sick."

"Now ain't that too bad! But you'll make out all right. What you plan to make out of yourself?"

"I don't know now; I came here wanting to be an educator. Now I don't know."

"So what's wrong with being an educator?"

I thought about it while sipping the good hot soup. "Nothing, I suppose, I just think