The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [229]
Sheppard glanced across the room at the child. He was sitting on the floor against a trunk, trussed up in a rope he had found and wound around his legs from his ankles to his knees. He appeared so far away that Sheppard might have been looking at him through the wrong end of the telescope. He had had to whip him only once since Johnson had been with them—the first night when Norton had realized that Johnson was going to sleep in his mother’s bed. He did not believe in whipping children, particularly in anger. In this case, he had done both and with good results. He had had no more trouble with Norton.
The child hadn’t shown any positive generosity toward Johnson but what he couldn’t help, he appeared to be resigned to. In the mornings Sheppard sent the two of them to the Y swimming pool, gave them money to get their lunch at the cafeteria and instructed them to meet him in the park in the afternoon to watch his Little League baseball practice. Every afternoon they had arrived at the park, shambling, silent, their faces closed each on his own thoughts as if neither were aware of the other’s existence. At least he eould be thankful there were no fights.
Norton showed no interest in the telescope. “Don’t you want to get up and look through the telescope, Norton?” he said. It irritated him that the child showed no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. “Rufus is going to be way ahead of you.”
Norton leaned forward absently and looked at Johnson’s back.
Johnson turned around from the instrument. His face had begun to fill out again. The look of outrage had retreated from his hollow cheeks and was shored up now in the caves of his eyes, like a fugitive from Sheppard’s kindness. “Don’t waste your valuable time, kid,” he said. “You seen the moon once, you seen it.”
Sheppard was amused by these sudden turns of perversity. The boy resisted whatever he suspected was meant for his improvement and contrived when he was vitally interested in something to leave the impression he was bored. Sheppard was not deceived. Secretly Johnson was learning what he wanted him to learn—that his benefactor was impervious to insult and that there were no cracks in his armor of kindness and patience where a successful shaft could be driven. “Some day you may go to the moon,” he said. “In ten years men will probably be making round trips there on schedule. Why you boys may be spacemen. Astronauts!”
“Astro-nuts,”Johnson said.
“Nuts or nauts,” Sheppard said, “it’s perfectly possible that you, Rufus Johnson, will go to the moon.”
Something in the depths of Johnson’s eyes stirred. All day his humor had been glum. “I ain’t going to the moon and get there alive,” he said, “and when I die I’m going to hell.”
“It’s at least possible to get to the moon,” Sheppard said dryly. The best way to handle this kind of thing was with gentle ridicule. “We can see it. We know it’s there. Nobody has given any reliable evidence there’s a hell.”
“The Bible has give the evidence,” Johnson said darkly, “and if you die and go there you burn forever.”
The child leaned forward.
“Whoever says it ain’t a hell,” Johnson said, “is contradicting Jesus. The dead are judged and the wicked are damned. They weep and gnash their teeth while they burn,” he continued, “and it’s everlasting darkness.”
The child’s mouth opened. His eyes appeared to grow hollow.
“Satan runs it,” Johnson said.
Norton lurched up and took a hobbled step toward Sheppard. “Is she there?” he said in a loud voice. “Is she there burning up?” He kicked the rope off his feet. “Is she on fire?”
“Oh my God,” Sheppard muttered. “No no,” he said, “of course she isn’t. Rufus is mistaken. Your mother isn’t anywhere. She’s not unhappy. She just isn’t.” His lot would have been easier if when his wife died he had told Norton she had gone to heaven and that some day he would