The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [231]
“I said where’s Rufus?” he said louder.
“Gone somewhere,” the child said without turning around.
“Gone where?” Sheppard asked.
“He just said he was going somewhere. He said he was fed up looking at stars.”
“I see,” Sheppard said glumly. He turned and went back down the stairs. He searched the house without finding Johnson. Then he went to the living room and sat down. Yesterday he had been convinced of his success with the boy. Today he faced the possibility that he was failing with him. He had been over-lenient, too concerned to have Johnson like him. He felt a twinge of guilt. What difference did it make if Johnson liked him or not? What was that to him? When the boy came in, they would have a few things understood. As long as you stay here there’ll be no going out at night by yourself, do you understand?
I don’t have to stay here. It ain’t nothing to me staying here.
Oh my God, he thought. He could not bring it to that. He would have to be firm but not make an issue of it. He picked up the evening paper. Kindness and patience were always called for but he had not been firm enough. He sat holding the paper but not reading it. The boy would not respect him unless he showed firmness. The doorbell rang and he went to answer it. He opened it and stepped back, with a pained disappointed face.
A large dour policeman stood on the stoop, holding Johnson by the elbow. At the curb a patrolcar waited. Johnson looked very white. His jaw was thrust forward as if to keep from trembling. “We brought him here first because he raised such a fit,” the policeman said, “but now that you’ve seen him, we’re going to take him to the station and ask him a few questions.”
“What happened?” Sheppard muttered.
“A house around the comer from here,” the policeman said. “A real smash job, dishes broken all over the floor, furniture turned upsidedown…”
“I didn’t have a thing to do with it!” Johnson said. “I was walking along minding my own bidnis when this cop came up and grabbed me.”
Sheppard looked at the boy grimly. He made no effort to soften his expression.
Johnson flushed. “I was just walking along,” he muttered, but with no conviction in his voice.
“Come on, bud,” the policeman said.
“You ain’t going to let him take me, are you?” Johnson said. “You believe me, don’t you?” There was an appeal in his voice that Sheppard had not heard there before.
This was crucial. The boy would have to learn that he could not be protected when he was guilty. “You’ll have to go with him, Rufus,” he said.
“You’re going to let him take me and I tell you I ain’t done a thing?” Johnson said shrilly.
Sheppard’s face became harder as his sense of injury grew. The boy had failed him even before he had had a chance to give him the shoe. They were to have got it tomorrow. All his regret turned suddenly on the shoe; his irritation at the sight of Johnson doubled.
“You made out like you had all this confidence in me,” the boy mumbled.
“I did have,” Sheppard said. His face was wooden.
Johnson turned away with the policeman but before he moved, a gleam of pure hatred Hashed toward Sheppard from the pits of his eyes.
Sheppard stood in the door and watched them get into the patrolcar and drive away. He summoned his compassion. He would go to the station tomorrow and see what he could do about getting him out of trouble. The night in jail would not hurt him and the experience would teach him that he could not treat with impunity someone who had shown him nothing but kindness. Then they would go get the shoe and perhaps after a night in jail it would mean even more to the boy.
The next morning at eight o’clock the police sergeant called and told him he could come pick Johnson up. “We booked a nigger on that charge,” he said. “Your boy didn’t have nothing to do with it.”
Sheppard was at the station in ten minutes, his face hot with shame. Johnson sat slouched on a bench in a drab outer office, reading a police magazine. There was no else in the room. Sheppard sat down beside him and put his hand tentatively on his shoulder.
The boy glanced up—his lip curled