The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [232]
Sheppard felt physically sick. The ugliness of what he had done bore in upon him with a sudden dull intensity. He had failed him at just the point where he might have turned him once and for all in the right direction. “Rufus,” he said, “I apologize. I was wrong and you were right. I misjudged you.”
The boy continued to read.
“I’m sorry.”
The boy wet his finger and turned a page.
Sheppard braced himself. “I was a fool, Rufus,” he said.
Johnson’s mouth slid slightly to the side. He shrugged without raising his head from the magazine.
“Will you forget it, this time?” Sheppard said. “It won’t happen again.”
The boy looked up. His eyes were bright and unfriendly.
“I’ll forget it,” he said, “but you better remember it.” He got up and stalked toward the door. In the middle of the room, he turned and jerked his arm at Sheppard and Sheppard jumped up and followed him as if the boy had yanked an invisible leash.
“Your shoe,” he said eagerly, “today’ is the day to get your shoe!” Thank God for the shoe!
But when they went to the brace shop, they found that the shoe had been made two sizes too small and a new one would not be ready for another ten days. Johnson’s temper improved at once. The clerk had obviously made a mistake in the measurements but the boy insisted the foot had grown. He left the shop with a pleased expression, as if, in expanding, the foot had acted on some inspiration of its own. Sheppard’s face was haggard.
After this he redoubled his efforts. Since Johnson had lost interest in the telescope, he bought a microscope and a box of prepared slides. If he couldn’t impress the boy with immensity, he would try the infinitesimal. For two nights Johnson appeared absorbed in the new instrument, then he abruptly lost interest in it, but he seemed content to sit in the living room in the evening and read the encyclopedia. He devoured the encyclopedia as he devoured his dinner, steadily and without dint to his appetite. Each subject appeared to enter his head, be ravaged, and thrown out. Nothing pleased Sheppard more than to see the boy slouched on the sofa, his mouth shut, reading. After they had spent two or three evenings like this, he began to recover his vision. His confidence returned. He knew that some day he would be proud of Johnson.
On Thursday night Sheppard attended a city council meeting. He dropped the boys off at a movie on his way and picked them up on his way back. When they reached home, an automobile with a single red eye above its windshield was waiting in front of the house. Sheppard’s lights as he turned into the driveway illuminated two dour faces in the car.
“The cops!” Johnson said. “Some nigger has broke in somewhere and they’ve come for me again.”
“We’ll see about that,” Sheppard muttered. He stopped the car in the driveway and switched off the lights. “You boys go in the house and go to bed:’ he said. “I’ll handle this.”
He got out and strode toward the squad car. He thrust his head in the window. The two policemen were looking at him with silent knowledgeable faces. “A house on the corner of Shelton and Mills,”the one in the driver’s seat said. “It looks like a train run through it.”
“He was in the picture show down town,” Sheppard said. “My boy was with him. He had nothing to do with the other one and he had nothing to do with this one. I’ll be responsible.”
“If I was you,” the one nearest him said, “I wouldn’t be responsible for any little bastard like him.”
“I said I’d be responsible,” Sheppard repeated coldly. “You people made a mistake the last time. Don’t make another.”
The policemen looked at each other. “It ain’t our funeral,” the one in the driver’s seat said, and turned the key in the ignition.
Sheppard went in the house and sat down in the living room in the dark. He did not suspect Johnson and he did not want the boy to think he did. If Johnson thought he suspected him again, he would lose everything. But he wanted to know if his alibi was airtight. He thought of going to Norton’s room and asking him if Johnson had left the movie. But that