The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [235]
Johnson was sitting on the sofa, gazing over the top of the encyclopedia. His expression was trancelike. He might have been listening to something far away. Sheppard watched him intently but the boy continued to listen, and did not turn his head. The poor kid is lost, Sheppard thought. Here he had sat all evening, sullenly reading the paper, and had not said a word to break the tension. “Rufus,” he said.
Johnson continued to sit, stock-still, listening.
“Rufus,” Sheppard said in a slow hypnotic voice, “you can be anything in the world you want to be. You can be a scientist or an architect or an engineer or whatever you set your mind to, and whatever you set your mind to be, you can be the best of its kind.” He imagined his voice penetrating to the boy in the black caverns of his psyche. Johnson leaned forward but his eyes did not turn. On the street a car door closed. There was a silence. Then a sudden blast from the door bell.
Sheppard jumped up and went to the door and opened it. The same policeman who had come before stood there.
The patrol car waited at the curb.
“Lemme see that boy,” he said.
Sheppard scowled and stood aside. “He’s been here all evening,” he said. “I can vouch for it.”
The policeman walked into the living room. Johnson appeared engrossed in his book. After a second he looked up with an annoyed expression, like a great man interrupted at his work.
“What was that you were looking at in that kitchen window over on Winter Avenue about a half hour ago, bud?” the policeman asked.
“Stop persecuting this boy!” Sheppard said. “I’ll vouch for the fact he was here. I was here with him.”
“You heard him,” Johnson said. “I been here all the time.”
“It ain’t everybody makes tracks like you,” the policeman said and eyed the clubfoot.
“They couldn’t be his tracks,” Sheppard growled, infuriated. “He’s been here all the time. You’re wasting your own time and you’re wasting ours.” He felt the ours seal his solidarity with the boy. “I’m sick of this,” he said. “You people are too damn lazy to go out and find whoever is doing these things. You come here automatically.”
The policeman ignored this and continued looking through Johnson. His eyes were small and alert in his fleshy face. Finally he turned toward the door. ‘Well get him sooner or later,” he said, “with his head in a window and his tail out.”
Sheppard followed him to the door and slammed it behind him. His spirits were soaring. This was exactly what he had needed. He returned with an expectant face.
Johnson had put the book down and was sitting there, looking at him slyly. “Thanks,” he said.
Sheppard stopped. The boy’s expression was predatory. He was openly leering.
“You ain’t such a bad liar yourself,” he said.
“Liar?” Sheppard murmured. Could the boy have left and come back? He felt himself sicken. Then a rush of anger sent him forward. “Did you leave?” he said furiously. “I didn’t see you leave.”
The boy only smiled.
“You went up in the attic to see Norton,” Sheppard said.
“Naw,” Johnson said, “that kid is crazy. He don’t want to do nothing but look through that stinking telescope.”
“I don’t want to hear about Norton,” Sheppard said harshly. “Where were you?”
“I was sitting on that pink can by my own self,” Johnson said. “There wasn’t no witnesses.”
Sheppard took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He managed to smile.
Johnson rolled his eyes. “You don’t believe in me,” he said. His voice was cracked the way it had been in the dark room two nights before. “You make out like you got all this confidence in me but you ain’t got any. When things get hot, you’ll fade like the rest of them.” The crack became exaggerated, comic. The mockery in it was blatant. “You don’t believe in me. You ain’t got no confidence,” he wailed. “And you ain’t any smarter than that cop. All that about tracks that was a trap. There wasn’t any tracks. That whole place is concreted in the back and my feet were dry.”
Sheppard