The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [239]
“Here’s your boy,” the dourest of the policemen said. “Didn’t I tell you we’d get him?”
Johnson jerked his arm down savagely. ” I was waitin for you!” he said. “You wouldn’t have got me if I hadn’t of wanted to get caught. It was my idea.” He was addressing the policemen but leering at Sheppard.
Sheppard looked at him coldly.
“Why did you want to get caught?” the reporter asked, running around to get beside Johnson. “Why did you deliberately want to get caught?”
The question and the sight of Sheppard seemed to throw the boy into a fury. “To show up that big tin Jesus!” he hissed and kicked his leg out at Sheppard. “He thinks he’s God. I’d rather be in the reformatory than in his house, I’d rather be in the pen! The Devil has him in his power. He don’t know his left hand from his right, he don’t have as much sense as his crazy kid!” He paused and then swept on to his fantastic conclusion. “He made suggestions to me!”
Sheppard’s face blanched. He caught hold of the door facing.
“Suggestions?”the reporter said eagerly, “what kind of suggestions?”
“Immoral suggestions!” Johnson said. “What kind of suggestions do you think? But I ain’t having none of it, I’m a Christian, I’m…”
Sheppard’s face was tight with pain. “He knows that’s not true,” he said in a shaken voice. “He knows he’s lying. I did everything I knew how for him. I did more for him than I did for my own child. I hoped to save him and I failed, but it was an honorable failure. I have nothing to reproach myself with. I made no suggestions to him.”
“Do you remember the suggestions?”the reporter asked.
“Can you tell us exactly what he said?”
“He’s a dirty atheist,” Johnson said. “He said there wasn’t no hell.”
“Well, they seen each other now,” one of the policemen said with a knowing sigh. “Let’s us go.”
“Wait,” Sheppard said. He came down one step and fixed his eyes on Johnson’s eyes in a last desperate effort to save himself. “Tell the truth, Rufus,” he said. “You don’t want to perpetrate this lie. You’re not evil, you’re mortally confused. You don’t have to make up for that foot, you don’t have to…”
Johnson hurled himself forward. “Listen at him!” he screamed. “I lie and steal because I’m good at it! My foot don’t have a thing to do with it! The lame shall enter first! The halt’ll be gathered together. When I get ready to be saved, Jesus’ll save me, not that lying stinking atheist, not that…”
“That’ll be enough out of you,” the policeman said and yanked him back. ‘We just wanted you to see we got him,” he said to Sheppard, and the two of them turned around and dragged Johnson away, half turned and screaming back at Sheppard.
“The lame’ll carry off the prey!” he screeched, but his voice was muffed inside the car. The reporter scrambled into the front seat with the driver and slammed the door and the siren wailed into the darkness.
Sheppard remained there, bent slightly like a man who has been shot but continues to stand. After a minute he turned and went back in the house and sat down in the chair he had left. He closed his eyes on a picture of Johnson in a circle of reporters at the police station, elaborating his lies. “I have nothing to reproach myself with,” he murmured.
His every action had been selfless, his one aim had been to save Johnson for some decent kind of service, he had not spared himself, he had sacrificed his reputation, he had done more for Johnson than he had done for his own child. Foulness hung about him like an odor in the air, so close that it seemed to come from his own breath. “I have nothing to reproach myself with,” he repeated. His voice sounded dry and harsh. “I did more for him than I did for my own child.” He was swept with a sudden panic. He heard the boy’s jubilant voice. Satan has you in his power.
“I have nothing to reproach myself with,” he began again. “I did more for him than I did for my own child.” He heard his voice as if it were the voice of his accuser. He repeated the sentence silently.
Slowly his face drained of color. It became almost grey beneath the