The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [73]
It all happened in a second. The three of them reached Baby at the same time. She lay crumpled down on the dirty sidewalk.
Her skirt was over her head, showing her pink panties and her little white legs. Her hands were open--in one there was the prize from the candy and in the other the pocketbook. There was blood all over her hair ribbon and the top of her yellow curls. She was shot in the head and her face was turned down toward the ground.
So much happened in a second. Bubber screamed and dropped the gun and ran. She stood with her hands up to her face and screamed too. Then there were many people. Her Dad was the first to get there. He carried Baby into the house.
‘She’s dead,’ said Spareribs. ‘She’s shot through the eyes. I seen her face.’
Mick walked up and down the sidewalk, and her tongue stuck in her mouth when she tried to ask was Baby killed. Mrs.
Wilson came running down the block from the beauty parlor where she worked. She went into the house and came back out again. She walked up and down in the street, crying and pulling a ring on and off her finger. Then the ambulance came and the doctor went in to Baby. Mick followed him. Baby was lying on the bed in the front room. The house was quiet as a church.
Baby looked like a pretty little doll on the bed. Except for the blood she did not seem hurt. The doctor bent over and looked at her head. After he finished they took Baby out on a stretcher. Mrs. Wilson and her Dad got into the ambulance with her.
The house was still quiet. Everybody had forgotten about Bubber. He was nowhere around. An hour passed. Her Mama and Hazel and Etta and all the boarders waited in the front room. Mister Singer stood in the doorway.
After a long time her Dad came home. He said Baby wouldn’t die but that her skull was fractured. He asked for Bubber.
Nobody knew where he was. It was dark outside. They called Bubber in the back yard and in the street. They sent Spareribs and some other boys out to hunt for him. It looked like Bubber had gone clear out of the neighborhood. Harry went around to a house where they thought he might be.
Her Dad walked up and down the front porch. ‘I never have whipped any of my kids yet,’ he kept saying. ‘I never believed in it. But I’m sure going to lay it onto that kid as soon as I get my hands on him.’
Mick sat on the banisters and watched down the dark street. ‘I can manage Bubber. Once he comes back I can take care of him all right.’
‘You go out and hunt for him. You can find him better than anybody else.’
As soon as her Dad said that she suddenly knew where Bubber was. In the back yard there was a big oak and in the summer they had built a tree house. They had hauled a big box up in this oak, and Bubber used to love to sit up in the tree house by himself. Mick left the family and the boarders on the front porch and walked back through the alley of the dark yard.
She stood for a minute by the trunk of the tree. ‘Bubber--,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s Mick.’
He didn’t answer, but she knew he was there. It was like she could smell him. She swung up on the lowest branch and climbed slowly. She was really mad with that kid and would have to teach him a lesson. When she reached the tree house she spoke to him again--and still there wasn’t any answer. She climbed into the big box and felt around the edges. At last she touched him. He was scrounged up in a corner and his legs were trembling. He had been holding his breath, and when she touched him the sobs and the breath came out all at once.
‘I-I didn’t mean Baby to fall. She was just so little and cute--seemed to me like I just had to take a pop at her.’
Mick sat down on the floor of the tree house. ‘Baby’s dead,’ she said. ‘They got a lot of people hunting for you.’
Bubber quit crying. He was very quiet.
‘You know what Dad’s doing in the house?’ It was like she could hear Bubber listening.
‘You know Warden Lawes--you heard him over the radio.
And you know Sing Sing. Well, our Dad’s writing a letter to Warden