BOOK ONE

DREAD

Dread is an alien power which lays hold of an individual, and yet one cannot tear oneself away, nor has a will to do so; for one fears what one desires.

—KIERKEGAARD

FROM AN INVISIBLE February sky a shimmering curtain of snowflakes fluttered down upon Chicago. It was five o’clock in the morning and still dark. On a South Side street four masculine figures moved slowly forward shoulder to shoulder and the sound of their feet tramping and sloshing in the melting snow echoed loudly. The men were warmly dressed and wore mufflers about their throats. The brims of their hats, encrusted with snow, were pulled down at rakish tilts over their eyes. Behind turned-up overcoat collars their gruff voices exploded in jokes, laughter, and shouts. They jostled one another with rude affection and their hot breaths projected gusts of vapor on to the chilled morning air. One of the men threw out an arm and grabbed a companion about the neck and crooned:

“Booker, let me rest this tired old body on you, hunh?”

“Hell, naw! Stand on your own two big flat feet, Cross!” Booker, a short, black man protested with a laugh.

The man called Cross turned and flung his arm about the shoulders of a big, fat, black man and said, “Then how about you, Joe?”

“Look, Crossy, I’m tired too,” Joe defended himself, shying off. “Why pick on me?”

“’Cause you’re soft as a mattress and can stand it,” Cross explained.

“If you’re cold, it’s your own damn hard luck,” Joe said. “You don’t take care of yourself. Me, I ain’t never cold. I know how come you’re always so cold, Cross. You drink too much. Don’t eat enough. Don’t sleep. But, me… Ha-ha! I eat and sleep as much as I can. And my good old fat helps to keep me warm. Ain’t that right, Pink?”

The man called Pink did not reply at once; he was reddish in color and older than the other three.

“Cross,” Pink said seriously, “you ought to take some vitamins or something. Man, you couldn’t be cold now. Hell, we just left that steamy Post Office twenty minutes ago.”

Cross swiftly pulled the glove off his right hand and, grabbing Pink’s shoulder, rammed his bare fingers down the collar of Pink’s neck.

“How do they feel, Pink?” Cross demanded.

“Jeeesus! Your fingers’re cold as snakes!” Pink gasped, his eyes lit with concern. “They ought to call you Mr. Death!”

“I just need some alcohol,” Cross confessed grimly. “My old engine won’t run without it.”

“You better quit that bottle, Cross,” Joe, the big, fat, black man warned. “When you start living on alcohol, you’re traveling a road that ain’t got no turning. You been hitting that bottle heavy for a month now. Better let up, boy.”

“Man, whiskey ain’t never hurt nobody,” Pink said; he broke into song:

If the ocean was whiskey

And I was a duck

I’d dive right in

And never come up

A rich, rolling laughter erupted and died away over the snow-blanketed sidewalks.

“Crossy, how come you’re drinking so much these days?” Booker asked in a tone free of moral objections.

“My soul needs it,” Cross mumbled.

“Makes you feel better, hunh?” Booker asked.

“No. Makes me feel less,” Cross corrected him.

“But how about your liver?” Joe demanded.

“My liver’s in the death house,” Cross admitted.

“Say, Pinkie, remember when Crossy used to be the life of the gang?” Joe asked. “Now he just swills and every word he says is a gripe.”

“We all have blue days,” Pink said.

“Pink has blue days,” Cross’s tongue played softly with the words.

They tossed wild laughter amidst the milling flakes of snow. All of them laughed except Cross whose lips shaped themselves into an ambiguous smile whose meaning might have been a jeering at or a participation in the merriment. He was tall but slightly built with a smooth, brown and yellow skin, and his body moved as though it had more nervous energy than it could contain.

“Aw, leave Cross alone,” Pink said.

“Thanks, pal,” Cross muttered.

Joe suddenly paused amid the flakes of dancing snow, laughing hysterically, slapping his thighs, sending blasts of steam on to the frigid air. The sheen of a street lamp sharply etched his ebony face.

“What’s the matter, Joe?” Booker asked.

“Oh, God,” Joe gasped, his fat cheeks trembling and tears gleaming at the corners of his eyes.

“All right; share the damn joke,” Pink said.

The three men confronted Joe and waited for his mirth to subside.

“Today I heard somebody say the damndest thing about Cross—” Joe went off into another spasm of mirth, bending over, coughing, spluttering, sending tiny flecks of spittle into the run-away snowflakes. Joe finally straightened and placed a brotherly hand upon Cross’s shoulder. “Now, listen, if I tell what I heard, you won’t be mad, will you?”

“I don’t give a damn what you heard,” Cross muttered.

Tiny crystals trembled whitely between their dark faces. The shoulders of their overcoats were laced with icy filigrees; dapples of moisture glowed diamondlike on their eyebrows where the heat of their blood was melting the snow.

“Well, spill it, man,” Pink urged impatiently.

Joe sobered only to give way to so much laughter that Pink and Booker joined in and laughed so infectiously that even Cross surrendered to the contagion and chuckled.

“Somebody said,” Joe began, “that Cross was trying to imitate the United States’ Government. They said the trouble with Cross was his four A’s. Alcohol. Abortions. Automobiles. And alimony.” Joe laughed so violently that his eyes were buried in fat and the pearly gleam of his white teeth vied with the translucence of the snow. Jerking out his words, he continued: “They called C-cross the Q-q-quadruple-A Program! Said that the best thing for Cross w-was to plow h-himself under…”

Cross stood aloof as the others bent double with their giggles. Cross did not resent what had been said; it was as though they were laughing at the foibles of an absent man who was well-known to him. He smiled, admitting to himself that the analogy was not badly put, that it fitted the snarled facts of his life pretty aptly, and that he could not have summed up his situation any better himself. The more Pink, Joe, and Booker guffawed, the longer Cross retained his nervous, ambiguous smile. Finally the laughter died and Joe, putting his arm about Cross’s shoulder, promised consolingly: “Goddammit, Crossy, I’m gonna buy you a drink. Hell, I’m gonna buy you two damn drinks. You need ’em.”

Still chuckling, they trudged on through the snow to a corner tavern whose neon sign dimly identified it as: THE SALTY DOG. They pushed through the door and went in. Cross followed solemnly, his hands dug into his overcoat pockets, a cigarette stub glowing in his lips. He sat with the others in a booth and looked at them with quiet eyes and an enigmatic smile. A short, fat, brown proprietor with a bald head and a grey goatee called to them from behind the bar: “Same old thing, boys?”

“Same old thing, Doc,” Joe and Pink chorused.

“Crossy, what’s the trouble?” Booker asked softly.

“You know what’s wrong with ’im,” Joe insisted. “His Quadruple-A Program’s got ’im down.”

They laughed again. Doc sat four whiskies before them and, at the sight of the little glasses of pale brown fluid, they grew sober, almost dignified; each took up his glass daintily and threw back his head and tossed the liquor down his throat.

“One of these days, Doc,” Cross said, sighing and smacking his lips, “we’re going to fool you. We’re going to swallow the glasses too.”

“Atta boy!” Joe approved.

“The spirit moved ’im at last,” Booker commented.

“Crossy,” Joe said, “you’re losing your touch. Remember the time you used to pull them crazy stunts?” Joe turned to the others for confirmation. “When Cross first came to work in the Post Office, he was a nonstop riot, a real killer-diller. Early in the evening, when the rush hour was on, he used to—we were working on the 11th floor then—lift up the window, run his hand in his pocket and toss out every cent of silver he had. Just throw it all out of the window to the street. And then he’d lean out and watch the commotion of all them little antlike folks down there going wild, scrambling and scratching and clawing after them few pieces of money and then, when the money was all gone, they’d stand looking up to the window of the 11th floor with their mouths hanging open like fishes out of water. And Cross’d be laughing to beat all hell. And Cross’d say that them folks was praying when their faces were turned up like that, waiting for more money to fall. Ha-ha!

“Remember when two men jumped at the same time for the same quarter that Cross had tossed out? They dived toward each other and they butted head on and knocked each other out, cold? They just lay there, like a truck had hit ’em, and all the other folks crowded round, looking and wondering what had happened. They had to send the riot cars full of cops to break up the mob and take the two dopes who had been diving for the quarter to jail. Ha-ha! Honest to God, I thought I’d die laughing. Cross said that that was the only time he ever felt like God. Ha-ha!”

They laughed musingly, their eyes resting on Cross’s face which carried a detached smile.

“Remember that wild gag he pulled at Christmas time in 19—?” Joe frowned thoughtfully and the others waited. “When the hell was that now? Oh, yes! It was in 1945. I’ll never forget it. Cross bought a batch of magazines, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Collier’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and clipped out those ads that say you can send your friends a year’s subscription as a Christmas gift. Well, Cross signed ’em and sent ’em to his friends. But he didn’t sign ’em with his name, see? He signed ’em with the names of friends of people he was sending the subscriptions to. He sent me one and it was signed by my wife. Ha-ha! Was she mad? But in the end, she really paid for it. Crossy sent one to James Harden and signed it with my name. Ha-ha! Christmas morning Harden calls me up and starts thanking me for the gift-subscription I’d sent ’im to Harper’s. I didn’t know what the hell Harden was talking about, and I was so ’shamed I sat right down and sent Harper’s a check! Man, the whole South Side was in a dither that Christmas morning. Folks was thanking other folks for presents the others didn’t know nothing about. And Crossy was listening and watching and saying nothing. Lord, it was a mess! Cross, how in God’s name did you dream up such stuff? Any man who can do things like that is a man standing outside of the world! Know what I mean? Like somebody outside of your window was looking into your house and poking out his tongue at you.” Joe went into a gale of laughter; then he pointed to Cross’s smiling face. “Look at ’im, will you? He sits there, smiling, not saying a word, not letting on he used to pull stunts like that.”

They laughed, looking at Cross with tenderness in their eyes.

“Say, remember all them big, deep books he used to read and tell us about?” Joe asked looking from Cross to the others. “He used to use so many big words I thought he’d choke! Every time I saw ’im, he had a batch of books under his arm.”

“But what I couldn’t understand,” Pink recalled, “was why Cross wouldn’t believe anything in the books he read. One time he was all hepped-up over one writer and the next time he was through with ’im and was gone on to another.”

“And the books in Cross’s room!” Booker exclaimed. “I went to see ’im one day when he was sick, and I could hardly get into the door! Big books, little books, books piled everywhere! He even had books in bed with ’im.”

Their heads tilted back with laughter; Cross smiled without rancor.

“I told ’im,” Booker continued, “‘Crossy, you better find a gal to sleep with you, ’cause them books can’t keep you warm!’ Man, in the clothes closet: books. In the bathroom: books. Under the bed: books. I said, ‘Crossy, you ain’t got no ’flu germs; you got bookworms!’”

They clapped their hands with laughter; Cross smiled and looked off.

“Cross, you ain’t never said how come you was reading all them books,” Joe pointed out.

“I was looking for something,” Cross said quietly.

“What?” Pink asked.

“I don’t know,” Cross confessed gloomily.

“Did you find it?” Joe asked.

“No.”

Joe, Pink, and Booker howled with delight.

“In those days Cross’s mind was like a little mouse, running every which way—Say, Cross, how many books you got in your room?”

“I don’t know,” Cross mumbled.

“I wished I had a dollar for every book you got,” Joe sighed. “Now, honest, Crossy, how come you don’t read no more?”

“I’ve put away childish things,” Cross said.

“Aw, be yourself, man,” Booker said.

“I am what I am,” Cross said. “I’m sparing you guys a lot. I’m not going to bother you with my troubles.”

“Can’t we help you any, Cross?” Joe asked seriously.

“Lay off, guys,” Cross said, frowning for the first time. “I’m all right.” He turned and beckoned to Doc. “Bring me a bottle, Doc!”

“Don’t drink any more, Cross,” Pink begged.

“Ain’t you gonna eat some breakfast?” Booker asked.

“Whiskey ain’t no good on an empty stomach,” Joe reminded him.

“It’s my stomach,” Cross said.

“Aw, leave ’im alone,” Booker said.

“But a man who drinks ought to eat,” Joe insisted.

“Eating’s all you think about, Joe,” Cross growled.

“Hell, you got to eat to live!” Joe shouted with authoritative rudeness. “And you better stop drinking and eat and sleep some.” Joe suddenly laughed and began a game of make-believe, imitating a baby’s crying: “Aww-www—Awwww—Awwww—!” He altered his tone. “Now, what the little baby wants?” He bawled out the answer: “The bottle, the bottle, the whiskey bottle, Mama!”

Laughter seethed and Cross joined in to show his appreciation.

“Leave ’im alone,” Booker said. “He knows his own mind.”

“If he keeps up that drinking, he won’t have no mind left,” Joe said emphatically. “And it’ll kill ’im.”

“All right,” Cross said darkly. “Do I want to live forever?”

“You’re nuts,” Joe said.

“It pleases me,” Cross said without anger.

“Okay,” Joe said.

“Sure; it’s okay,” Cross said, opening the bottle and taking a long swig.

“Wheeew,” Joe whistled. “You can’t drink like that, boy!”

“I am,” Cross said calmly.

“You gonna finish that bottle today?” Booker asked softly.

“Maybe. How do I know?”

“Ain’t you gonna sleep?”

“If I can.”

“‘If I can’,” jeered Joe. “Stop drinking and you can sleep.”

“I wouldn’t sleep at all then,” Cross said.

“What’s eating you, Cross?” Pink implored softly. “We’ve been your friends for six years. Spill it. We’ll help you—”

“Skip it,” Cross said. “Am I complaining? You signed for my last loan and that took care of my Quadruple-A debts. That’s enough.”

They laughed at how Cross could laugh at himself.

“There’re some things a man must do alone,” Cross added.

The three men looked silently at Cross. He knew that they liked him, but he felt that they were outside of his life, that there was nothing that they could do that would make any difference. Now more than ever he knew that he was alone and that his problem was one of a relationship of himself to himself.

“We ain’t your mama and your papa,” Joe sighed, forcing a sad smile. “We can’t hold your hand, Big Boy. And you’re a big boy, you know.”

“Yes, I’m a big boy,” Cross smiled bitterly.

“It’s between you and Your Maker, your problem,” Joe said.

“Lucky Joe,” Cross murmured in a tone of envy.

“What do you mean?” Joe asked.

Cross rose, smiled widely for the first time, pointed his finger into Joe’s fat, black, round face, and intoned: “‘And God made man in His own image…’”

Pink and Booker yelled with laughter. Joe passed his hand caressingly and self-consciously over his black face and looked puzzled. Cross demanded in a mockingly serious voice: “Did God really make that face? Is He guilty of that? If He did, then He was walking in His sleep!” Cross shook with laughter. “To blame God for making Joe is to degrade the very concept of God!”

Pink and Booker leaped to their feet and grabbed Joe about the waist.

“Did God really make you, Joe?” Pink demanded.

“Was God absent-minded when He cooked you up, Joe?” Booker asked.

Joe forced a smile, but underneath he was a little disturbed. Then he protested: “God made me, all right. He made my soul and He made my body too.”

“But why did He make your body so fat, Joe?” Cross asked.

“I just ate too much and got fat,” Joe replied sheepishly.

“But God gave you your appetite,” Pink told him.

“And the body reflects the soul,” Cross clenched it.

“Wow!” Pink screamed, covering his mouth with his hand. “I’m going home ’fore I laugh myself to death!”

They all rose except Cross; he still sat and smiled up at Joe.

“Go home and get some shut-eye, Cross,” Joe advised him.

“God won’t let me sleep,” Cross said.

“God ain’t got nothing to do with it!” Joe pronounced.

“Then who keeps me awake all day long?” Cross wanted to know.

“You, yourself,” Joe said.

“Maybe you’re right,” Cross conceded.

“So long,” Pink said.

“See you, Crossy,” Joe said.

“’Bye, now,” Booker said.

“So long,” Cross mumbled, not looking at them as they filed out.

“Some guys,” Doc said from behind the bar.

“Yeah; some guys,” Cross repeated, staring at the floor.

Yeah; it was time to sleep. He felt dead. How long could he last like this? His eyes suddenly clouded with displeasure. He had promised to see Dot this morning, but he didn’t want to talk to her, much less see her…That was all he needed: seeing Dot and having one of those long, hysterical, weeping arguments. He knew what Dot wanted to ask and the answer was no and it would always be no! Oh, damn that Dot! But if he didn’t call her, she’d soon be coming to his room and they’d argue all day long. And that was the last thing he wanted. Yes; he’d better call her; he’d tell her he was sick, feeling too bad to see her. He rose, jammed the whiskey bottle into his overcoat pocket, went into the telephone booth, dropped a coin into the slot and dialed. Almost at once Dot’s voice sang over the wire: “How are you, darling?”

She was waiting in the hallway by the phone, he thought.

“I feel like hell,” he growled.

“Have you eaten breakfast?”

“Naw; I just left the Post Office—”

“But honey, you got off from work at four o’clock and now it’s nearly six. You’ve had plenty of time to eat.”

“I was in a bar,” he told her.

“Oh, God, Cross! You must stop drinking!”

“Do you think I can with what I’ve got on my mind?”

“Come over right now, hunh? I’ll cook your breakfast—”

“Naw.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You’re mean! And you promised you’d see me this morning—”

“But I don’t feel like it. I’m exhausted.”

“You mean you’re too drunk!” she said savagely.

“So?”

“Oh, God, Cross! Why did I ever get mixed up with you?”

“I’ve told you how to get unmixed with me, haven’t I?”

“Don’t you say that to me again!”

“I am saying it!”

“Listen, come here now! I want to talk to you!”

“I’m tired, I tell you!”

“I don’t care! You come over now!”

“You’re crazy, Dot! Do you think you can make people do things they don’t want to do?” he asked her earnestly.

He heard her suck in her breath and when her voice came over the wire again it was so shrill that he had to hold the receiver away from his ear.

“If you don’t see me this morning, you’ll be sorry! You hear? Whatever happens’ll be your fault! You can’t treat me this way! I won’t let you! You hear? I said I won’t let you! You made me a promise and I want you to keep it! Now, come over here. I’ve got something to tell you—”

“Dot—”

“No; no; let me talk—”

“Listen, Dot—”

“I said let me talk!”

“Oh, Goddammit, Dot!”

“Don’t cuss me! Oh, God, don’t cuss me when I’m like this! Can’t you understand? Have a little pity—” Her voice caught in her throat. “I’ll kill myself—”

“Dot—Don’t go on like that—”

“You don’t think I’ll kill myself, but I will—”

“You’re crazy!”

“I’ll get you for that!” she shouted. “I will!”

“If you keep shouting at me, I’ll hang up!”

“I will shout at you!”

He hesitated, then slammed the receiver on to the hook. Damn her! He was trembling. He’d not wanted to call her because he’d known that it’d go like this and he’d be unnerved for the rest of the day. He fumbled for the bottle and took a deep swallow. Yes; he had to get some sleep or go mad. He went out of the telephone booth and waved good-bye to Doc and kept on out of the door and walked along the snow-piled sidewalks. He caught a trolley and rode standing on the platform, swaying as much from the rocking of the car as from the influence of alcohol. He alighted in front of his apartment building, groped for his key, and let himself in. Fifteen minutes later he was undressed and in bed. He was so tired that he could scarcely feel the sensations of his body and he could not relax. He stared wakefully in the semi-darkness and wondered what he could do about Dot…

What a messy life he was living! It was crazy; it was killing him; it was senseless; and he was a fool to go on living it. What a stinking botch he’d made out of everything he had touched! Why? He didn’t know. I could be teaching school, he told himself. He’d dropped out of the university right after he’d married Gladys and after that nothing had gone right.

He lay still, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly before him, and drifted into dreams of his problems, compulsively living out dialogues, summing up emotional scenes with his mother, reliving the reactions of his wife, Dot, and his friends. Repeatedly he chided himself to go to sleep, but it did no good, for he was hungry for these waking visions that depicted his dilemmas, yet he knew that such brooding did not help; in fact, he was wasting his waning strength, for into these unreal dramas he was putting the whole of his ardent being. The long hours of the day dragged on.

He twisted on his crumpled bed, reshaped his lumpy pillow until his head nestled into it exactly right; and, for the hundredth time, he closed his eyes and lay still, trying to purge his mind of anxiety, beseeching sleep. He felt his numbed limbs slowly shedding tension and for a moment he floated toward a world of dreams, seesawing softly between sleeping and waking. Then, convulsively, his entire body jerked rigidly to stem a fearful feeling of falling through space. His rebellious nerves twanged with a terror that his mind sought desperately to deny. He shook his head, his body seething with hate against himself and the world.

He checked his watch: two o’clock. A grey day showed through the curtained window and from the snowy street rose the din of traffic. Today was like yesterday and he knew that tomorrow would be the same. And it had been like this now for many months. Each morning he’d come from work and crawl wearily into bed and toss for hours, yearning for the mercy of a sleep that was not his and at last he realized that his search for surcease was hopeless. He sighed, stood, crossed to the dresser and took another pull from the bottle. At six o’clock he’d report to work and for eight long hours he’d sway upon his feet, drugged with fatigue, straining against collapse, sorting mail like a sleepwalker. He moistened his lips with his tongue. He had not eaten all day and, as the alcohol deadened the raw nerves of his twitching stomach, he thought: I’ll do it now; I’ll end this farce…He hunched determinedly forward and his crinkled pyjamas bagged about his gaunt body and the muscles of his neck bulged. He’d not crawl like a coward through stupid days; to act quickly was the simplest way of jumping through a jungle of problems that plagued him from within and from without. A momentary dizziness swamped him; his throat tightened; his vision blurred; his chest heaved and he was defenseless against despair. He sprang to the dresser and yanked open a drawer and pulled forth his gun. Trembling, feeling the cold blue steel touching his sweaty palm, he lifted the glinting barrel to his right temple, then paused. His feelings were like tumbling dice…He wilted, cursed, his breath expiring through parted lips. Choked with self-hate, he flung himself on the bed and buried his face in his hands.

Broken thus in will, he relaxed for the first time in weeks; he could rest only when he was too drained of energy to fret further. At length he lifted his head and the fingers of his right hand pressed nervously against his lower lip, then tapped his knee as though to still the writhing of his spirit. He was despairingly aware of his body as an alien and despised object over which he had no power, a burden that was always cheating him of the fruits of his thought, mocking him with its stubborn and supine solidity.

Claimed at last by the needs of the hour, he proceeded to bathe and dress. Again he drank from the bottle and was grateful for the sense of depression caused by the alcohol which made him feel less of pleasure, pain, anxiety, and hope. Could he get through the night without collapsing? Suddenly he was filled with an idea: He would take the gun with him! And if the pressure from within or without became too great he would use it; his gun would be his final protection against the world as well as against himself…And if he was ever so unlucky as to be found sprawled from nervous collapse upon some frozen sidewalk or upon the floor of the Post Office, it would be manfully better to let others see a bloody hole gaping in his temple than to present to the eyes of strangers a mass of black flesh stricken by stupor. His decision renewed his courage; if he had not thought of the gun, he doubted if he could have gone to work.

He pulled on his overcoat and stood hesitantly by the door; he knew now that even the gun sagging in his pocket did not convince him that he was fit to work. During the past month he had been absent so often on excuses of illness that he did not dare telephone and report himself on the sick list. He would master his tricky sensations; he would force himself to carry on till he dropped. He usually found that he did not really collapse even when he had the consciousness of being about to pitch forward on his face…

He yearned to talk to someone; he felt his mere telling his story would have helped. But to whom could he talk? To his mother? No; she would only assure him that he was reaping the wages of sin and his sense of dread would deepen. Could he talk to his wife with whom he was not living? God, no! She’d laugh bitterly and say, “I told you so!” There was Dot, his sweetheart, but she was not capable of understanding anything. Moreover, she was partly the cause of his present state. And there was not a single man to whom he cared to confess the nightmare that was his life. He had sharp need of a confidant, and yet he knew that if he had had an ideal confidant before whom he could lay his whole story, he would have instantly regretted it, would have murdered his confidant the moment after he had confided to him his shame. How could he have gone on living knowing that someone else knew how things were with him? Cross was proud.

His hand touched the doorknob and the telephone shrilled. Now, who in hell could that be? Was it Dot? Or Gladys? He turned the doorknob and the telephone rang again. Hell! Anger flashed through him at some vague someone who was trying to snatch him from his futile wrestling with his problem, trying to pry him loose from the only thing that made his life possess meaning even though it made him suffer. Impatiently he picked up the receiver.

“Cross? Is that you?” It was his mother’s quavering, high-pitched voice singing uncertainly over the wire.

“How are you, Ma?”

“Fine, Cross, I reckon,” she said querulously, like those who are over sixty and who feel uncommonly well but are too superstitious to admit it. “Can I see you, Cross? Sometime today…?”

He bridled, trying to slap away the clutch of his mother’s wrinkled hand as it reached invisibly for him.

“Anything wrong, Ma?”

“I want to see you,” she said, evading his question.

His teeth clamped; he did not want to see her, certainly not now with this mood of bleak dread in him.

“Ma, I’m trying to sleep,” he lied, speaking reprovingly.

Silence. He felt he had hurt her and he grew angry. He waited for her to speak further, but only the metallic hum of the line came to his ear.

“Ma,” he called softly. “You’re still there?”

“Yes, Cross.” A note of firm patience in her voice frightened him.

“What is it, Ma? I work nights and I’ve got to get some rest.”

Again silence.

“Is it about money?” he asked, trying to hasten it.

Another silence; then his mother’s voice came clearly: “Cross, that Dot girl was just by here to see me…”

Her tone, charged and precise, was filled with a multitude of accusations that evoked a vast, hot void in him. His mother was still talking, but he did not hear her. His eyes darted like those of a bayed animal. Oh, God! Why had Dot done that? He had not kept his promise to see her this morning and she had gotten into a panic; that was it. But she had sworn to consult him before acting on her own, and now…His life was a delicate bridge spanning a gaping chasm and hostile hands were heaping heavy loads upon that bridge and it was about to crack and crash downward.

“What did you say, Ma?” He pretended that he had not heard.

How much did she know? Perhaps everything! That crazy Dot! He could wring her neck for this! She had no right to tell tales to his mother! Women had no sense of…

“You know what I’m talking about, boy,” his mother scolded him sternly. “That girl’s in trouble—”

“Who are you talking about, Ma?” He still stalled for time.

“Stop acting foolish, Cross! That girl’s blaming you—”

“Blaming me for what?” he asked. He knew that he was acting silly, but he could not easily change his attitude now.

“She’s in a family way, Cross,” his mother spoke boldly, a woman lodging woman’s ancient complaint against man. “And she says it’s you! She’s worried sick. She had to talk to somebody, so she came to me. Son, what have you done?” There came the sound of a sob being choked back. “You’re married. You’ve three children. What’re you going to do?”

“Just a sec. Somebody’s at the door,” he lied for respite.

Like always, he had doubled his burdens; he heard his mother’s tirades and at the same time he pretended that he was not reacting to them, and this dual set of responses made him frantic. That harebrained Dot! Trying to save herself and ruining me, the only one who can save her…Dot’s panic had made her deal him a dirty blow. He brought the receiver to his mouth.

“Is she still there, Ma?” His tone of voice confessed that he now knew what it was all about.

“Hunh? No; she’s gone,” his mother said. “She’s gone to see Gladys…Cross, that girl’s young, a child. She can get you into serious trouble…”

Dot was talking to his wife! This was the end! The void in him grew hotter. A widening circle of people were becoming acquainted with his difficulties. He knew that Gladys would do her damndest now; she would be merciless. Her knowing about Dot would redouble her hate for him. She would bare the details of his private blunderings before the domestic courts…He had to try to stop her. But could he? Maybe it was already too late?

“I’ll be right over,” he said, hanging up abruptly.

He took another drink and went out of the door. As he descended the stairs, his mother’s scolding intensified his mood of self-loathing, a mood that had been his longer than he could recall, a mood that had been growing deeper with the increasing complexity of the events of his life. He knew himself too well not to realize the meaning of what he was feeling; yet his self-knowledge, born of a habit of incessant reflection, did not enable him to escape the morass in which his feelings were bogged. His insight merely augmented his emotional conflicts. He was aware, intimately and bitterly, that his dread had been his mother’s first fateful gift to him. He had been born of her not only physically but emotionally too. The only psychological difference between them was that he was aware of having received this dark gift from her at a time when he was too young to reject it, and she had given it to him in a period of her life when her intense grief over the death of her husband had rendered her incapable of realizing the full import of what she had been doing. And he could never speak to her about this difference in emotional similarity; he could only pretend that it did not exist, for not only did his deep love of her forbid it, but he did not possess enough emotional detachment from her for that to happen. As her son, he was much too far from her and at the same time much too close, much too warm toward her and much too cold. To keep her life from crushing his own, he had slain the sense of her in his heart and at the same time had clung frantically to his memory of that sense. His feelings for her were widely distant: flight and embrace…

From the vestibule he stepped into a frozen world lit by a lemon-colored sun whose glare sparkled on mounds of ice. The snow had stopped and the sky stretched pale and blue; the air was dry and bitter cold. The sun disclosed in sharp detail the red brick buildings, glinted on the slow moving trolleys, and cast into the windowpanes liquid reflections that stung his eyes. His shoulders hunched forward and he shivered and clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering, his breath steaming against the freezing air.

He was conscious of himself as a frail object which had to protect itself against a pending threat of annihilation. This frigid world was suggestively like the one which his mother, without her having known it, had created for him to live in when he had been a child. Though she had loved him, she had tainted his budding feelings with a fierce devotion born of her fear of a life that had baffled and wounded her. His first coherent memories had condensed themselves into an image of a young woman whose hysterically loving presence had made his imagination conscious of an invisible God—Whose secret grace granted him life—hovering oppressively in space above him. His adolescent fantasies had symbolically telescoped this God into an awful face shaped in the form of a huge and crushing NO, a terrifying face which had, for a reason he could never learn, created him, had given him a part of Himself, and yet had threateningly demanded that he vigilantly deny another part of himself which He too had paradoxically given him. This God’s NO-FACE had evoked in his pliable boy’s body an aching sense of pleasure by admonishing him to shun pleasure as the tempting doorway opening blackly on to hell; had too early awakened in him a sharp sense of sex by thunderingly denouncing sex as the sin leading to eternal damnation; had posited in him an unbridled hunger for the sensual by branding all sensuality as the monstrous death from which there was no resurrection; had made him instinctively choose to love himself over and against all others because he felt himself menaced by a mysterious God Whose love seemed somehow like hate. Mother love had cleaved him in twain: a wayward sensibility that distrusted itself, a consciousness that was conscious of itself. Despite this, his sensibilities had not been repressed by God’s fearful negations as represented by his mother; indeed, his sense of life had been so heightened that desire boiled in him to a degree that made him afraid. Afraid of what? Nothing exactly, precisely…And this constituted his sense of dread.

As he neared his mother’s rooming house, he could already feel the form of her indictment, could divine the morally charged words she would hurl at him. And he knew that his reaction would be one of sullen and guilty anger. Why, then, was he going to see her? Because he really wanted her to rail at him, denounce him, and he would suffer, feel his hurt again, and, in doing so, would know intuitively that somewhere in the depths of his raw wound lay the blood of his salvation or the pus of his disaster. This obscure knowledge had stayed his finger on the trigger of the gun whose barrel had touched his temple this morning…

He entered a dilapidated building, went down a dark hallway and tapped upon a door. Sounds of muffled movement came to him; the door opened and framed his mother’s solemnly lined face, the white hair pulled severely back from a wide forehead, a gnarled right hand holding a woolen shawl about stooped shoulders. Her mouth was a tight, flat slit and her eyes peered through cloudy spectacles.

“Hi, Ma.”

Without answering, she widened the door and he walked past her into a tiny, shabby room that smelt of a sweetish odor of decaying flesh that seemed to cling to the aged who are slowly dying while still living.

He noticed, as he did each time he visited her, that she appeared to have shrunken a bit more; and he knew that it was her chronic fretting, her always tearing at her emotions that was whitening the hairs of her head, deepening the lines in her face, and accentuating the stoop of her back. His mother could no more relax than he could. Like me, she’s using up herself too fast, and she’s just a little over sixty…If she cared for herself more, judged life less severely, time would deal easier with her…Why were some people fated, like Job, to live a never-ending debate between themselves and their sense of what they believed life should be? Why did some hearts feel insulted at being alive, humiliated at the terms of existence? It was as though one felt that one had been promised something and when that promise had not been kept, one felt a sense of loss that made life intolerable; it was as though one was angry, but did not know toward what or whom the anger should be directed; it was as though one felt betrayed, but could never determine the manner of the betrayal. And this was what was making his mother old before her time…

He smoked, looked about vacantly, avoiding her accusing eyes, and was already fighting down a feeling of defensive guilt. She turned and began rummaging aimlessly in a dresser drawer and he knew that she was deliberately making him wait before she spoke, attempting to reduce him again to the status of a fearfully impressionable child. Before pronouncing her condemnations, she would make him feel that she was weighing him in the scales of her drastic judgment and was finding, to her horror, that he was a self-centered libertine ruthlessly ridden by this lust for pleasure, an irresponsible wastrel thoughtlessly squandering his life’s substance. And afterwards he would listen with a face masked in indifference and he would know that she was right; but he would also know that there was nothing that neither he nor she could do about it, that there was no cure for his malady, and, above all, that this dilemma was the meaning of his life.

Long ago, in his fourteenth year, while standing waiting for her preachments, he had demanded to know why she always pinioned him in solitude before handing down her moral laws, and she had replied that it was to make him develop the habit of reflecting deeply, that he knew as well as she when he had done wrong and she wanted to teach him to be his own judge. Anger now rose in him and he sought for some way to make her feel it. He grew suddenly resentful of the rickety furniture of the room. It’s her own damn fault if she lives like this…She could be living comfortably with Gladys…

Yet, even as he thought it, he knew that he was wrong. Gladys and his mother hated each other; once, when they had lived together during the early days of his marriage, Gladys and his mother had vied for female dominance in the home and it had ended with his mother’s packing and leaving, declaring that she preferred to live alone rather than with a wilful daughter-in-law who did not respect her.

“Why do you insist on living like this?” he broke the ice.

“We’re not going to talk about how I’m living,” she countered.

“No matter. But why do you live like this?” he asked again.

“And why do you live as you’re living?” she demanded bitterly turning to him. “You’re drinking again. I can smell it.”

“Not much,” he said; his voice was clipped but controlled.

Her right hand dabbed clumsily at a tear on her wrinkled cheek. She slid into a chair and cried, her withered lips twisting, her false teeth wobbling loosely in shrunken gums.

“You’ve started spoiling little girls, taking advantage of children…Son, can’t you control yourself? Where’s all this leading you? Why in God’s name do you lie to a little girl like Dot and seduce her?”

“I didn’t lie—”

“You did!” she blazed. “You let her hope for what you couldn’t do, and that’s lying. I’m no fool! If you didn’t lie to her, that’s worse. Then she’s just a little whore. And if she’s a whore, why did you take up with her? Cross, it’s easy to fool a young girl. If you’re proud of this cheap trick, you’ve fallen lower than I thought you had.”

She had done it; she had evoked in him that shameful mood of guilt born of desire and fear of desire. He knew that she was not lamenting for him alone, but for her own betrayed maidenhood, for how she had once been so treacherously beguiled into trusting surrender; she was blaming him somehow for its having gone wrong, confusedly seeking his masculine sympathy for her sexually blighted life! Goddamn her! Hadn’t she no sense of shame? He imagined himself rising and with a single sweep of his palm slapping her to the floor. And in the same instant a poignant pity for her seized him. Poor, lost, lonely woman clinging for salvation to a son who she knew was as lost as she was. He was too close to her and too far from her; much too warm toward her and much too cold. If only he understood her less! But he was cut off from that; he was anchored in a knowledge that offended him. And this image of his mother’s incestuously-tinged longings would linger with him for days and he could curse her for it, and finally he would curse himself for living in a crazy world that he could not set right.

“Promising a child and knowing you don’t mean it,” she sobbed in despair. “How can men do that?”

He knew that now she was reliving her own experience, grieving over the thwarted hopes that had driven her into the arms of religion for the sake of her sanity. And he? Where could he be driven? Nowhere. His mother was lucky; she had a refuge, even if that refuge was only an illusion. But he could only get out of this world or stay in it and bear it. His anger waxed as he saw that she had a balm, however delusory, and he had none. And yet she was complaining to him! If she knew what he lived each day, she would be horrified. But his mother was convinced that he was hardhearted, that he was withholding his help out of selfish malice. An ironic smile stole across his lips.

“You can laugh!” she stormed at him. “But God’ll punish you! He will! You’ll see before you die! You’ll weep! God is a just God! And He’s a hard and jealous God! If you mock Him, He’ll show you His Power!”

He shuddered and again projected his pity out upon her, then his pity recoiled back upon himself, for he knew that she would never understand him. A second later he pushed even this self-pity from him, realizing that it too was useless, would only depress him.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” he sighed.

“Sorry for what?” she railed. “You can’t undo what you’ve done. You’ve sinned, Cross, and it’s to God you must confess with a contrite heart. Even if that girl gets rid of her child, she’ll be forever hurt. She’ll remember what you promised—”

“But I didn’t promise her anything,” he protested.

“Oh, stop lying,” she said. “You did! You promised by the way you acted…”

A hopeless silence rose between them. Through the years his mother had related to him how, when she had been a country school teacher in a tiny southern community, she had met his father during the early days of the First World War. A Negro regiment had been camped nearby and excitement was everywhere. Her heart was ready and full of love. They first met at a church dance and he had straightaway declared his love. In her romantic eyes he was a huge boy going away to die on some distant battlefield and her heart had gone impulsively out to him, and finally her body also.

They married a month after they met and his regiment moved northward. She followed, feeling glad that she was giving him her life. But she soon learned that there were other girls foolish enough to look at him through romantic eyes and give him their hearts and bodies too. She finally upbraided him and he was cynical and defiant; then, more to avoid her than from motives of patriotism, he had, after returning from France, joined the army as a regular soldier. She trailed him dismally from army camp to army camp, begging for an understanding. Instead, the gap grew wider. Even before her son was born in 1924, she knew that she was only in his way, a worrisome wife. It was then that she took her sorrow and her infant son to God in copious tears. A year later she learned that somewhere in the reaches of Harlem, in a dirty, vacant lot at midnight, the police had found him lying wounded. He had been in a drunken street brawl, had lain unconscious in subzero weather, and had died a day later in an army hospital…

With Cross in her arms, she had returned South and resumed her teaching, but her real profession was a constant rehearsal in her memory of her tiny but pathetic drama, a continuous clutching of it to her heart in the form of a blend of complaint and accusation.

Cross looked at her; tears were still streaming on her cheeks.

“Son, can’t you deny yourself sometimes and not hurt others?” she begged of him humbly; she was again, in the evening of her life, supplicating the fateful world of man. “You’re destroying yourself. I know you believe only in your own pleasure, but must you hurt other people? If you feel you can’t master yourself, then take your problem to God. He’ll teach you how to live with others before it’s too late. Life is a promise, son; God promised it to us and we must promise it to others. Without that promise, life’s nothing…Oh, God, to think that at twenty-six you’re lost…What’re you going to do, Cross?”

He stood and gazed solemnly down at her.

“I don’t know, Ma.”

“Is it really over between you and Gladys?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. We can’t make it.”

“But your children? They need you…Cross, you can lose your job. Gladys can ruin you, and so can that girl. A wronged woman is a hard woman, Cross.”

On wobbly legs he waited for her to grow quiet; he was frantic to see Gladys.

“To think I named you Cross after the Cross of Jesus,” she sighed.

“I got to go,” he said brusquely. The longer he stayed the more she would bewail the past and grate her heart as well as his nerves. “You need anything, Ma?”

“I need to know that you’ve found God, Cross,” she whispered. “For months now everything I’ve heard about you is bad.”

“I’ll—” He felt the need to be kind. “See you tomorrow, hunh?”

“And pray, son.”

He went out of the door quickly to escape this fountain of emotion that made him feel guilty. He had to see Gladys and attempt to arrange a roughshod compromise to curb any rashness she might be contemplating as a result of Dot’s crazy visit. But the thought of Gladys made him quail; he knew that she would grasp eagerly upon his predicament and turn it against him, would try to use it to hold him at her mercy. Goddammit, if necessary, he would threaten to throw up his job…That ought to make her think a little. After all, the only thing Gladys really wanted was money.

Of all the mad things on earth, the maddest was Dot’s talking to Gladys. Damn…He paused in the snow and stared. He ought to see Dot first and learn what had happened between her and Gladys. And he would give Dot the dressing down of her life! Didn’t she know that Gladys was her enemy, that she would never befriend her, would do all in her power to humiliate her? Yes; instinct should have warned Dot not to reveal her plight to the wife of the man she claimed to love. He stopped at a street corner and looked at his watch. He had three hours before reporting to work; he had to hurry.

The sun had waned and already a touch of darkness was in the sky. It was growing rapidly colder and an icy wind swept through the streets. Hunger and emotional tension had drained him; he had to eat to stave off that incessant grinding in his stomach. He saw a dingy lunchstand with a sweaty plate glass window. He’d grab a bite to eat…He turned, crossed the ice-packed pavement, pushed through a narrow doorway and saw a crowd of working class Negroes and heard babbling voices. He perched himself atop a high stool and propped his elbows upon a greasy counter.

“A hamburger and a cup of coffee,” he told the girl who came toward him.

“Right,” she sang out.

The girl turned to prepare his order and his eyes, trained by habit, followed the jellylike sway of her sloping hips. At once his imagination began a reconstruction of the contours of her body, using the clues of her plump arms, her protruding breasts, the gently curving shape of her legs, and the width of her buttocks. Through the bluish haze of tobacco smoke and amidst the hub of laughter coming from the rear of the cafe, his senses dreamily seized upon woman as body of woman, not the girl standing by the steam table, but just woman as an image of a body and he drifted toward a state of desire, his consciousness stirring vaguely with desire for desire. His feelings, set off by the sight of the girl, now turned inward, then they projected themselves outwardly again, not so much upon the girl but in a seeking for a girl, to an image that fetched him toward something to embrace as desirable: woman as body of woman…The girl came toward him now and he looked fully at her; she slid the plate with the hamburger to him and he saw her face: hard, with small reddish eyes; a full, coarsely formed mouth; huge cheek bones that slanted to a stubborn chin; sullen lips…An intractable bitch, he thought. He sighed as the girl’s too-solid reality eroded his deepening mood of desire for the desirable: woman as body of woman…

He munched his hamburger and fell into a melancholy brooding upon the mysterious movements of his consciousness. What was this thing of desire that haunted him? It seems that I just desire desire, he told himself. And there’s no apparent end or meaning to it…And then there came to his mind the memory of the many sultry, smoky nights when he had been drunk with his friends in cheap dives and had seen girls like this. And, on those times, like today, a drive toward desire had risen imperiously in him and he had been just drunk enough for this desire for desire to hold fast to itself in spite of the girl’s blatant ugliness and he had sordidly bargained with her and had had her; and, like now, in the end, he had recoiled from her in self-disgust while lying beside her in bed just as he had recoiled a moment ago from this one without ever having gone to bed with her. On those drunken occasions he had gone back alone to his empty room to reflect moodily upon the obscurity of what he had been seeking when he had wanted the girl. Surely it had not been that girl he had so ardently wanted. No. But, yes, it had been the girl and it had not been the girl; he saw clearly that he had wanted the girl because his desire-impulse had pointed to her; but after having had her, desire was still not satisfied, still sought to encompass something within desire and hold it steady, to possess it, to become one with it. And that’s impossible, he told himself. One’s crazy to try to do it…Yet, he did try, and his trying seemed to be the essence of living. And marriage, could he build a marriage upon desire? Should one give pledges, make promises, swear vows the sacredness of which depended upon such running sands of feelings as desires…?

And what about his desire for Dot? Although she was carrying his child, his desire for her had already gone…God in Heaven! What could he do? When he had been a child he had thought that life was a solidly organized affair, but when he had grown up he had found that it had the disorganized character of a nightmare. What crazy fool had thought up these forms of human relations? Or had men and women just drifted blindly through the centuries into such emotional arrangements? He was convinced that an idiot could have conceived of better ways of establishing emotional alliances, and men must have felt uneasy about it too, for they had sought to make desire and passion stable by subjecting them to legal contracts! If human emotions fail to remain constant, then draft laws stipulating that that which will not remain constant must remain constant…As he brooded over the problem of desire a quiet sense of awe drenched him. Moods like these were the nearest he ever came to religious feelings.

He jerked to attention as a wave of guffaws rose from the crowd of Negroes in the rear of the cafe. Most of them were young and they were bent double with mirth. A tall Negro lifted his voice with loud authority over the rolling laughter.

“Where there’s lots of rumors, there’s bound to be some truth in ’em,” he pronounced.

“You mean to tell me you believe Flying Saucers are real?” a short, brown boy demanded with indignation. “You got better sense than that!”

Cross had heard a hundred such arguments in bars and cafes and he was primed to relax and listen to yet another one, to see to what heights of fantasy it would soar.

“I say these white folks is hiding something,” the tall Negro maintained, “and what they’re hiding scares ’em!”

“And what’re they hiding?” the waitress asked.

“Things they don’t want you to know,” the tall Negro said cryptically.

Teasing laughter full of suspense went from man to man. Cross could feel that they wanted to believe this high mystery, but they needed more fantastic facts before their beliefs could jell. Their attitude was one of laughing scepticism underscored with seriousness.

“Know what they found in one of them Flying Saucers?” the tall man demanded. “One of ’em was full of little men, about two feet high, with skin like peach fuzz—”

A waterfall of laughter showered in the cafe. Men rose and stomped their feet, tossed back their heads, and bellowed.

“But what the white folks so scared about?” someone asked. “Little men can’t hurt nobody.”

Silence. All eyes were turned expectantly to the face of the tall man.

“THEM LITTLE MEN THE WHITE FOLKS FOUND IN THEM SAUCERS WAS COLORED MEN AND THEY WAS FROM MARS!” the tall man spoke in deep solemn tones. “That’s why they hushed up the story. They didn’t want the world to know that the rest of the universe is colored! Most of the folks on this earth is colored, and if the white folks knew that the other worlds was full of colored folks who wanted to come down here, what the hell chance would the white folks have?”

Screams of approval, leaping from chairs, and clapping of hands.

“You ought to be shot to think of a thing like that!”

“It fits in with the way white folks act!”

Laughter died slowly. The men wiped their mouths with the backs of their hands, gazing at one another with sly joy.

“But it could be true,” a man said soberly. “White folks in America, France, England, and Italy are the scaredest folks that ever lived on this earth. They’re scareda Reds, Chinese, Indians, Africans, everybody.”

“But how come you reckon they so scared?” an elderly man asked.

“’Cause they’re guilty,” the tall man explained. “And guilty folks are scared folks! For four hundred years these white folks done made everybody on earth feel like they ain’t human, like they’re outsiders. They done kicked ’em around and called ’em names…What’s a Chinese to a white man? Chink-Chink Chinaman with pigtails down his back and he ain’t fit for nothing but to cook and wash clothes. What’s a Hindoo to a white man? A nigger who’s in love with ghosts, who kisses cows and makes pets of vipers. What’s a black man to a white man? An ape made by God to cut wood and draw water, and with an inborn yen to rape white girls. A Mexican? A greasy, stinking rascal who ought to be worked to death and then shot. A Jew? A Christ-killer, a cheat, a rat. A Japanese? A monkey with a yellow skin…Now our colored brothers are visiting us from Mars and Jupiter and the white folks is sweating in a panic—”

Negroes rolled in laughter, feeling that the powerful white world had been lowered to their own humble plane by the magic of comic words. One black boy danced ecstatically, then, holding his hands over his mouth as though he felt it unseemly to vent his savage mirth indoors, ran out of the cafe, leaving the door open. Upon the snowy sidewalk he screamed and howled and flapped his arms in the icy wind. For a moment he paused, then ran back to the door and, gasping for breath, said:

“Man, that’s sure cool!” He lifted his eyes to the grey sky. “You colored brothers on Mars, come on down here and help us!”

Cross found himself joining in the laughter. His heart went out to these rejected men whose rebel laughter banished self-murder from his thoughts. If only he could lose himself in that kind of living! Were there not somewhere in this world rebels with whom he could feel at home, men who were outsiders not because they had been born black and poor, but because they had thought their way through the many veils of illusion? But where were they? How could one find them?

It was time to go. Amidst a tidal wave of laughter he paid his check and went out, passing the black boy on the sidewalk and looking back several times to see other Negroes leave the cafe to join the black boy laughing in the white snow. Their peals reached his ears for half a block.

Yes, he had to see Dot. The thought made tension rise in him and he went into a bar and had a double whiskey. When he came out a bluish mist hung in the air and the sun was a faint red ball. The outlines of the buildings were beginning to blur. A freezing wind stung his face. He found a taxi and climbed in.

“5743 Indiana,” he told the driver.

Underneath all he had felt that day, Dot had rested as a kind of uneasy undertow, a slow black tide that would not be gainsaid. And, now that he was going to have it out with her, he flinched with fear at the hurt she would sustain. It had been six months ago that she had first floated into his mind as just another image of desire, woman as body of woman; but, for reasons which he had not foreseen, she had clung to him and he had clung to her and slowly she had come to mean more to him than just a woman’s body. Now that the moment of what she so melodramatically liked to refer to as the “payoff” was at hand, he did not like it. What bothered him most was that he knew that he had to betray her, and this betrayal was not springing from any innate perversity in him, but from the very complexity of his relations with Gladys. There was no way out but to hurt her, and he was convinced that she knew it. He had helped her with money, advice, sharing with her his life; but it seemed that these gifts enraged her. She had said that they were not enough and he knew that, as a woman, she was right. Dot was so close to what she wanted in life, that is, to marry him, that its impossibility drove her almost out of her mind.

In her struggle for legal possession of him, Cross knew that she was in the end counting heavily upon his weakness to carry her through. Yes, he was weak, but he knew that he was weak, and that made a difference. He also knew more about the turnings and twistings of her mind than she knew he knew, and this knowledge gave him an ironic insight into her that he did not relish. How could he ever make her know that, though he gave forth the appearance of weakness, that this weakness was really a kind of strength of not wanting to hurt others. His own experience had shown him that he was cold-bloodedly brutal when trapped in situations involving his self-respect. All his life he had been plagued by being caught in relations where others had tried to take advantage of him because they had thought him supine and gullible; and when he had finally confronted them with the fact that he knew that they were playing him, they had hated him with a redoubled fury for his having deceived them! And he dreaded that happening with Dot.

He had never tried to conceal from Dot his situation; he had been transparently honest with her from the beginning; he had told her everything and if she had any illusions, they were of her own making. And what saddened him to inward tears was that he suspected that Dot had allowed herself to become impregnated in order to test the strength of their attachment, hoping that he would be so moved and harassed by her passionate appeals that he would find some way of breaking legally with Gladys and marrying her. And he knew that freedom was the last thing on earth that Gladys would ever grant him. Dot’s just young and romantic enough to try such a fool thing, he thought bitterly.

He had met her, of all the places in a teeming city, in the liquor section of the South Center Department Store one Saturday morning last spring. There had been a widely advertised sale of Jamaica rum and long lines of people had queued up to buy at the unheard of rate of two bottles of rum for three dollars. The store had been jammed with milling crowds. He had taken his place at the end of a long queue and a moment later he had been aware that a young, willowy slip of a tall yellow girl had fallen in directly behind him. It was warm; he was without a coat and his shirt sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. He sniffed the perfume she wore, then gave her a quick survey; she was uncommonly pretty and was wearing a sheer pink print dress that showed the shape of her body with disturbing distinctness. She looks sweet, he thought. He glanced at her, trying to catch her eye; but the jostling crowd so distracted him that he forgot her until a few minutes later, when, all at once, he felt his naked elbow touching something yieldingly soft behind him. He looked around and she smiled shyly; a soft lump rose in his throat. Good God, what a gal! And so young… Did she know that his elbow was touching her left breast? If she did, she gave no outward sign; she still had that vague, sweet smile that could mean anything: coyness or just simple self-consciousness. Why, she’s just a child, he thought with a twinge of shame. He looked at her again, feeling his elbow still touching her breast; she smiled and looked off, yet she did not try to move away. She knows…But really, would a young girl with a face so sensitive and finely chiselled allow him to do that to her in public? Was she alone or was that man behind her her husband? The image of woman as body of woman filled him and his head felt pleasantly giddy. He was determined to know if she knew that his bare elbow was tan-talizingly touching the tip of her breast. Perhaps she’s so excited about the rum that she does not feel it…But his knowledge of the erotic made him feel that that was impossible. He sensed in her a quality of quiet waiting and it made him feel that she did know and did not mind, was even welcoming it. The line inched forward. The metallic ringing of cash registers sang out over the crowd. Traffic clanged through the streets outside. And all around was bubbling a cacophony of voices. He was now so near the counter that he could see the towering rows of bottles of dark yellow rum. Slowly, so slowly that no one could notice anything, he moved his bare elbow to and fro across the tip of her breast, realizing with sensual astonishment: She’s not wearing a brassiere! Desire surged softly through him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that she had not moved; she was staring steadily ahead, holding her purse primly in front of her. He tried it again; she did not move or seem aware that she was being touched at all; her face was sweet, composed, solemn, angel-like in its purity and remoteness from erotic passion. Was she aware or was she not? He had to know; it obsessed him. She could, of course, abruptly leave the line to indicate her disgust; or she could, if she were the hysterical breed, yell out that he was molesting her. But he did not believe that she would…Was she playing the same game that he was playing? And who was she? Again he moved his naked elbow across her left breast, caressing it, gently indenting the soft, surrendering flesh under the sheer cloth of her dress as much as he dared, and, this time, he knew that she knew, for he felt the tip of her loose breast gradually hardening, growing delicately into a pointed, taut nipple. He gazed at her directly now, but still she did not look at him; and her face was as passive and serene as a summer landscape. The line shortened and he fondled her breast with his elbow and she made no move to withdraw her body; instead, as the line snaked forward, she managed to keep her breast where his elbow could touch it. He was now certain that the man behind her was not her husband, did not know her. Finally he turned to her and smiled, still touching her breast, and said:

“It’s a long time, hunh, to wait for two bottles of rum?”

“It’s awful,” she said, and they both laughed.

“You like rum?” he asked.

“Now, what do you think?” she countered teasingly.

“What do you make with it? Cuba Libres or Rum Punches?”

“Both,” she said.

“You live around here?”

“Naw. Up near 37th Street.”

He looked at her openly now, as a man looks at a woman he likes and wants.

“You couldn’t be over sixteen,” he ventured.

“You’re wrong. I’m seventeen,” she corrected him.

They had spoken in low tones, as though both were conspiring to keep secret the erotic link that was springing up between them. He noticed that she was trembling slightly and he knew that she was being claimed by a state he knew well: dread. This was perhaps the first time she had ever let herself be caressed in this manner and he must not frighten her. He cast about for something to say to let her know that, though he was after her, he was also a gentleman and that she need not be afraid of him, that she could rely on him for discreetness and good sense. It was then that he saw a Wendell Phillips High School pin on the collar of her dress.

“When did you get your sheepskin?” he asked her.

“Last June,” she answered readily.

“Phillips was my school, too,” he told her.

“Really?” she asked. She smiled broadly, relaxing completely for the first time.

They were at the counter now and he paid for his rum and stood aside, waiting for her. When she left the counter, he said:

“Here. Let me help you carry that.”

“Thank you,” she said with a charming degree of hesitation; then she allowed him to take her bottles.

They walked out of the store together, making small talk. She told him that she lived with her mother and a younger brother; but her mother was a terror, depriving her of all freedom. She said that she was thinking seriously of leaving home and living with Myrtle, a girl friend…During the first five minutes he had let her know that he was not free, that he worked in the Post Office, that he was married but not living with his wife. They passed a movie house and he asked her if she liked movies and she said yes. He invited her to see a show with him that afternoon and she demurred modestly. She doesn’t want to seem too forward, he thought; and he laughed out loud about it when he was alone in his room.

“But you can call me sometimes, if you want to,” she said, and she gave him her telephone number.

That was how it had begun. She had known from the beginning that he was not free and she had told him that it did not really matter for the time being. In their relationship he had found her a passionate child achingly hungry for emotional experience. Of an afternoon she would come to his room with the most disconcerting directness he had ever known in a woman. He would try to talk to her and as he talked he could tell that she was not listening; she was pulling off her dress, stripping down her nylon stockings, stepping out of her nylon slip and panties…And afterwards he would stare at her unbelievingly as she would stomp her foot and tell him with a childlike seriousness that was all the more serious because it was so childlike: “I never want to make love with anybody but you.”

“You’ll live and learn,” he had told her, yawning.

“Don’t say that,” she had protested with sudden fury, and he realized with a sense of dismay that what had taken place was to her sacred.

But that did not prevent some nuance of perversity in him from trying to make her admit that she had been conscious of his elbow caressing her breast that warm, spring Saturday morning in the liquor store, but she would never confess it, would exhibit feelings of shame and indignation whenever he mentioned it; but beneath her ardent denials was a furtive sense of erotic pleasure. He was amused by the manner in which she balanced her moral notions with her emotional hungers. Under his questioning she would pause in her dressing and stare at him with wide, hurt eyes and exclaim:

“How can you say that? You sure have a filthy imagination!”

“But, Dot, dammit, you knew! I swear you did—”

“Do you think I’d let anybody do that to me in public?” she asked, her voice ringing with genuine incredulity.

“But you did, Dot!”

“I didn’t!”

Tears would roll down her cheeks and he would take her in his arms and soothe her; but she never got angry about it. And until the end she would never concede that that morning was the first time that she had ever felt so keen a sensual pleasure. But Cross was certain of it and it made him marvel that she could deny it with such passionate consistency.

His bond with her grew deeper with the passing days, for it was with her that, for the first time in his life, he found himself talking freely, emptying out of his soul the dammed up waters of reflection and brooding thought. He told her of his morbidly tangled yet profound relation with his mother; he told her how, when he had been twenty-one years of age, he had naïvely been sucked into a stupid marriage with Gladys; and he confessed to her his incurable melancholy stemming from his mulling over his emotions. He never quite knew how much of what he told her she understood, but she always listened patiently, now and then timidly venturing a detached question or two, but never commending or blaming. He came at last to believe that she accepted the kind of talk in which he indulged as a mysterious part of a man’s equipment, along with his sexual organs. But the mere fact that she listened to his analytical tirades had been a boon to him beyond his deepest hopes.

And now he had to hurt her. And what would she do? Once he had toyed with trying to find possible friends of his with whom she could fall in love; he had once even spoken to her in glowing terms of a man who worked with him on the job. And he had been amazed when she had turned to look at him and demanded:

“Are you trying to pawn me off on somebody?”

To hear her speak like that had so shamed him that he had never tried it again. Then, one Sunday evening over dinner in a crowded restaurant, she told him that she was carrying his child. His stupefication had been such that the food stuck in his throat. Later, in his room, she had wildly resisted his suggestion that she abort the child and it had maddened him. The scenes of emotional conflict that took place the following month had frayed him almost to madness.

He had just left one woman, his mother, who, in an outpouring, had hurled at him her life draped in the dark hues of complaint and accusation, had tried futilely to rouse compassion in him by dramatizing the forlorn nature of her abandoned plight; now he was on his way to struggle with yet another woman. And after Dot there loomed the formidable figure of his wife.

“Okay, Buddy; here you are,” the taxi driver told him as the cab swerved to a curb hidden by snowflakes.

He paid, ran up the steps, pushed the bell of Dot’s apartment three times, the signal they agreed upon when he was calling to see her. The buzzer was so long in answering that he thought that surely she was not in. Where could she be? He rang again and was about to leave when the buzzer suddenly responded in a long blast of sound that would not stop. He opened the vestibule door, feeling that something was wrong. He heard the buzzer still emitting its tinny throb long after he had passed the second floor. She must be upset or something…When he reached the door of Dot’s apartment, he saw Myrtle, Dot’s girl friend, looking at him with a face as devoid of expression as she could make it. Myrtle was a tall, dark girl with a handsome face and sardonic eyes. Cross slowed his movements, sensing knowledge of a crisis behind Myrtle’s reserved manner.

“Hi,” he greeted her.

Without answering, she caught hold of his arm and drew him forcibly into the hallway of the apartment.

“Where’s Dot?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

“In bed,” she said flatly.

“What’s happened?”

“You ought to be asking…All hell’s broke loose, that’s all.”

“What do you mean? I want to see Dot.”

“You can’t now,” she said with an air of petty satisfaction.

He started for Dot’s bedroom and Myrtle held him back.

“The doctor’s in there,” she whispered fiercely.

“The doctor? Why? Tell me what’s happening!”

“You men!” She curled her lips in scorn. “How much do you think a poor girl can stand?”

“Okay. You can can that,” he told her roughly, unable to suppress hot resentment. “Dot can talk to me like that, but you can’t!”

He had never liked her and she did not like him and the way she was now acting was something he had known she would do if she ever had gotten the chance; now she had it and was doing it. One instinct told him to ignore her, but she had cut too deeply into his bleeding feelings for him to leave off. He stood glaring at her, his fingers trembling.

“Look, I’m Dot’s best friend, see?” she shot at him. “I’m taking care of her, trying to repair the damage you’ve done. I can say what I damn well like…”

“Not to me,” Cross said.

“And why not?” she flipped at him.

“Because I don’t sleep with you,” he told her brutally, looking her straight in the eyes.

An anger so intense burned in Myrtle’s face that her large eyes shrank in size.

“You dirty sonofabitch,” she said in an even, low tone.

“Thanks,” he said.

He opened the door of Dot’s room and peered in.

“Who is it?” a loud masculine voice called out to him as he stood uncertainly.

It was the doctor who had yelled; Cross could see his back bent over Dot’s bed. Dot was lying with her face to the wall.

“It’s me, honey. Cross.”

“Please, please, don’t come in now, Cross.”

“Will you be kind enough to wait outside until I’m through here?” the doctor asked brusquely. “What happens after I’m gone is your business…”

Cross shut the door and turned to see the smirk on Myrtle’s face.

“What happened?”

“I ought to spit right in your face for what you said to me,” she said forming her lips as though about to spew something through them. “What she ever saw in your sullen heart, God only knows!”

“I’m sorry,” he relented to get information. “But why don’t you tell me what’s happened?”

“Yeah, sorry… Men are always sorry,” she derided him openly, keeping her voice low and charging it with hate.

“For Christ’s sake!” he exploded. “Now’s no time to carry on like that! Tell me what happened.”

“Wait and she’ll tell you,” Myrtle said and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

Cross sat and fumed. How crazy women could be sometimes…What did she think she was gaining by throwing dramatic fits? He looked up as she came briskly out of the kitchen, opened the door of the hall closet, took out her coat and put it on. She paused, not looking directly at him. The muscles of Cross’s body tightened; he could have kicked her right through the brick wall into the snowdrifts piled outside.

“I’ve got to go down to the drugstore and get a prescription filled,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’m leaving a hypodermic needle and a syringe boiling in a pan on the gas stove. Turn out the fire under it in two or three minutes, will you?” She shot him a sidelong glance. “You ought to be able to do that now.”

“You can go to hell,” he growled at her.

“I’d gladly go, if only I could take you along with me,” she snapped at him and pulled the door shut behind her so violently that it sounded like a rifle shot.

His nerves twitched in protest, then he was conscious that the droning murmur of the doctor’s voice in the bedroom had ceased and he heard Dot’s distressed voice ringing out:

“Oh, Cross! What was that?”

Before he could reply the doctor had opened the door and was glaring at him.

“The girl slammed the door,” Cross told the doctor sheepishly.

“This child’s a nervous wreck,” the doctor said, throwing up his hands in despair. “She’s got to be kept quiet.”

Cross huddled forward in his chair. The doctor went back into Dot’s room, drawing the door shut.

Once more the masculine murmur of the doctor’s voice resumed. What was he saying to her? And what had she told him? He was convinced that he was under discussion and it made him feel deprived of his humanity, converted into a condemned object, exposed to the baleful gaze of a million eyes. He crept softly to the door, cocked his head and listened, but he could not distinguish any words. Now and then he could hear Dot’s silvery voice rising in a melody of complaint, of protest. Goddamn…Why had she called in that doctor without telling him? If she’d only trust me…But he knew that her trusting him would not get her what she wanted; he was in no position to marry her. All right; suppose Dot was in trouble? Did that justify her subjecting him to shame? The South Side was a small community and if Dot had revealed their relations to this doctor, their predicament would be on the lips of a thousand gossiping men and women in a day’s time…

He had a hot impulse to rise and flee the apartment and disappear forever…What had he to lose by throwing up this fool’s game? His job? It was not worth a damn, so mortgaged was he with debt. He really had nothing to lose. What a stupid situation for an intelligent man to find himself in! What greater shame was there for a man than to walk the streets cringing with fear of grasping women whose destructive strokes were draped in the guise of whimpers and accusations? Somehow he would shake loose from this and never in all his life let himself be caught again…

He was already supporting Dot, but she could, if she wanted to be brutal about it, compel him, at the behest of a court of law, to support the child after it was born. He knew that she would do such only if she were certain that he would never marry her. Had Gladys told her that a divorce was impossible? More than likely she had…

He ought to leave now… But he sat, hating himself. He yearned to roll himself into a tight little black ball and fling himself away as far as his strength would allow. But, no; there were his small sons, Cross, Junior, Peter, and Robert, whom he loved and did not want to leave. He would regain his influence over Dot; all was not lost. Dot had gone berserk because he had broken his promise to see her this morning and now he would have to be with her constantly to bring her around. Above all, he had to persuade her to abort the child for her sake, his sake…

A gurgle of water sounded in the kitchen. That pot that Myrtle had told him to look after! He ran and turned out the gas just in time, for there were but a few bubbles left in the pan.

The telephone rang. He entered the hallway and stood uncertainly.

“Shall I answer it, Dot?” he called through the door.

“Yes, please,” Dot answered weakly.

He picked up the receiver.

“Dot? Is that you?” It was the voice of a woman speaking with breathless eagerness.

“No, this is not she,” he said.

“Who’s speaking?” the voice was cautious now, but still urgent.

“Just a friend,” Cross said, disguising his tone. He was always afraid of Gladys’ trapping him in Dot’s apartment.

“Is this Mr. Damon?”

“No,” he lied, hoping that his voice would not carry to Dot’s room. “I’m a friend of Myrtle.”

“Won’t you please call Dot to the phone?”

“I’m afraid she can’t come. She’s in bed. The doctor’s with her. Who’s this?”

“Mary, a friend of Dot. Listen, tell Dot I’ve found her a lawyer. He’s a whizz. She’s to call me as soon as possible.”

“I see.” His eyes widened.

“Tell her that she’ll have to act fast to tie up Damon—”

“I’ll tell her.” He struggled to keep his voice normal.

There was a hesitating silence.

““Who’s this speaking?” Fear was in the voice.

“Brown’s the name,” he lied.

“Oh…For a moment I had the feeling you were Dot’s friend, that Damon man,” the voice sighed with relief.

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes—”

“Nothing’s seriously wrong with Dot, I hope?”

“No. She just needs some rest.”

“Tell Dot that she’s got to hang on to her birth certificate; it’s her quickest way of proving that she’s under sixteen. My lawyer says that as long as she’s not sixteen, Damon’s guilty of rape. Now, Dot’s birthday comes in June, and that gives her four months of grace.”

Cross felt a red horizon of danger closing in about him.

“What did you say?”

“Explain this to Dot,” the voice spoke distinctly. “Wait a minute.”

He held his breath as a faint rustle of paper came over the wire.

“I got it,” the voice was edged with satisfaction. “I copied it down as my lawyer read it to me this morning. Here it is: ‘…Every male person of the age of seventeen years and upwards who shall have carnal knowledge of any female person under the age of sixteen years and not his wife, either with or without her consent shall be adjudged guilty of the crime of rape…’ You know what carnal means, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Cross breathed; he felt wrapped in a nightmare.

“‘…Every person convicted of the crime of rape shall be imprisoned in a penitentiary for a term of not less than one year and may extend to life…’ You got that?”

“Yes.”

“Now, this Damon’s married, so he can’t marry Dot and wriggle out that way,” the voice went on in a tone of hard triumph. “So if Dot doesn’t get mushy, she’s got Damon where she wants him.”

“I see,” Cross said. “But are you sure Dot’s under sixteen?”

“I’ve seen her birth certificate,” the voice assured him.

“I’ll tell her,” Cross promised heavily.

“Good-by.”

“’Bye.”

He hung up, swayed a bit, then sat. Dot was a minor? How was that possible? He was certain that she had told him that she was seventeen. Jesus…Could this be true? He had been honest with her and she had tricked him! Yet, in casting back his mind, he remembered that he had often felt that she was younger than she had claimed. How in God’s name had he stumbled into a situation of such deadly seriousness? He sat hunched over in the chair, too stunned to move. If ever, now was the time to act upon the impulse of flight. He had about fifty dollars in his pocket. He ought to buy a railroad ticket for as long a journey as the money would cover, and vanish. There was no doubt now but that Dot had made up her mind, and from now on he had to regard her as his enemy. Longing for a drink, he rummaged in the kitchen and found an inch of gin in a bottle and drained it.

The hall door lock clicked and Myrtle entered without glancing at him. Yes; she was in on this too. Her knowledge of his being a potential convict was what had made her so bold in sassing him. He glared at her as she pulled off her coat and went into the kitchen and returned with a tray; she went into Dot’s room, closing the door behind her. That bitch…His talk with Dot would be decisive; either she called off the lawyer or he would drop her and let her do her worst. He had a last weapon, his gun, and it would change things and leave her dismayed…

At last the doctor emerged, leaving Dot’s door open this time. Moving methodically, the doctor placed his black bag on a chair and proceeded to get into his overcoat. He pulled on his hat and looked at Cross with cold eyes. Abruptly he grabbed his bag and went unaided out of the door. Yes; Dot had identified him to the doctor. Cross felt sick and cheap.

On his tongue was a storm of reproaches he wanted to hurl at Dot, but he checked himself. To lose his temper would be playing into her hands, giving her an opportunity to wallow in an emotional scene. He walked slowly into the room and saw Dot lying with her face to the wall. Myrtle sat huddled on a side of the bed with her head bent forward, her body shaking; she was weeping. The hypodermic needle and the syringe lay on the tray at the foot of the bed. A medicinal odor hung in the air.

“Myrtle, what the hell’s eating you?” he demanded.

As he had expected, they had been waiting for this signal; both women started to berate him at once. It was Dot’s voice that won out.

“Please, Cross, in the name of God,” Dot begged, without turning to look at him. “Be gentle with Myrtle. She’s been waiting on me night and day. She’s all I got. Don’t insult her.”

“I’m not insulting anybody—”

Myrtle jerked upright, her limbs trembling and her face wet with tears.

“You did! And what have I ever done to you?”

“You started slashing at me the moment I got into this apartment,” he charged her.

“But can’t you see what’s happening?” Myrtle blazed at him. “This poor child’s half out of her mind…Try to be human!”

“That’s the trouble,” he almost hissed. “I’m simply too damned human.”

“If I was Dot, I wouldn’t take this off you for a single minute,” Myrtle burst out in a torrent of rage. “Oh, boy, I’d have you in a way that you’d never forget!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“I’d get your money, your job, and throw you smack into jail!”

“Oh, Myrtle, no…” Dot protested.

Yes, Myrtle was going further than Dot wanted. Cross looked at the two of them. When he spoke he was not smiling, but there was a note of hard irony in his voice that was worse than laughter.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just a big, bad, black brute. Pushing little girls around. Taking advantage of the helpless. Spoiling innocent children. I’ve no feelings. I’m just having a damn grand time and making others suffer.” He summed up their case for them and then sat on the edge of the bed beside Myrtle.

“You’re a man and you can’t dodge your responsibilities,” Myrtle told him wailingly.

“I’m not responsible to you for anything,” Cross told her. “And I don’t like your meddling. Now, get the hell out of here and let me talk to Dot.”

“You are a real bastard,” Myrtle said. “You ought to marry Dot, but I pity her spending a lifetime with you.”

“Don’t worry,” he taunted her. “I’m not going to spend a lifetime with you.”

“Cross, for God’s sake,” Dot whimpered. “Don’t be that way.”

“That’s the only way he can be,” Myrtle said.

“Get out of here, Myrtle,” Cross told her again.

There was silence. He stood his ground. He was determined to wreck their rehearsed appeal to him. He felt that instinct was guiding them, prompting their attitudes and the strategy of their attacks. Both of them were weeping now and he made no move. He would let their tears flow futilely for awhile; they would see that he was not to be easily overcome.

“You’re lucky that it’s Dot you’re dealing with instead of me,” Myrtle said. Weeping, she stood and walked from the room.

Cross heard the door close behind his back. He could almost see the little wheels turning in the brains of both girls as they planned their next move. Men had to consult together for concerted action; women simply gravitated together spontaneously, motivated by their situation in life as women. They knew without prior consultation the most effective assaults. Cross was conscious of their consciousness. He knew them as women better than they knew him as man.

“Dot, I want to talk to you,” he began. “Are you up to it, or should I come back in the morning?”

Dot lay without moving. He knew that she was debating. Finally she slowly turned over and faced him, the mass of her tumbling brown tresses framing an oval of face delicate and demure. God, but she’s really beautiful…Her deep brown eyes were haunted, empty. She lifted her head an inch from the damp pillow and then let it fall again, as though she was too weak to bear the strain of holding it erect. She managed a wan smile. What an actress! How do they learn it? Is it instinct?

“I’m sorry, Cross,” she whispered.

And he was truly sorry too. He wanted in that instant to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knew that she would at once take advantage of it, would exploit it, would try to wring out of a simple act of compassion a promise of marriage. Goddamn! He reined in his feelings. She was gazing toward the window and the thought shot through his mind: She’s about to switch her tactics…His eyes traveled along the slight outlines of her body stretching under the blanket; she was so tiny and yet somehow so strong, this girl. Woman as body of woman was not in his consciousness now, but there was rolling teasingly through his memory a memory of it. He did not really want to hurt her, but what was he to do? How could he avoid it?

“Dot, let’s start from the beginning,” he commenced. “Are you going to do what I suggested?”

“What do you mean, Cross?” she hedged, sparring for time, her eyes swimming helplessly at him.

“About the child,” he told her. “I’ve got it all arranged.”

She leapt to a sitting position. Her body rocked to and fro; she clenched her fists and shook them at him, her mouth gaping in protest.

“No, no, no!” she pealed hysterically. “Don’t ask me that again! Please, Cross, if you do—”

“I am asking you,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

She sprang from the bed in her nylon gown and screamed, then ran on bare, scampering feet across the room to the window. He walked toward her, calmly. The door burst open and Myrtle stood staring at them with parted lips and tense eyes.

“If you ask me that again, I’ll jump out of the window! I swear I will! I swear, I swear…” Dot sobbed, clawing blindly at the window latch.

“Oh, God!” Myrtle exclaimed, grabbing Dot with both arms. “Darling, don’t! You don’t know what you are doing!” She looked beseechingly at Cross who stood near Dot. Cross had not budged; he regarded Dot coldly. “Please, Cross, help me to get her back to bed…”

“Get back in bed, Dot,” Cross said in a detached voice; he still did not touch her.

Dot sobbed brokenly, clinging convulsively to Myrtle. Then she slid heavily to the wooden floor, resting on her bare knees. The nylon gown was pulled taut across the curves of her firm, yellow thighs and through the sheer white translucence of the tissue he could see the dark smudge of her pubic hair. She beat her knees frantically with her fists, violently shaking her head, tears oozing from her eyes, her body rocking back and forth. She keened: “No, no! I’ll never kill my child! I’ll die first! You can’t make me murder…! It’s my child and I’ll keep it and love it like I love my own life…! Oh, God, don’t let this happen to me!” She gulped for breath and fell prone to the floor, her body jerking with nervous spasms.

“Help me, Cross,” Myrtle begged, struggling with Dot.

He did not move; he stood looking silently at both of them. Myrtle stood over Dot, looking from him to Dot. Yes, she’s trying to weigh how much influence this is having on me, he thought. A woman’s business is emotion and her trade is carried on in cash of tears…He would help to keep Dot from leaping out of the window, but that was all he was prepared to do at the moment. And, besides, he was not convinced that she would leap.

“Come, darling,” Myrtle coaxed, lifting Dot.

Dot allowed herself finally to be led back to the bed. Myrtle eased her upon it and Dot sat and sobbed with tears streaming through the fingers of her hands which covered her face.

“I won’t kill my child,” Dot took up the refrain. “I won’t…”

“Darling, get in bed,” Myrtle cooed. “The doctor said you had to be careful. You’re not well, you know.”

Cross knew that these words were aimed at him. When Dot was once more in bed, Myrtle turned to him.

“Why do you treat her like that?” she demanded. “The doctor said—”

“Leave me alone!” he shouted; he did not relent; he could not.

“I never dreamed anyone like you existed,” Myrtle said.

“You know better now,” he said tersely.

Myrtle ran from the room. Cross sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly touched Dot’s shaking shoulder.

“Dot,” he began, “try to listen calmly. This may be the last time I can talk to you like this—”

“Don’t say that, Cross. You’re going to leave me?” she asked.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.

Dot lay very still. Cross heard an “L” train thundering past outside. Night was falling and a dark blue sheen of sky stood at the windowpane.

“You promised not to tell anybody about this without first telling me,” he began.

“Oh, Cross, I had to tell the doctor,” she said in a rush of words. “I was so nervous and he kept asking me what was the matter—”

“I’m not talking about that!”

Dot’s eyes showed helpless bewilderment. He knew that her pretended naïveté was particularly dangerous, for in it was a pathetic appeal for love that his heart yearned to answer. He knew that her deception stemmed from her craving for security and that she was expecting him, if he ever caught her in it, to forgive her.

“Don’t you know that if you destroy me, you’re hurting yourself?” he asked her. “This calling in a lawyer—”

“Oh, Cross!” she wailed. “I didn’t! You don’t understand!”

“I understand more than you think,” he told her.

She flung herself into his arms and clutched him frantically. All grief and despair vanished from her face as quickly as a summer rain, and he could not help but marvel at the weapons of a woman when she fought. Her volatile emotions altered with dialectical suddenness, changing into their opposites, disappearing, hiding under new guises.

“Mary phoned and told me to tell you that she had a lawyer for you,” he told her.

“That was Mary on the phone a while back?” she asked with wide eyes.

“Yes.”

Dot sighed with such relief that Cross wondered if she had other plots cooking…

“Oh, Mary…She’s crazy,” Dot explained it away in a childlike voice. “I don’t have to obey her, Cross. The lawyer was her idea.”

He would now try to see what was really on her mind.

“Dot, how old are you?” he asked her softly.

She did not look at him; her eyes were steadily before her and yet he knew that she knew that he was staring at her and waiting for an answer.

“Did you hear what I asked you, Dot?” he demanded.

She still did not answer or look at him. Well, he would wait her out. He had been intimately tender with this girl and now he had caught her acting most cruelly against him. What excuse would she give? Then he guessed her strategy; she would give none. She would just be a helpless, hard-put-upon, suffering woman playing her oldest and strongest role.

“Dot, I’m talking to you,” he said. “How old are you?”

The knowledge of the criminal threat she held over him stood between them like an invisible wall. She still could not turn to look at him; then she bent suddenly forward, covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

“I don’t know what to do,” she gulped.

She had failed to answer; instead, she had let him see the emotional dilemma in which she was caught, let him glimpse the terrible weapon she held in her hand, let him surmise how reluctantly she would use it, but use it she would.

“Look, Dot, you can haul me before a court and get me convicted, but I swear to you that I’ll find some way out, you hear?” he warned her. “You lied to me. You told me you were seventeen. You led me to this crime, if you call it a crime. Now, how old are you?”

“I’ll be sixteen in June,” she breathed, not looking at him.

Cross sighed. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I wanted you,” she whispered, her eyelashes nestling against her cheeks.

“And now you want me put into jail for ten, maybe twenty years?”

Myrtle entered and lifted the tray from the bed.

“Darling, I’ll never do that to you,” Dot said sweetly, too sweetly.

“If you do, you’ll never win,” he warned her solemnly.

“Maybe Superman’ll kill himself and escape everybody?” Myrtle gave forth a brittle laugh. “You could run off to South America, too.”

She went briskly through the door and Cross balled his fingers in fury. He turned again to Dot.

“Look, start with Ma. Why did you go to her?”

Again Dot became too weak to talk; through tears she groped blindly for Cross’s hand and gripped it.

“I was wild—Even my mother won’t speak to me,” she whimpered.

“Your mother? Does she know?” he demanded, amazed.

She gave him a look that begged forgiveness. She had not kept her word. He would never be dumb enough to trust anybody again. Dot’s face suddenly brightened with joy.

“Your mother’s wonderful,” she sang.

Goddammit! Wouldn’t Dot ever learn that these assumed poses would never work.

“I understand now why you love her so,” Dot floated on warmly. “She has such a noble face…And she’s for us, Crossy. She hates Gladys; she didn’t tell me so, but I can feel it. She says your children are beautiful! Oh, Crossy, I’d love to take care of them. I would!”

She’s out of her mind…Did she think that she could take away another woman’s children? Were there no limits to her vanity? Dot turned and looked yearningly at him.

“The children, yours and mine, could all be together—”

“Did Gladys tell you that?” he asked with soft irony.

Dot’s eyes narrowed as she conjured up the image of Gladys. “She hates me; she hates you—God, she’s awful!”

“Look, Dot, I’m going to tell you the lay of the land, then you must let your common sense guide you. Gladys will not let me go; her keeping me is her revenge on me for leaving her. Let’s live together and ride this out. Or, get rid of the child—”

Dot sat up and looked at him; she had changed.

“Cross, you got to get a divorce,” she pronounced.

“Somebody has to give way in this,” he insisted.

“I won’t kill the child,” she said simply.

She was telling him that she would not let go of the hold she had upon him, no matter what. He stood up.

“I don’t give a damn,” he muttered. “I couldn’t care less—”

“Then, why do you blame me for getting a lawyer?” she demanded.

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to myself, about myself,” he said.

His eyes were hot and vacant. He was in a rage.

“You’re threatening me with jail to make me get a divorce my wife won’t give,” the words growled out of him.

“Pull off your coat, honey,” she seemed to relent.

“Naw; I got to go,” he said. “I’ve got to see Gladys and try to undo some of the harm you’ve done.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me something?” she begged.

“You tell me what to tell you!” he shouted.

Myrtle came in and stood by the bed, and asked, “What did you decide about Dot, Cross?”

“Nothing,” he told her bluntly.

“Wouldn’t your wife take some money?”

“Sure; if I had it.”

“Can’t you borrow some?”

“I’m already up to my neck in debt.”

“Give her monthly payments—”

“And what’ll be left for Dot, then? I’m paying for the car—”

“Sell it,” Myrtle suggested.

“I haven’t got the car to sell. Gladys has it and she’s hanging on to it and I’ve got to keep up the payments,” he explained.

“Well, it’s your funeral,” Myrtle said. “You can’t expect Dot to sit here and not defend herself; can you?”

“All right; put me in jail, if you want to,” he spoke through tight lips.

He turned abruptly and walked out. He was so spent that he felt that he was floating down the steps. Through the night’s mist the street lamps gleamed dully. He tramped over snow-carpeted sidewalks without knowing it. He had to see Gladys, but he did not know what he would say to her. He paused and rubbed his hand over his eyes. If those who were pressing him knew how little he felt himself as a real being, they would recoil in horror; he felt unreal, scarcely alive. How long could he go on like this? Shame flooded him as he recalled his attempt with the gun. He could not even do that…

He stopped at a street corner and waited for a southbound trolley. The snow enforced a hush over the city, muffling the sounds of traffic and the footsteps of passersby. Above him an invisible plane droned through the night sky. Icy wind flapped his overcoat and he turned his back to it to escape its knifelike pain on his face. His eyes caught a scrap of paper whirling uncertainly on currents of wind; he watched it rise, veer, hover, then vanish aimlessly around a corner. A clanging trolley heaved into view and he approached the tracks and sprang upon the trolley when it slowed to a stop. He paid and sat in the rear of the car and closed his eyes and leaned his head against a sweaty windowpane.

Dread was deep in him now; he had to tackle Gladys and he did not know how. The tussle between them had been so long and bitter that there was not much room left for jockeying. Over the years they had hurled at each other every curse word they knew and he felt that his present visit would be by far the most exacting. He had not seen her for more than three months; he made his payments to her by sending a check through the mails every two weeks. His not seeing her had made him forego his joy in seeing his sons and he missed them acutely, but Gladys had so adroitly managed their parting that she had extorted his not seeing the children as part of the price he had to pay for his being rid of her. After the terrible scene the last time he had seen her, he had told her that he did not intend to come again, and, in his black mood, he had given her the right to tell the children any damn thing she chose. And Gladys had seized literally upon his words and had written a special delivery letter to his mother informing her that he had disowned his children, branding him an unnatural monster. His mother had summoned him, had upbraided him, wept and prayed.

His head lolled as the trolley jolted through the snowy night streets and his mind drifted back to the time he had been attending day classes at the University of Chicago, majoring in philosophy and working the nightshift in the Post Office. In those days he had not had much time for fun and had been constantly hankering for relaxation. His mother had been in the South, living in the house that she had bought through her lifelong and morbid frugality, and he had been a lonely young man hankering after pleasure in a big city. A stream of her pious letters had urged him to marry, but he had ignored her naïve moralizing and had remained single. Ideas had been his only sustained passion, but he knew that his love of them had that same sensual basis that drew him achingly to the sight of a girl’s body swinging in a tight skirt along a sunny street.

He had been more than ready for Gladys when she had first risen on his horizon. He had congratulated himself on having tumbled upon a naïve girl who was gratefully receiving his amorous attentions, and it was not until long afterwards that he had discovered that she had waited patiently while he had gropingly strayed into her domain, and then she had quietly closed the trap door over him. If some ironic enemy had been intending to tangle him in an ill-suited marriage, his self-enforced abstinence could not have better prepared him for her. She had been living in his South Side rooming house and he had spoken to her only casually. A registered nurse, quiet, perhaps more than a little repressed and with maybe a tendency toward the hysterical, she was soft-spoken, brown-skinned, and well-made. Sometimes he had seen her in her handsome nurse’s uniform and he had admitted that she looked distinctively attractive in it.

Early one rainy autumn afternoon five years ago he had gone down into the vestibule to go out to drive his Ford to work and had found her standing there, sheltering herself against the roaring downpour. He could see the edges of her white uniform showing around the hem of her coat. Surmising that she was trying to get to work, he had offered her a lift. Enroute he engaged her in a bantering conversation which had ended with her accepting an invitation to have a drink with him at the GOLDEN KEY the next afternoon.

That was how it began. The next afternoon—the rain was still falling—he sat waiting for her in a rear booth of the tavern, hunched over an unfinished drink. She presented herself a half hour late all done up in a smart, dark blue suit with a white silk blouse. A red silk scarf was tied over her head and flouncing over her whole body was a transparent, plastic raincoat. He helped her out of her coat and noticed that tiny drops of rain gleamed on her wide forehead and her pert nose. From her there drifted to him the odor of lilacs and autumn leaves…

As they drank they talked about themselves, their families, racial problems. He found that she had no settled tastes or convictions, and he was not a little flattered to discover that she was curious about his notions and had the good sense to defer to him when he told her something of importance. Years later Cross realized that she had had enough sagacity to clear ample psychological ground about her so that he could move in at ease and without knowing that she was luring him. Her feminine instinct placed him at once in the role of a strong and reliable man and encouraged him to play it; he found himself liking to talk to her.

He had already made up his mind to invite her to dinner when she suddenly lifted her left wrist and looked at her watch, wailing:

“Oh, God! It’s almost six. I’ve got to go.”

“I thought you were going to be free,” he said disappointedly.

“You didn’t ask me to be,” she said quickly. “I’ve got to go to a cocktail party. You know, the white and colored nurses’ associations are merged and if a colored member doesn’t show up when she’s invited, they might get the notion that we don’t want to belong.” She frowned and stared off. “Really, I feel out of place in a roomful of whites. I’m afraid I’ll be the only spook there.”

“Guess I’ll catch up on my sleep,” he yawned.

“If that’s all you’ve got to do, come with me to the party. Then I’ll have dinner with you. And I’d feel better if you were with me.”

They hustled out of the bar and drove to the Loop. The party was paralyzingly dull, with Cross and Gladys standing huddled together at one end of a huge, buzzing roomful of people, holding their drinks selfconsciously, watching the others. He was amazed at how uneasy Gladys was in the presence of whites. She’s too conscious of her color, he thought.

“Look, buck up,” he sought to put some backbone in her. “Don’t let the mere existence of these people intimidate you.”

“They think they’re something and we’re nothing,” she snapped.

“It’s up to us to make ourselves something,” he argued. “A man creates himself…”

“You are a man,” she said simply.

He understood now; it was the helplessness of dependence that made her fret so. Men made themselves and women were made only through men.

They had been there only half an hour when Gladys whispered to him: “Let’s get to goddamn hell out of here. They make me sick!”

“Okay,” he assented. “But whites don’t scare me.”

They went straight to a bar on the South Side where Gladys sulked bitterly. He studied her, wondering what memories lay under her mood. Through gentle questioning he stumbled upon it; she had attended a racially mixed school in her adolescence and the snubs and ostracism had branded her with a deep sense of not belonging and a yearning to have her status as an outsider cleared of shame. Her consciousness of being an outcast moved him toward her, enabled him to drape about her a net of tender compassion. Underneath sex and common interests flowed a profounder tide of identity.

After dinner they began to drink in earnest, then they danced in a far South Side night club and it was while holding her in his arms on the dance floor that desire for her leaped in him and it carried an extra urge to bind her to him and make her feel her humanity; he hungered for her as an image of woman as body of woman, but also as a woman of his own color who was longing to conquer the shame imposed upon her by her native land because of her social and racial origin. Gladys finally said that she wanted some fresh air and they went to a little bar on 47th Street where they drank some more. They got quite drunk.

“I ought to be getting in,” Gladys said. “It’s late.”

“Okay. I’ll put the car up and we’ll walk home; is that all right?”

“Anything you do is all right,” she said, her head lolling and her eyes a little glazed.

He took her arm and guided her wandering steps to the car; he kissed her when they were inside and she went limp. But when he attempted to caress her further, she resisted. He put the car in the garage, then walked beside her, his arm about her waist.

“I’m drunk, really drunk,” she said as though talking to herself.

“I am too,” he confessed, chuckling.

It was raining and she began to stumble. Giggling, they supported each other. It was after three o’clock in the morning and they were fairly floating. The rain began to fall in broad, steady sheets and Cross, who wore no hat, let his coat flop open.

“Honey, you’re getting wet,” she said.

“I don’t feel it,” he said.

“But you’ll catch cold!”

“Naw!”

He suggested another drink when they were near the rooming house and she agreed. They had three each. In the vestibule of their building, he kissed her; then, on the landing leading to their rooms, he kissed her again in the stillness and darkness.

Nestling close to him, she mumbled as out of a dream: “I hate white people.”

“Why?”

“They’re mean.”

“Did white people ever bother you?”

“Hell, naw! I wouldn’t let ’em,” she said belligerently.

“Then why do you hate ’em?”

“’Cause they’re different from me. I don’t like ’em even to look at me. They make me self-conscious, that’s why. Ain’t that enough?”

“If you say so, baby. But, listen, I’m not white.”

“That’s what’s so nice about it,” she said drunkenly.

He led her to his room and when he switched on the light she had a fleeting moment of soberness and shook her head, taking an aimless step backward. He tried to kiss her again and she twisted out of reach.

He switched off the light and kissed her and she melted, letting her lips cling fully to his; he carried her to the bed and they slept together in their damp clothes, being too drunk to undress. It was the beginning of the unleashing of a mutual, silent, and intense passion. During the following week, Cross had her in his bed, on the floor, standing up, in the bathroom…She made no demands, imposed no conditions, set no limits; she simply clung to him and when she spoke at all on general topics it was about how good it was to have someone to be with when the whole world was white and she was colored; he could say nothing to her about her color consciousness because he did not know how to handle it. In time he grew to accept it along with her womanness.

Cross’s drunken carousal in the rain gave him pneumonia and Gladys stayed home from her job to nurse him. Quietly and all the time avoiding discussing it, she took total charge of him, created a situation that spelled unconditional surrender. She straightened out his disordered room, sent his piles of soiled linen to the laundry, gave him his penicillin injections, cooked and brought up his food. He accepted it all meekly, gazing up at her in humble gratitude when his fever was over one hundred and four. He had never been so comfortably looked after in all his life.

The climax of their relationship came unexpectedly when the fat, black, religious landlady told Cross that, now that he was well, she could no longer permit Miss Dennis “actually living in your room like that. You know it ain’t decent. I want folks to respect my home”.

He told Gladys and she wept; he held her in his arms till she quieted.

“What must people think of me?” she moaned.

“To hell with that landlady,” Cross said.

“You think the others in the house feel the same way?”

“God, I don’t know.”

“I hope it doesn’t get to my job…”

His head reeled. He had not thought of that.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she told him.

“So; it’s settled.”

“But what are we going to do?” her voice echoed with ringing meanings.

It was the first time he had thought of marriage and it frightened him. But could he abandon her like that? He felt that if he had said that he was through with her, she would have accepted it, humbly. And it made him feel guilty. Well, would he ever find anyone better than she? He studied her face for a moment, then said impulsively to her: “Let’s get married.”

She had wept again. They rented an apartment and were furnishing it when they were married. Gladys had definite ideas about the home and Cross, having none, deferred to her. She argued gently that the thing to do was to buy a house and they did, arranging for the payments to fall due monthly.

The advent of the birth of their first child, a son, Cross, Junior, marked the commencement of protracted trouble. After safely transporting Gladys, who was in violent labor, to the hospital, Cross went out with a picked group of his Post Office cronies—Pink, Joe, and Booker—to stage a celebration which ended for his cronies after seven guzzling hours, but which, for Cross, extended itself for two whole days and nights during which he managed to pick up—he never knew exactly where or how—a brown-skinned girl who encouraged him to continue his “bat” as long as he had money to spend.

As strenuously as he could try, he could never recall quite clearly as to how he had come to bring the girl home with him and he never saw her after that to inquire. He suspected that he had drunkenly decided to do it after his money had run out; he had confused recollections of being ejected from bars for nonpayment of drinks. Before his nonstop carousal, Gladys had tried to reach him by telephoning from the hospital, and worried, she had come home with the baby and a nurse to find Cross unshaven, bleary-eyed and in bed with what Gladys chose to call his “whore”. Gladys’ reaction had been so savage and intense that she had wept for days, refused food, sat in deep moods of depression. Finally she demanded of Cross despairingly: “Aren’t you happy with me?”

“Sure,” he had said lightly, not wanting to think about it.

“Where did you meet the girl?”

“In a bar, I think…” he said vaguely.

“How in God’s name can you pick up a girl in a bar?”

In a nervous rage he had demanded: “Do you want to go? Or do you want me to go? I told you I was drunk, didn’t I?”

Gladys resisted an explanation that enthroned the demonical as a motive for his actions; she sensed the presence of irrational forces that could trample her and her home.

Despite this they remained together, but the naturalness and trust that had characterized their earlier relationship were gone. Cross hoped that Gladys had written off that shameful episode as an unrepeatable aberration which she would forget. But whenever he drank she would fling it at him and, in the end, a slow, mounting resentment rose in him toward her. More and more she sulked and, as he suffered her nagging, he felt increasingly walled off from her; but the more he felt it the more he sought to hide it, and finally there crept into his dealings with her a weird quality of irony. It first manifested itself in an innocent question: How could he help Gladys? And the moment he asked himself that question he knew that he did not love her and perhaps had never loved her…She had become for him an object of compassion. He was now haunted by the idea of riding some way to make her hate him. Her hatred would be a way of squaring their relationship, of curing her of her love for him, of setting her free as well as himself.

One winter when Cross was ill, Gladys nursed him and tried to reestablish over him her old emotional authority. It resulted in another pregnancy from which there issued two more sons, twins this time, Peter and Robert. Gladys had been hopeful, but not for long. Expenses increased and Cross’s salary was squeezed. Gladys now had her hands full while Cross worked extra hours to pull in more money. The house was bedlam, filled with shouting, tumbling children. Cross found it all but impossible to sleep during the day and he became so nervous that Gladys would flare at him: “What are you trying to do? Drive us all out so that you can fill the house with your whores?”

Dating from this period, a wave of self-loathing began to engulf Cross. Each time he realized how much he had lost control of his life, his self-hatred swelled threateningly. He knew himself too well to blame Gladys and he was scrupulous enough to let her know it, which baffled and tortured her all the more. She longed for some simple definition of their troubles that she could grasp. She thought that she was losing her physical appeal for him and she went, without telling him—and submitted to an extraordinarily expensive operation to have her breasts lifted! That more than anything else had depressed Cross, filled him with a compassion mingled with disgust. He had been so stunned by it that he could never discuss it with her.

One afternoon in a bar, dawdling over a drink, he recalled how stunned Gladys had been when she had come home from the hospital with Junior and had found him in bed with the girl. That fantastic happening had now become accepted as an “accident”. Well, why could not another “accident” happen? One so fatal and unique that it would make her remember the last one as a guide by which to interpret it! He was far from planning anything overtly criminal; it was a complicated psychological attack whose consequences would clarify Gladys’ feelings about him. But what on earth could that “accident” be? It would have to be so decisive that she would tell him to go and never come back. He would support her and the children, of course. He sipped his drink idly, turning his wish carefully over in his mind. His self-hate, his aversion for Gladys, his perpetual toying with his own feelings had resulted in there flashing into his mind a confoundingly luminous image. He had it! By God, this was it! It could flow from him as naturally as it could be embraced by her, and it was simple. Though the seed of the idea came from the time when he had brought the girl home, it had only psychological affinities with it. Could he carry it out? It would take cool nerve, insight, timing, and ruthless execution. What decided him was a cynical question: “If I fail, I’ll be no worse off than I am now, will I?”

He finished his nightshift in the Post Office at four o’clock in the morning; then, with his cronies, he went to the SALTY DOG, a bar around the corner from his house, for what they jokingly called a “daycap”, since they slept during the day. At five o’clock he went home for breakfast which Gladys was preparing in the kitchen in her kimono. Afterwards he went directly to bed. But on that morning, he would not stop for his “daycap”; he would go back for his drink after he had done it. Such timing would make his actions seem more normal. Furthermore, his going back to have a drink with the boys would give him an alibi, in case he needed one. Above all, the children should be sound asleep when he did it; he did not want to disturb them in any way.

He decided upon a Friday morning to carry his plan into action. After he left work he detached himself unobtrusively from his friends and went directly home, arriving shortly after four o’clock. Gladys had just gone into the kitchen and was putting a pot of coffee on the gas stove. He walked in and advanced wordlessly upon her, his eyes fastened on her face.

“Oh, good morning, Cross,” she said, glancing at the electric clock on the wall. “You’re early, aren’t you?”

He stood directly in front of her, his eyes unblinking and his face a blank mask.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, backing away a step.

He reached forward and gave her a slap with his open palm, not hard, but stinging and with enough force to send her stumbling backwards into a corner.

“Cross!” her voice was not loud, but charged with shock.

Then for a moment she was still as stone, staring at him, her lips parted, her hands lifted to shield her face. She lay against the wall, her kimono open and showing her full breasts. The sound that came from her now seemed to coincide with her recognition of danger.

“No, no, no…” she spoke in low, clipped words, the inflection of her voice rising.

As he advanced toward her again, her mouth opened slowly and her chest heaved as she sucked in her breath to scream. He roughly seized both of her hands in his left hand and slapped her once more, then stood leering down at her with a twisted face.

“Oh, God!” she screamed. “Don’t kill me, Cross!”

As if pulled by cables of steel, he whirled and walked from the kitchen and out of the front door, hearing Gladys sobbing. He had not uttered a single syllable and the whole assault had taken no more than a minute. When he reached the door of the bar, he stood a moment to collect himself. He saw his pals sitting in the rear; he eased himself toward them and sat down.

“Where did you go, Crossy?” big, fat Joe asked carelessly.

“I was making a phone call,” he said, lighting a cigarette and controlling his hand to keep it from trembling.

They began arguing politics. He spoke with composure, glancing now and then at the clock on the wall, wondering what was happening at home. He was pleased that the children had not heard him. Would she call the police? He doubted it; she would wait and talk to him first. Would she tell the children? He did not think so. Would she go to see his mother? Maybe. Her mind must be in a turmoil…At five-thirty, he said casually: “Well, guys, I’ve got to cut out and get some shut-eye.”

He rose and waved good-bye. Now was the test. If his abrupt, physical attack upon Gladys provoked an immediate storm of reaction, then it would go badly for him; but if she was frantically trying to find some explanation for it, then all might go well. The main strategy was not to let her settle upon any one reason for it, to keep her judgment torturingly uncertain. Everything depended upon how much pretended incredulity he could demonstrate, how much simulated surprise he could convincingly sustain. As he turned into the walk leading to the house, he had a bad moment; a surging impulse made him want to turn about and dodge it all. He shook it off, went to the front door, entered the hallway and went into the bathroom. That had always been his routine and he adhered to it now. As he washed he whistled a tune, not steadily, but in snatches, not like a man intentionally trying to create an impression of carefreeness, but like a man with nothing serious on his mind. There was not a sound of movement in the house. Where was Gladys? Had she funked and fled? No; she would not leave the children…He emerged from the bathroom and went into the kitchen; he knew that she was not there, but he had to act as though he expected to find her frying his bacon and eggs. On the gas stove a blue flame glowed under the coffee pot and the scent of burning metal assailed his nostrils. He went to the stove and saw that the coffee had evaporated from the pot and that the metal around the bottom gleamed red hot. He shut off the gas and looked over his shoulder. That meant that Gladys had quit the kitchen the moment he had left the house. That’s normal…

“Gladys!” he called out quietly, questioningly.

There was no answer. He made for the bedroom, calling again: “Gladys!”

Silence. He opened the bedroom door and asked into the semi-gloom: “Gladys, aren’t you up yet?”

Silence. He hesitated a second, then switched on the wall light. Gladys was huddled on the bed, her eyes black with fear. She was so immobile that at first he thought that maybe she was dead, had died of shock. But, no; he could see her chest slowly rising and falling.

“What’s the matter?” he asked softly.

She did not answer. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her fingers writhed.

“Didn’t you know you left the coffee pot on the fire? All the water boiled out and it was red hot…”

She did not move.

“What’s the matter? Are you ill?” he asked.

He walked toward her and she lunged violently backwards, falling from the bed to the floor, leaving one of her bedroom slippers on the quilt. He stopped, blinked his eyes in simulated bewilderment. He advanced upon her again and Gladys shook her head wildly.

“No, no, no…Don’t hit me, Cross! Don’t…” she whimpered convulsively, barricading her face and head with her elbows.

He stared at her, his mouth drooping open in mock amazement. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Cross,” she sobbed. “I never thought you’d hit me.”

He stepped away from her imperceptibly, as though stunned. “Hit you? What in the world are you talking about?”

He went to her and she shrank, burrowing herself against the wall. He caught hold of her shoulder and she lifted her eyes and stared at him and he returned her stare with make-believe astonishment until her eyes fell.

“What’s the matter, Gladys! You’re shaking! Here, let me put you to bed. I’ll call a doctor…”

He was still holding onto her shoulder and felt a slight lessening of tension in her muscles. Trembling, she allowed him to lead her to the bed and push her gently upon it. She looked at him with eyes filled with shock.

“Lie down and keep still,” he said hurriedly, feigning deep anxiety. “I’ll have the doctor here in a minute. If you felt like that, why didn’t you phone me at the Post Office?”

Delicately he pulled the cover over her, went to the telephone at the bedside, picked it up, dialed the first letter and then glanced at her.

“No, no, no…No, Cross,” she begged; her eyes were pools of bewilderment. She breathed uncertainly. Her gaze fell and her fingers fluttered.

“Now, listen, you’d better have the doctor take a look at you,” he said, play-acting and pitching his voice to a tone of half-command and half-entreaty.

She began to sob again, burying her face in the pillow. He sat on the edge of the bed and patted her shoulder.

“Take it easy. Have you any pains? What’s happened? Where are the children?”

She stared at him again, unable to believe the evidence of her senses. Her head rocked on its neck. Her mouth trembled and she had to move her lips several times before she could speak.

“Why did you do it?” she whimpered. Then she spoke fully, almost rising to a point of objectivity. “Do you hate me that much?”

“Do what?” he asked, replacing the receiver upon the hook of the transmitter. “Hate you? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, God!” she croaked. “You know what you did?”

Fear filled him for a second. She was in her crisis now; would she veer against him or would she still float in indecision?

“You’re dreaming!” he shot at her. “Do you know what you are saying?”

“You hit me…You beat me…What for?” she asked insistently.

“Beat you?” he echoed, as though he had to repeat the word to believe in its reality. His face was the living personification of stupefied surprise. “You are out of your mind. Now, look here, be calm. Tell me what happened.”

Her chest heaved, emptying her lungs; then she looked distractedly about the room like a rat searching for a hole. She was a tiny child hearing a grownup tell a tale that it did not believe, but it dared not challenge that tale because it had no way of successfully disputing it, feeling that its reasoning was not acceptable.

“Cross, you came into the kitchen and knocked me down,” she explained in a low voice.

“You are crazy!” He stood and pretended to look suspiciously about the room. “Who’s been here?”

“You!”

“Good Lord, you’re wild!” He shook his head. “I just left the bar; I went there directly from work and had a drink, like always…Look, get hold of yourself.” He wagged his head, aping bewilderment. “Have you been drinking?”

“Oh, Cross!”

“Listen, if you don’t stop I’ll call the doctor. You’ve got the children to look after,” he copied tones of responsibility.

She stared at him, dumbfounded. Slowly, she shook her head. Yes! The idea was working in her mind. It was coming off much easier than he had thought. But he had to be firm and not retreat from his position.

“When do you think I hit you, Gladys?” he mimicked the compassion of one resolved to be lenient.

“I didn’t imagine it,” she whimpered.

It was working; she was beginning to wonder if what had happened had not been wiped from his memory. Silence followed. The restoration of normality must depend upon his initiative; what had so mysteriously occurred must seem to have been swallowed up in his mind as though it had never transpired; he must not in any way grant it one whit of objective reality.

“Look, kid,” he began kindly, “I know we are not the loving couple one reads about in books. But you mustn’t let our troubles break you down. There’s no sense in brooding ’til you start imagining things. You need a rest…”

She clutched his arm. “Cross, don’t you remember what you did?”

“Darling, really, I hate to say it, but you’re off!”

“I’m sane, Cross,” she said, unable to restrain her tears.

She collected her senses; she was no longer physically afraid; she was fearful of something more menacingly dark than a slap.

“I don’t know what’s happened to you,” he played his role.

“Cross, you remember you hit me,” she moaned.

“I didn’t!” His face pretended to grow hard. “You’re mixed up…Tell me, who’s been here?”

“Nobody,” she breathed.

“Who else saw me come in here?”

“Nobody,” she whispered, her eyes widening with understanding.

“Look, Junior’s coming,” he spoke in a low, rapid voice. “Brace up…You’ll upset ’im.”

“Is it possible?” she asked herself in a despairing whisper.

She pulled herself unsteadily from the bed to the dresser and began arranging her hair with palsied hands. He could see her watching his reflection in the mirror; he had to be careful. She had forgotten her bedroom slipper on the quilt; he got it and held it out to her.

“Here; you better put it on,” he said in a neutral voice.

“Oh,” she said in confusion.

She obeyed him with movements charged with suppressed fear. But when he looked at her she glanced quickly away.

Junior, four years of age, came running in in his pyjamas. “I’m hungry,” he sang, lifting an earnest, brown face to his father.

Cross swept the boy up in his arms and fondled him. Watching Cross out of the corners of her eyes, Gladys went hesitantly from the room to prepare breakfast. Cross burrowed his head playfully into Junior’s stomach and the boy giggled. He was now certain that he could handle it. This was the beginning, the setup; next time would be the pay off.

During the following week, under the cover of anxious solicitude, Cross craftily urged Gladys to see a doctor and she politely refused. A few days later she timidly begged him to see a doctor, telling him that she was certain that what had happened was a recurrence of what he had done with the girl. In a tone of play-acting shock, looking her levelly in the eyes, he scoffed at her interpretation and assured her that he was absolutely sane. He now made it a rigorous rule never to refer to the “accident”; all mention of it had to come from her. And, as time went on, she found it more and more difficult to bring it up; but he knew that the thought of it was continuously hovering in the background of her mind.

One day, puckering up her lips and touching his cheek gently as she spoke—hoping by such a gesture to negate any hint that she thought him insane—she expressed concern that he might harm the children “while in one of your spells”. He patted her shoulder and said soothingly: “Don’t worry, darling. Everything’s all right.” She beseeched him to reduce his drinking, his smoking, to sleep more. She strove to keep more order in the house, chiding the children lovingly not to “make noise and get on poor papa’s nerves”.

He chose Easter Sunday morning for his next attack. He knew that nothing would be further from Gladys’ mind then, for her attention would be involved in buying Easter egg coloring and arranging new clothes for the children’s Easter outing. He worked the night of Easter Eve and went straight home and found Gladys alone in the kitchen; she whirled with fear as he came in, for she knew that he was as early as on that other fateful morning. Again he walked slowly toward her, wordlessly, his facial expression simulating dementia.

“No, no, no…!”

He slapped her resoundingly and she went down like a log.

“Junior!” she yelled. “Somebody help me!”

He stooped and slapped her once more, his face contorted in an imitation of rage; then he turned and rushed out, hurried to the bar and joined Joe, Pink and Booker who had not missed him this time. He sat coolly talking and drinking with them, but his mind was trying to picture what was happening at home. At a little past five he went back, let himself in with his key, and headed as usual to the bathroom to wash up. He lathered his hands and whistled softly. Suddenly he was still, hearing muffled footsteps moving haltingly along the hallway. What’s she doing…? Then all was quiet. He dried his face and hands and when he emerged he did not have to look for Gladys, for there she was at the door, confronting him with his gun, pointing it straight at his heart.

“Cross,” she said heavily, struggling to manage her breathing, “I can’t bear with you another minute. Pack your things and get out, now! You’re crazy, a danger to yourself and others!”

He saw such craven fear in her face that he was afraid that she would lose control of herself and pull the trigger, causing him to die messily in a trap of his own devising.

“My God,” his voice rang with sincerity. “Take it easy…”

His nervousness made Gladys step quickly away from him and wave the gun threateningly.

“If you come near me, I’ll shoot!” she cried. “And I’ll go free, for you’re crazy!”

Her arm trembled and she reached toward him, the gun barrel coming within inches of his right temple.

“Gladys,” he breathed, leaning weakly against a wall. “I can’t get my clothes unless you let me pass.”

“You’re sick, Cross,” she pronounced in neutral, distant tones.

Realizing that she was blocking his path, she stepped cautiously to one side. He went into the bedroom and began to pack. She waited in the doorway, still nervously clutching the gun.

“Gladys,” he ventured to protest.

“Get out!” she ordered in a frenzy.

He packed a suitcase and stood looking at her out of the corners of his eyes. “I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff later—”

“You let me know and I’ll send you your things,” she said. “Don’t ever set foot in this house without first telling me, you hear! If you do, it’ll be dangerous for you.”

“I’ll phone you,” he mumbled.

She held open the front door, still brandishing the gun loosely in her shaking hand. He saw her legs wobbling; he walked over the threshold, sweating, fearing that he would stumble.

“See a doctor, Cross,” she said, slamming the door.

On the sidewalk he paused and saw her peering at him from behind one of the lace window curtains in the living room, still grasping the gun. He walked on and filled his lungs with crisp morning air. It had worked without a hitch.

 

Cross roused himself on the jolting trolley, wiped a clear spot on the sweaty windowpane and saw that he had ridden past Gladys’ place. Good God…He rushed to the front of the car and when it slowed he swung off. As he neared the house his steps faltered. He was doubtful if Gladys would help him, but his predicament was so knotty that he had to try, whatever the outcome. He mounted the steps and paused; his instincts warned him away from this Gladys whom he had made hate him too well. But he had to see her. He pushed the button of the doorbell and almost in the moment of his pushing it, the door flung open and Gladys stood before him, grim, erect. Out of a tightly organized face two deep-set eyes regarded him with composed hate.

“Hello, Gladys,” he mumbled.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said with placid irony. “I watched you creep up the walk like a doomed man. Are you scared of your home now?”

“I want to talk to you about something important,” he told her.

A twisted smile played on Gladys’ rouged lips. “I suppose it’s about Miss Dorothy Powers, hunh?”

Anger flashed through him. No; he had to be calm.

“That’s it, Gladys,” he admitted, forcing a smile.

She stepped to one side and he moved gingerly into the hallway, feeling for the first time intimidated by Gladys. He glanced about apprehensively, his body screaming for a drink to brace him for this ordeal.

“Where’re the kids?” he asked to fill the gaping silence.

“I knew you were coming,” she announced, “so I sent them for the afternoon to the house of a friend of mine.” Her voice was a midnight bell tolling tidings of bad news to come.

He walked into the living room and sat. Gladys followed and stood at the other end of the room and regarded him with hostile eyes. He could feel that she was clamoring for an emotional scene. Well, he would refuse her any such satisfaction. He would be polite, bantering, if possible.

“A young lady visited you this morning, I think,” he said, trying to rid his voice of anxiety.

“You mean that bitch you sent—!” The hot lava of hate leaped out.

“Gladys, I didn’t send anybody here,” he cut in quickly.

“Cross, for God’s sake, why do you insist on being such a crawling coward? You sent her here—”

“I didn’t, I tell you!”

“You’re lying!”

“Gladys, I know how you feel about me—”

“You ought to,” she spat at him. “Do you think you can walk over me? Well, you won’t, ever! You sent that little whore here to beg me…”

He tried to stop listening. It was going worse than he thought. Well, if she wanted to blast Dot, let her. The main thing was the question of divorce.

“There is one thing, by God,” she roared, “that you are going to do! You are going to respect me. You can’t send a filthy, stinking little tart like that to talk to me. You can be sure I gave your bitch a hot welcome, and she won’t forget it, not soon!” Gladys groped for words, her mouth open. “And while I’m on it, let me settle one more question. You’ll not get a divorce. For a rotten slut like her, never! That’s the way I feel and I’m not ashamed of it! If you can be dirty, then so can I! Keep on living with her, but if she asks you to make her respectable, tell her you can’t! Take your Dorothy and fuck her and let her give you a litter of bastards. That’s all she’s fit for, and you, too, it seems! Is that clear?”

Her hysterical tirade made him ashamed for her. The satisfaction she was deriving from it was obscene.

“Look, I’m not going to argue with your feelings,” he clutched at words to stem the tide, striving to be judicious, balanced. “Let’s arrange something. I’m supporting you and the children—”

“And by the living hell, you’ll keep on!”

“Okay. I agree. But your welfare depends on my job—”

He jerked as she burst into a gale of cynical laughter. “So, you’ve been to the Post Office?” she asked. “They put the fear of God into you, hunh? That’s why you came crawling to me…”

Cross froze. Had she already told the postal officials about the possibility of his being convicted of rape? He had come to bargain with her, but if she had already talked, the game was all but lost.

“What are you talking about?” he asked quietly.

“Cross, are you stupid?” There was a mocking pity in her tone. “I must protect myself…That little whore of yours had not been gone from here an hour before my lawyer and I had gone to the Post Office—”

“Why?”

He knew why she had gone, but he wanted to know how far she had gone. Maybe his job was already lost!

Gladys spoke quietly, as though she were a school teacher explaining a complicated problem to a dullard. She came to within a few feet of Cross and sat.

“Cross, you really cannot expect me to think of you and your troubles,” she said. “You’re intelligent and you know what you’re doing. I had to act in my own defense. I went straight to the Postmaster and told him that your Miss Powers was about to charge you with rape—”

“Did she tell you that?” Cross asked, feeling that his chair was whirling him round.

“Of course she did,” Gladys informed him with a smile. “Do you think she’s informing you of her moves against you? The Postmaster knows, of course, that you cannot marry the girl…And if you are convicted, you’re ruined. Now, the Postal Inspector has your case, see?”

Cross had no will to gainsay her; he knew that she was summing up his situation accurately.

“Cross, you must not be naïve,” she continued. “There’s nothing that Miss Powers can do but charge you, unless she’s willing to live with you and bear your child…And I doubt if she loves you that much.” She paused, lit a cigarette, eyeing Cross the while. “Now, there are some rather disagreeable things I must say to you.” She lifted her left hand and with her right hand she pulled down the little finger of her left hand and said: “Number One: You’re signing this house over to me at once. Number Two: You’re signing over the car to me. Number Three: You’re going to the Post Office tonight and borrow eight hundred dollars from the Postal Union on your salary. I’ve already made the arrangements with the Postal Inspector. He’s okayed it. I want that money to clear the titles of both the house and the car.” She stood, lifted her hand to bar his words. “I know you want to say no,” she said. “But you can’t. Cross, understand this: so far as I’m concerned, you’re through! I’m squeezing you like a lemon. If you don’t do what I’m asking, in the morning I shall keep an appointment with Miss Powers. She, I, and her lawyer will go to the 49th Street Police Station and I will help her bring charges against you. I’m not justifying my actions. I’m not apologizing, see? I’m just telling you. That’s how things stand between us, Cross.”

He was willing to sign over everything, but he did not want to borrow the money; it would mean indebtedness for him for two years to come. And he could use that money to try to bribe Dot…

“They may not let me have the money,” he said.

“Mr. Dumb,” she said scornfully, “if the Postal Union thought you were going to be indicted for rape, they’d not let you have the money, for you’d have no job. I led them to believe that the girl would abort the child, that you’d pay her off…I made sure with the Postmaster that your job was safe, and the Postal Union has been told that it’s all right…”

“But the girl can still charge me,” Cross protested without strength. “What game’s this you’re playing?”

“My game,” Gladys said.

“The eight hundred dollars,” he was pleading now, “could keep the girl and I could make payments to you—”

“I don’t give a damn about that girl,” she snapped. “What happens between you and her is your business!”

Gladys was using Dot to drag money from him and at the same time betraying Dot! Cross wanted to close his eyes and sleep this nightmare away.

“If you get eight hundred dollars, you’ll not help the girl?”

“Hell, no! Why should I? Let that bitch rot!”

He was properly trapped. There was nothing more to say. This was a cold and vindictive Gladys created by him. He rose and moved toward the door.

“What’s your answer?” she asked.

“Okay. I’ll get the money. I’ll phone you tonight.”

“Oh, there’s one other thing,” she said, opening the door for him. “Is your life insurance paid up?”

“Hunh?” His voice sounded far away. “Yes; yes…”

“Have you changed the beneficiary?” she asked.

“No; why should I?”

“I just wanted to know,” she said.

He felt as though he were already dead and was listening to her speak about him. He went out and did not glance back. He was so depressed that he was not aware of trampling through the deep snow. About him were sounds that had no meaning. When he came fully to himself, his feet were like two icy stumps. I must have fever…He paused and stared around him. He was tired. Oh, God, I got to get that money for Gladys…He looked about for a taxi. Oh, there’s the “L”…He ran for the entrance, stumbled up the steps of the “L”, fished a dime from his pocket, paid, and rushed to the platform just as a Loopbound train slid to a stop. He found a seat, fell into it, and sat hunched over, brooding.

His seeing Gladys had compounded his problems. If he obeyed her, he was lost; and if he did not obey her, he was lost. Yet, because he could not make up his mind to ditch it all, he had to follow her demands.

Before reaching Roosevelt Road the “L” dipped underground. Cross rose, swaying with the speed of the train, and traversed each coach until he came to the first car whose front window looked out upon a dim stretch of tunnel. He leaned his forehead against the glass and stared at the rushing ribbons of steel rails whose glinting surfaces vanished beneath his feet.

When his station arrived, he got off and went toward the Post Office, a mass of steel and stone with yellow windows glowing, a mass that rose sheerly toward an invisible sky. The night air was still; it had begun to grow a little warmer. It’s going to snow again, he thought idly. Yes, he’d see about the loan right now, but he’d not work tonight. He hungered for sleep. He flashed his badge to the guard at the door and went inside. Where’s that Postal Union office? Yes; there on the right…He pushed open the door and saw Finch, the union secretary, sitting quietly, his hat on, chewing an unlighted cigar and holding a deck of soiled playing cards in his hands. Cross approached Finch’s desk and for a moment they stared at each other. He suddenly hated Finch’s whiteness, not racially, but just because he was white and safe and calm and he was not.

“Damon, hunh?”

“Yes.”

“I was waiting for you,” Finch said. “Sit down.”

Cross obeyed. He did not want to look at Finch; he knew that the man knew his troubles and it made him ashamed; instead, he stared stupidly at the pudgy, soft fingers as they shuffled the cards.

“You look like an accident going somewhere to happen,” Finch commented.

“I’m under the weather,” Cross confessed. “I want to renew that eight-hundred-dollar loan I had last year—”

“Oh, yes.” Finch looked up. “Your wife’s been in.”

White fingers took the cigar from thin lips and a brown stream of tobacco juice spewed into a spittoon. Finch replaced the cigar, chewed it, and settled it carefully again in his jaw.

“You colored boys get into a lot of trouble on the South Side,” Finch gave a superior smile. “You must have a hot time out there every day, hunh?”

Cross stiffened. His accepting Finch’s sneering at his racial behavior was a kind of compound interest he had to pay on his loan.

“Is the loan possible?” Cross asked.

“The Postmaster said it’s all right,” Finch said, finally stacking the cards and flinging them to one side, as though ridding himself of something unpleasant. “Half of my time’s spent taking care of you colored boys…What goes on on the South Side?”

Cross cleared his throat to control himself. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I’m offering my house as security—”

“I’m ahead of you, Damon,” Finch said. “On the strength of your wife’s plea, I’ve had the papers all drawn up. Boy, you’ve got a good wife. You ought to take care of her—”

“I do,” Cross mumbled.

“If you did, you wouldn’t be in this mess,” Finch said. He pushed the contract toward Cross. “Here, sign…”

Cross signed clumsily, his nervousness letting a blob of ink smear blackly across the page. He fumbled with a blotter to soak it up.

“Let me do that,” Finch said, taking the blotter from Cross. “Looks like a chicken with dirty feet ran over this contract.” He handed Cross a carbon copy of the contract, then opened a drawer and pulled forth a sheaf of vouchers. “How do you want this? A check or cash?”

“Cash. I’d like the money tonight.”

“Why not? It’s your money.”

Finch initialed a voucher for cash and flipped it at Cross.

“Okay. Get going,” Finch said, yanking his thumb toward the door.

Cross stood and wanted to spit at the man. He edged forward and opened the door.

“Shut the door when you go out,” Finch called, picking up his deck of cards and beginning to shuffle them again.

“Yes; of course,” Cross said.

He pulled the door softly shut and sighed. Well, that was done. Then he stiffened. One of the Assistant Postmasters was bearing down upon him, his grey eyes intent on Cross’s face.

“Damon, just a moment!”

“Yes, sir,” Cross answered, waiting.

The Assistant Postmaster pointed a forefinger at Cross. “Damon, don’t ever again come to this Post Office on an errand like this. If it hadn’t been for your wife, I wouldn’t touch this stink with a ten-foot pole. Look, you had one loan and paid it. Do the same with this. We’re here to handle the mails, not emotional dramas. Now, this eight hundred ought to settle your little business, hunh?”

“Yes, sir,” he lied; it would only settle the claim of Gladys, but it would not help him with Dot. “Let me explain, sir…”

“Don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know.”

“I’d like the night off, sir,” Cross said. “I’ll take it out of my vacation days.”

“And what other service can I render you?” the Assistant Postmaster asked with mockery.

“I’m ill,” Cross said peevishly.

“You look it,” the Assistant Postmaster said. “Okay. Take it. But I know a guy called Damon who’s going to find the Post Office a hard line to walk from this out.”

Cross bit his lip, turned away and descended the stairs to the cashier’s office of the Postal Union and presented his voucher.

“Cash, eh?” the teller asked, smiling. “What’re you going to do with all that money? Buy the Tribune Tower?”

Cross pretended that he had not heard. He pushed the pile of fifty-dollar bills into his wallet, sought a telephone booth and dialed Gladys.

“I got the money,” he told her.

“I want it first thing in the morning,” she said flatly.

“I’ll bring it by at noon.”

“All right.”

He made for the exit, showed his badge to the guard and stepped into the street. It was snowing again; fat, white flakes drifted lazily down from a night sky. An “L” train rattled past overhead. He sighed, feeling relieved. He had to be careful and not let a pickpocket rob him of the money. He put his badge, the duplicate copy of the loan contract into the pocket of his overcoat and stuffed his wallet into his shirt, next to his skin. His job now was to head off Dot.

Diving into a subway, he paid his fare and, two minutes later, when a train roared up, walked into the first coach and sank into a seat, closing his eyes. The train pulled into motion; he opened his eyes and noticed that another Negro, shabbily dressed, of about his own color and build, was sitting across the aisle from him. The movement of the coach rocked some of the tension out of him, but not enough to let him relax. Restlessness made him rise and go to the front window and stand looking at the twin ribbons of steel rails sliding under the train. A moment later, when the train was streaking through the underground, darkness suddenly gouged his eyes and a clap of thunder smote his ears. He was spinning through space, his body smashing against steel; then he was aware of being lifted and brutally catapulted through black space and, while he was tossed, screams of men and women rent the black air.

Afterwards Cross remembered that when the lights had gone out he had involuntarily blinked his eyes, instinctively feeling that the cause of sudden darkness was some fault of the functioning of his pupils. About him were sounds of ripping metals and then something thumped against his head, sending him to sleep. How long he was unconscious, he did not know. When he was aware of himself again he realized that his body was in a vaguely upright position, but jammed between what seemed like two walls of steel. The right side of his skull was gripped by pain and something wet and warm trickled down a side of his face. His left leg was being wrenched and his right leg was pinioned, crushed to numbness between what seemed like two vices. He groaned. The words: It’s a subway wreck! shaped themselves in his consciousness.

Abruptly the thunder ceased and the only sounds he heard were screams. In the blackness that walled itself before his eyes, Cross was afraid to move. How badly am I hurt? Is it over? He became aware that he was holding his head tucked down to dodge another attack of annihilation. Lifting his eyes he saw far ahead of him a jutting spray of blue electric sparks showering down from somewhere. He had to get out of this, now, NOW…Gingerly, he groped with his fingers and what he touched made him project in terms of images what his fingers felt and he screamed. He imagined he saw the profile of a human face drenched in blood. He snatched his hand away and wiped it dry upon his coat.

He breathed softly, listening: a viscous liquid was slowly falling drop by drop somewhere near him: the whimper of a woman seemed to be issuing from a half-conscious body: a quiet coughing seemed to be trying to dislodge something thick and wet from a sticky throat: an incessant grunt grew fainter and fainter until it was heard no more…

He was calm now, thinking. His lighter must be in his left pants’ pocket. Twisting, he reached for it, felt it with the ends of his fingers. Yes! Purpose gripped him and, squeezing the tips of his fingers together, he caught hold of the lighter and slowly pulled it out. He pushed the lever and a bluish flame shed feeble light amid a welter of topsy-turvy forms. Lines zigzagged and solids floated in shadows, vanishing into meaninglessness; images dissolved into other images and his mind was full of a sense of shifting significances.

He saw that the seats of the train were above his head; the coach had reversed itself, twisted within the tube of the underground and he was standing on the shattered lights of the ceiling. Seats had ripped from the floor and had fallen to the ceiling where he stood.

Cross shut his eyes and bit his lips, his ears assailed by screams. He had to get out of here! He bent lower and looked; a white face with unblinking eyes was wedged at the level of his knees and beneath that face he could make out a dark pool of fluid that reflected the flickering flame of his lighter. He moved the flame over shards of glinting glass and saw again that window and the shower of blue electric sparks still sprinkling down…Yes; he had to get to that window…But his legs…He had to get them free…He bent and looked closer; his right leg was gripped between the steel wall of the coach and a seat that had tumbled from the floor to the ceiling. He pushed at the seat and it would not budge. Again he shoved his weight mightily at the seat. Why didn’t it move? He stooped lower with the light and saw that the seat that jammed his leg to the wall was anchored in place by the man’s head, which, in turn, was rammed by another seat. The man’s face was fronting Cross.

Cross lifted the pressure of his finger from the lever and the flame went out. He thought: That man’s head is keeping this seat from moving…Could he get that head out of his way? He pressed the lever again and looked. He could just reach the man’s head with his right hand. Yes; he had to shove it out of the way. He held the lighter in his left hand, shut his eyes, and felt the palm of his right hand touching the yielding flesh of the man’s face, expecting to hear a protest…He opened his eyes; no breath seemed to be coming from the nostrils or mouth. Cross shuddered. If the man was dead, then any action he took to free himself was right…He held his fingers to the man’s parted lips and could feel no stir of air. For a few seconds he watched the man’s chest and could detect no movement. The man’s dead…But how could he get that head out of his way…? Again he pushed his right hand with all of his strength against the face and it budged only a fraction of an inch. Goddamn…He panted with despair, regarding the man’s head as an obstacle; it was no longer flesh and blood, but a rock, a chuck of wood to be whacked at until it was gone…

He searched vainly in the moving shadows for something to hold in his hand, hearing still the sounds of screams. He felt in his overcoat pocket; the gun was there. Yes…He pulled it out. Could he beat down that foolishly staring face belonging to that head pushing against the seat wedging his leg to the wall? He shut his eyes and lifted the gun by the barrel and brought down the butt, and, even though his eyes were closed, he could see the gun butt crashing into the defenseless face…Sweat broke out on his face and rivulets of water oozed from his armpits.

He opened his eyes; the bloody face had sunk only a few inches; the nostrils, teeth, chin and eyes were pulped and blackened. Cross sucked in his breath; a few more blows would dislodge it. He shut his eyes and hammered again and suddenly he heard a splashing thud and he knew that the head had given way, for his blows were now falling on air…He looked; the mangled face was on the floor; most of the flesh had been ripped away and it already appeared skeletonlike. He had done it; he could move his leg.

Now, he had to free his other leg. Peering with the lighter, he saw that his left leg was hooked under a fallen seat. With his right leg free, he hoisted himself up and saw that he would get loose if he could use his left leg as a ramrod to shove at the seat. Pricked by splinters of glass, he hauled himself upward and perched himself on the back of an overturned seat and, with his left foot, he gave a wild kick against the seat and it did not move. Bracing himself, he settled his heel against the back of the seat, eased his overcoat—which was hindering his movements—down a little from his shoulders, and shut his eyes and pushed against the seat. It fell away. Both of his legs were free. An awful stench filled his nostrils.

He looked toward the gutted window; the blue electric sparks were still falling. From somewhere came a banging of metal against metal, like an urgent warning. That window was the way out. He crept forward over the ceiling of the overturned coach, past twisted and bloody forms, crunching shattered electric bulbs under his feet, feeling his shoes slopping through sticky liquid. He moved on tiptoe, as though afraid of waking the sleeping dead. He reached the window and saw that a young woman’s body had been crushed almost flat just beneath it. The girl was dead, but, if he was to get through that window, he had either the choice of standing upon her crushed body or remaining where he was. He stepped upon the body, feeling his shoes sinking into the lifeless flesh and seeing blood bubbling from the woman’s mouth as his weight bore down on her bosom. He reached for the window, avoiding the jagged edges of glass. Outside the blue electric sparks rained down, emitting a ghostly light. He did not need his lighter now. He crawled through and lowered his feet to the ground. He had to be careful and not step upon any live wires or the third rail…His feet sought for gravel.

He stood for a moment, collecting himself. His head throbbed. When he moved his right leg it pained him. His body was clammy and was trembling. For a moment he felt as though he would lose consciousness, but he remained on his feet. Screams, more distant now, came to his ears. He moved forward in the bluish gloom. Yes, ahead of him were amber lights! He pushed on and could hear distant voices and they were not the voices of the wounded. He had been lucky. I’d better let a doctor look at me…He now realized how fantastically fortunate he had been; had he remained in his seat, he would have been crushed to death…

He picked his way catlike over wooden trestles and then stopped. His overcoat…? Oh, God, he had left it somewhere back in that death-filled darkness, but he could not recall how it had gotten away from him. The gun was still in his pants’ pocket. With stiff and sweaty fingers he lit a cigarette and walked on. From above ground he caught the faint wail of sirens and ahead of him he saw dim traces of light in the circular tunnel. Later he made out blurred, white uniforms and he knew that they were doctors and nurses.

He trudged past overturned coaches whose windows were gutted of glass. He could see doctors and nurses quite clearly now. He heard someone yell: “Here comes another one! He seems all right!”

They had seen him and were running to meet him. A doctor and a nurse caught hold of his arms.

“Are you all right?” the doctor asked.

“I guess so,” he answered out of a daze.

“You are lucky,” the nurse said.

“Get ’im to an ambulance,” the doctor told the nurse. “I want to take a look back here.”

The doctor hurried off into the tunnel of darkness, spotting his way with a flashlight.

“Can you walk all right?” the nurse asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Does anything hurt you?”

“My leg, my right leg…”

“Come along, if you can manage,” she said. “They’ll see about it…What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

She led him toward a group of doctors and nurses who were congregated upon a subway station platform. He saw policemen pouring upon the underground tracks and heard someone shout: “Tell ’em the current’s cut off!”

Cross felt hands lifting him on to the platform, and now another nurse had hold of his arm. About him was a babble of voices. He began to revive, feeling a little more like himself.

“I’m all right now,” he told the nurse.

“But you must go to the hospital and be examined,” the nurse told him. “Come. The ambulance is waiting.”

She led him through a throng of policemen to the sidewalk where masses of excited people clogged the streets. The nurse tried to guide him through the crowd but they were brought to a standstill. A policeman saw them and attempted to help by clearing a path before them.

“That’s one of ’em,” Cross heard someone say. “But he doesn’t seem hurt.”

Cross could see the ambulances now; there were internes with stretchers rushing toward the subway station.

“You can get through now,” the policeman said.

“Look,” Cross told the nurse. “I’ll go and get into an ambulance. I’m all right. Go back and help the others.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” the nurse asked.

“Absolutely,” Cross assured her.

She let go of him and he was alone. He felt fine. He started in the direction of the ambulances. The crowd ignored him. He looked down at his clothes; save for dried blood on his shoes, he was all right. His overcoat had protected him somewhat. He paused. Why in hell should he go to a hospital? He was not wounded, only bruised. What he wanted more than medicine was a good, stiff drink of whiskey. Were the doctors and nurses watching him? He looked around; they were not…And the policeman had disappeared. The hell with it…He crossed the street and peered at his dim reflection in the plate glass window of a clothing store. His eyes were muddy and his face was caked with dirt and dried blood. He mopped at his cheek with his coat sleeve, rubbing it clean. Otherwise, he looked quite normal. Some whiskey would fix me up, he told himself and went in search of a drink.

A fine snow was falling, hanging in the air like a delicate veil. He limped toward Roosevelt Road and found a second-rate bar that had sawdust on the floor and an odor of stale bread and beer. He was glad of the warmth that caressed his face; he had been too preoccupied to notice that he was half-frozen. But what happened to his overcoat? He ordered a double whiskey and thought back over the underground accident. Then he remembered that he must have lost his overcoat when he had climbed atop that overturned seat to free his leg. That was it; he had had to pull his arms out of the coat and had been in such a frenzy that he had forgotten to put it on again. Well, he would buy another one. An overcoat was indeed a small loss in such a holocaust. He fingered the lump at the right side of his head; it was sore, but not serious. A man sure needs luck, he told himself.

The bar was filled with foreign-born working men who did not find his disheveled clothing outlandish. Over his head a loud-speaker blared. He was leaning on his elbow when he heard the radio commentator announce:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. One half hour ago, a Southbound subway train crashed headlong into another Southbound train that had come to a standstill about six hundred yards from the Roosevelt Road Subway Station. The cause of the accident is being investigated. Access to the wrecked trains is difficult because debris has blocked the underground tubes and rescuers are having to cut their way through thick steel beams with acetylene torches. Although it is too early to give any details, it is feared that the loss of life has been heavy. In the immediate area all subway traffic has been suspended. Doctors and nurses have been rushed to the scene of the disaster. Keep tuned to this station for further details.

Cross smiled. How quick they were! Then suddenly he started so violently that the white man drinking next to him drew back in astonishment. That money! He shoved his hand into his shirt…It was there! Thank God…He leaned weakly against the bar. If he had lost the eight hundred dollars, the only thing left for him would have been to jump into the Chicago River.

He paid his bill and hobbled back into the street where snow was still sifting down. Tomorrow at noon he had to see Gladys. And he’d go home now and wash up and then see Dot…He was hungry; yes, he’d first go to a South Side restaurant and have a decent meal. But he would not take a subway. Hell, no…He’d treat himself to something better this time. At a corner he limped into a taxi and called out: “47th and South Park.”

He leaned back and wondered why his life had been spared. Or had it been? To say that he had been “spared” implied that some God was watching over him, and he did not believe that. It was simply the way the dice had rolled. He stretched out his right leg, testing it; the flesh was still sore to the touch, but he could keep on his feet. Funny, that morning he had been ready to blow his brains out, but when his body had been tossed about in that darkness, he had wanted to live.

His postal badge! The loan papers! They too were in the pocket of his overcoat. He’d have to report their being lost the first thing in the morning to the postal officials…The taxi swerved to a curb at 47th and South Park. He paid the driver, limped out, walked through tumbling snowflakes and entered Dug’s, a small restaurant that served the kind of food he liked. He went into the men’s room, washed himself and then examined his face in the mirror. Not bad…He looked as though he had been on a two-day drunk, that was all. He grinned, reentered the restaurant which was almost empty and ordered a steak, fried potatoes, coffee, and ice cream. He took a sip of water, listening to the radio that was going near the front window.

…This is John Harlan speaking. I’m broadcasting from the scene of the subway wreck at Roosevelt Road. It is snowing here and the visibility is rather bad. I have my microphone with me upon the “L” platform and I’m able to see directly down to the subway entrance where doctors, nurses, attendants, and policemen are working frantically to bring the wounded from the underground. The scene is being illuminated by huge spotlights attached to telephone poles. Beyond the subway entrance, stretching far into the street and blocking the traffic, is a crowd of more than five thousand people standing silently in the falling snow. They have been here for almost an hour waiting for news of friends or relatives believed to have been passengers on the ill-fated subway trains that collided with a heavy loss of life more than an hour ago…

I see the internes bringing out another victim. A body is on the stretcher. It is the body of a woman, it seems; yes, I can see her long brown hair…Wait a minute. I’ll see if I can get the police to identify her for us.

So engrossed was Cross in listening that he did not see the waitress when she placed his food before him. They’re acting like it’s a baseball game, he thought with astonishment. He was glad now that he had walked so unceremoniously away from the accident. He surely would not have wanted anybody to blare out his name over the airways as a victim. He shrugged his shoulders. They’ll give us a commercial soon, he thought. The radio commentator resumed:

The name of the last accident victim is: Mrs. Maybelle Broadman of 68 Green Street, Ravenswood Park. She is being taken directly to the Michael Reese Hospital…

Ladies and gentlemen, I see the internes coming out with another stretcher. I can’t tell yet if the victim is a man or a woman, for the stretcher is completely covered. It’s a man…I can tell by the blood-stained overcoat which is draped over the foot of the stretcher…That is the forty-fourth victim taken so far from the wreckage of underground trains. Just a minute; I’ll try to get the identity of the last victim who was brought out…

In spite of himself, his interest was captured by the description of the happenings at the scene of the accident. As he waited for more news, he chewed and swallowed a mouthful of steak and lifted his cup of coffee to his lips.

Ladies and gentlemen, while we are endeavoring to establish the identity of the last man taken from the scene of the subway accident at Roosevelt Road, I’m going to ask one of the eyewitnesses, who was a passenger on the subway train, to say a few words about what he saw and felt when the disaster occurred. I have here at my side Mr. Glenn Williams, a salesman of 136 Rush Street, who escaped with but a few minor bruises. Mr. Williams, could you tell us what happened? Where were you on the train…?

WELL, I WAS IN A COACH TOWARD THE MIDDLE OF THE TRAIN. EVERYTHING SEEMED TO BE GOING ALL RIGHT. I WAS READING THE EVENING PAPER. THE TRAIN WAS FULL. I WAS SEATED. I GUESS WE WERE ABOUT A MINUTE FROM THE ROOSEVELT ROAD STATION, WHERE I WAS TO GET OFF, WHEN A GREAT CRASH CAME AND ALL THE LIGHTS WENT OFF. I FELT MYSELF BEING KNOCKED OFF MY SEAT…

I must interrupt you, Mr. Williams. I’m sorry. Ladies and gentlemen, the police have just informed me of the identity of the last victim taken from the subway crash at Roosevelt Road. His name is Cross Damon, a 26-year-old postal clerk who lived at 244 East 57th Street on the South Side. Mr. Damon’s body was crushed and mangled beyond recognition or hope of direct identification. His identity has been established, however, by his overcoat, private papers, and his post office badge…His body is being taken directly to the Cook County Morgue. Relatives must address all inquiries there…

Now, Mr. Williams, will you kindly…?

Cross was still holding the cup of coffee in his right hand, his fingers tense upon the handle. He stared, stupefied. What? He half stood, then sat down again. Good God! He…dead? He had a wild impulse to laugh. The damn fools! They were really crazy! Well, it was his overcoat that had led them wrong… Yes, that was it. He ought to phone them right now! He looked around the restaurant; except for himself, the place was now empty of customers. That tall, black girl who had been eating in the corner had gone…Dug, the proprietor who knew him, was not there. The waitress was a new one and he did not know her and she did not know him. He saw her watching him curiously. She must think I’m loony, he thought.

“Is there anything wrong, sir?”

He did not answer. This was rich! He was dead! He had to tell this to the gang at THE SALTY DOG, right now! Old Doc Huggins would die laughing…

“Is the food all right, sir?”

“Hunh? Oh, yes. Look, what do I owe you?”

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“No. I’ve forgotten something. I got to go at once…”

“Well, sir. It’s one seventy-five. You see, even if you don’t eat, they had to prepare it. We can’t serve that food to anybody else, sir, you know. So you’ll have to pay…”

“That’s all right. Here,” he said, tossing her two one-dollar bills.

He hurried out into the spinning snow and headed for THE SALTY DOG. This was the damndest thing! It was even more freakish than his having escaped alive from the subway accident itself. When he reached the corner, some force jerked his body to an abrupt halt amidst the jumping snow. He was stunned and shaken by the power of an idea that took his breath away and left him standing open-mouthed like an idiot amid the crazy flakes.

He was dead…All right…Okay…Why the hell not? Why should he refute it? Why should he deny it? He, of all the people on earth, had a million reasons for being dead and staying dead! An intuitive sense of freedom flashed through his mind. Was there a slight chance here of his being able to start all over again? To live a new life? It would solve every problem he had if the world and all the people who knew him could think of him as dead…He felt dizzy as he tried to encompass the totality of the idea that had come so suddenly and unsought into his mind, for its implications ramified in so many directions that he could not grasp them all at once. Was it possible that he could somehow make this false account of his death become real? Could he pull off a thing like that? What did one do in a case like this? These questions made him feel that the world about him held countless dangers; he suddenly felt like a criminal, and he was grateful for the nervous flakes of snow which screened his face from the eyes of passersby. Oh, God…He had to sit down somewhere alone and think this thing out; it was too new, too odd, too complicated. How could he let them go on believing that he was dead? But suppose later they found out that the body that they had dragged from the wreckage was not his? What then? Well, could he not hide away for a few days until they had made up their minds? If they buried that body as the body of Cross Damon, then he was dead, really, legally, morally dead. Had any of his friends seen him since he had come up out of the subway? No, not one. And no one had known him at the subway station. No doubt that doctor and those nurses had already, in their excitement, forgotten that they had ever seen him. He was certain that no one he knew had seen him in that dingy bar on Roosevelt Road. And if he was really serious about this, then he ought not go into THE SALTY DOG. What wild luck! And Dug had not been in! And that waitress was new and could not have known him from Adam…!

Then, if he was to do this thing, no one who knew him must see him now…From this moment on he had to vanish…Hide…Now! And his mother must not see him…And Dot must not see him…Gladys must be led to believe that he was dead…His sons…? Good God…Doing this meant leaving them forever! Did he want to do that? He had to make up his mind…Well, they were not close to him as it was; so leaving them was merely making final and formal what had already happened. And how was Gladys to live? Ah, she’d get his insurance money, ten thousand dollars! His cheeks felt hot. Gladys would be taken care of. And no doubt his old mother would now swallow her pride and go and live with Gladys. And the stern logic of Dot’s position would force her to have the child aborted…He trembled, looking about him in the snow-scattered street, his eyes smouldering with excitement. A keen sensation of vitality invaded every cell of his body and a slow, strange smile stole across his lips. It was as though he was living out a daring dream. If, after hiding away for a few days, they discovered that that body was not his, why, he could always come forth and say that the accident had wounded him in such a way that he had temporarily lost his memory! That would be his alibi…And were not such claims being made every day? He had often read of cases of amnesia…It might work. Why not? It was surely worth trying. What had he to lose? His job. It was already compromised by Dot’s possible accusations against him. And only tonight he had signed an obligation to pay a debt that would take him two years to discharge…And if he were dead, all of that would be at an end!

All right; what next? He could not plot or plan this by talking it over with anybody. He would have to sit down alone and figure this thing out carefully. And he had to keep shy of those sections of the city where he might meet people who knew him. Where could he go? Yes, down around 22nd Street, the area of the bums and whores and sporting houses…And he had eight hundred dollars in cash in his shirt next to his skin! Holy Moses! It all made sense! This eight hundred dollars would be his stake until he could launch himself anew somewhere else…It all fitted…He would be a damn fool if he did not try it. All of his life he had been hankering after his personal freedom, and now freedom was knocking at his door, begging him to come out. He shivered in the cold. Yes, he had to go to his room and get his clothes…But, no…Someone would surely see him. He could not take that chance. Funny, it was hard to think straight about this. He had to break right now the chains of habit that bound him to the present. And that was not easy. Each act of his consciousness sought to drag him back to what he wanted to flee.

He had to act, NOW! Each second he stood here like this made it more dangerous for him to do what he wanted. Yet he remained standing as though some power over which he had no control held him rooted. His judgment told him to move on, and yet he stood. Already he felt like the hunted. Waves of realization rolled through him: he had to break with everything he had ever known and create a new life. Could he do it? If he could conceive of it, he should be able to do it. This thing suited his personality, his leanings. Yes, take a taxi to 22nd Street…No, the driver might remember him; the South Side was a small place. The subway…? No, he might meet another postal clerk. He would walk over to State Street and take a trolley northward to 22nd Street. He was not likely to meet anybody in that direction.

At last he moved through the shaking flakes of snow. If it did not work, he could explain it all away. But, by God, it had to work. It was up to him to make it work. He was walking fast, caught up in a sense of drama, trying to work out a new destiny.

He recalled now the other Negro passenger on the train who had sat across the aisle opposite him; the man had been about his own general build, size, and color. What had happened was simple; they had mistaken that man’s body for his own! The body had been so disfigured that direct identification had been impossible, and, when they had found his overcoat with his postal badge and the contract papers in the pocket, they had leaped to the conclusion that it was the body of Cross Damon. Would anyone demand that that body be subjected to further examination to determine if it was really his? The insurance company? But why would they do that unless somebody put the idea in their heads? Would Gladys? Hell, no…She would be content to get the ten thousand dollars of insurance money and probably some more money from the subway company. Dot? She would not know what to do. His mother? Poor Mama…She’ll just think that God has finally paid me off, he mused.

He seethed with impatience; he was both scared and glad, yearning to find shelter before meeting anyone he knew. Anxiety now drove a sharp sense of distance between him and his environment. Already the world around him seemed to be withdrawing, and he could feel in his heart a certain pathos about it. There was no racial tone to his reactions; he was just a man, any man who had had an opportunity to flee and had seized upon it. He was afraid of his surroundings and he knew that his surroundings did not know that he was afraid. In a way, he was a criminal, not so much because of what he was doing, but because of what he was feeling. It was for much more than merely criminal reasons that he was fleeing to escape his identity, his old hateful consciousness. There was a kind of innocence that made him want to shape for himself the kind of life he felt he wanted, but he knew that that innocence was deeply forbidden. In a debate with himself that went on without words, he asked himself if one had the right to such an attitude? Well, he would see…

He took a northbound trolley on State Street and pushed his way apprehensively into the packed crowd and stood swaying. Was there anything in his manner that would attract attention? Could others tell that he was nervous, trying to hide a secret? How could one act normally when one was trying to act normally? He caught hold of a strap and, his shoulders jostling others, rocked with the motion of the trolley.

He began to see that this project of deception he had taken upon himself back there in the winging snow of the street was much bigger than he had realized. It was a supreme challenge that went straight to the very heart of life. What was he to do with himself? For years he had been longing for his own way to live and act, and now that it was almost his, all he could feel was an uncomfortable sense of looseness. What puzzled him most was that he could not think of concrete things to do. He was going to a cheap hotel in order to hide for a few days, but beyond that he had no ideas, no plans. He would have to imagine this thing out, dream it out, invent it, like a writer constructing a tale, he told himself grimly as he watched the blurred street lamps flash past the trolley’s frosted window.

As he neared 22nd Street he edged forward through the crowd, keeping his head down to conceal his face. He swung off and shivered from the penetrating dampness that bit into his bones. He was still limping, thinking: I got to find a hotel now…But…Who was he? His name? Age? Occupation? He slowed his feet. It was not easy to break with one’s life. It was not difficult to see that one was always much, much more than what one thought one was. His past? What was his past if he wanted to become another person? His past had come to him without his asking and almost without his knowing; at some moment in the welter of his spent days he had just simply awakened to the fact that he had a past, and that was all. Now, his past would have to be a deliberately constructed thing. And how did one go about that? If he went into a hotel they would ask him his name and he would not be able to say that he was Cross Damon, postal clerk…He stood still in the flood of falling snow. Question upon question bombarded him. Could he imagine a past that would fit in with his present personality? Was there more than one way in which one could account for one’s self? His mind came to a standstill. If he could not figure out anything about the past, then maybe it was the future that must determine what and who he was to be…The whole hastily conceived project all but crumpled. Maybe this dream of a new life was too mad? But I ought to be able to do this, he told himself. He liked the nature of this dare; there was in it something that appealed to him deeply. Others took their lives for granted; he, he would have to mold his with a conscious aim. Why not? Was he not free to do so? That all men were free was the fondest and deepest conviction of his life. And his acting upon this wild plan would be but an expression of his perfect freedom. He would do with himself what he would, what he liked.

He did not have to decide every detail tonight; just enough had to be fabricated in order to get a hotel room without rousing too much suspicion. Later, he would go into it more thoroughly, casting about for who he was or what he wanted to be.

He went into an ill-lighted tavern that reeked of disinfectant and sat in a rear booth and listened to the radio pour forth a demonical jazz music that linked itself with his sense of homelessness. The strains of blue and sensual notes were akin to him not only by virtue of their having been created by black men, but because they had come out of the hearts of men who had been rejected and yet who still lived and shared the lives of their rejectors. Those notes possessed the frightened ecstasy of the unrepentant and sent his feelings tumbling and coagulating in a mood of joyful abandonment. The tavern was filled with a mixture of white and black sporting people and no one turned to look at him. He ordered a beer and sat hunched over it, wondering who he would be for the next four or five days until he left for, say, New York. To begin his new life he would relive something he knew well, something that would not tax too greatly his inventive powers. He would be a Negro who had just come up fresh from the Deep South looking for work. His name? Well…Charles…Charles what? Webb…Yes, that was good enough for the time being. Charles Webb…Yes, he had just got in from Memphis; he had had a hard time with whites down there and he was damn glad of being in the North. What had he done in Memphis? He had been a porter in a drugstore…He repressed a smile. He loved this

When he went out he bought a stack of newspapers to keep track of developments in the subway accident. He searched for a hotel, the cheaper and more disreputable the better. If there was the slightest doubt about his being dead, he would come forth with a story to square it all; but if all sailed smoothly, he was free.

He came finally to an eight-story hotel with tattered window shades and bare light bulbs burning in the lobby. The hotels in this district were so questionable that they rarely drew a color line. Next door was a liquor store in which he bought a bottle of whiskey. He entered the hotel and a short, fat white woman studied him appraisingly from behind a counter.

“I’m looking for a room,” he said. “A single.”

“For how long?”

“Maybe a week.”

“You got any luggage?”

“No’m. Not with me.”

“Then you have to pay in advance, you know.”

“Oh, yes’m. I can do that. How much is it?”

“One-fifty a night. I’ll put you on the top floor. But no noise in the room, see?”

“I don’t make any noise,” he told her.

“They all say that,” she commented, sliding him a sheet of paper. “Here; fill that out.”

He answered the questions, identifying himself as Charles Webb from Memphis. When he returned the form to her, she pointed to the bottle he had under his arm.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t care what you do in your room, but I don’t want any trouble, see? Some people get drunk and hurt others.”

“Lady, I never really hurt anybody in my life but myself,” he told her before he realized what he was saying.

The woman looked at him sharply; she opened her mouth to reply, but thought better of it. He knew that that had been a foolish thing to say; it was completely out of character. He had to be careful.

“Come on,” the woman said, leading him down a narrow hallway to a skinny Negro with a small, black face who stood in a tiny elevator and eyed Cross sullenly.

“Take this man up to room 89, Buck. Here’s the key,” the woman ordered.

“Yes’m,” Buck sang.

He rode up with Buck who weighed him with his eyes. Cross knew that a bundle of newspapers and a bottle of whiskey were not the normal accoutrements of a Negro migrant from Memphis. He would have to do better than this. Five minutes later he was settled in his garishly papered room which had the white lip of a stained sink jutting out. The floor was bare and dirty. He lay across the lumpy bed and sighed. His limbs ached from fatigue. The hard light of the bare electric bulb swinging from the smoky ceiling stung his eyes; he doubled a piece of newspaper and tied it about the bulb to reduce the glare. He opened the bottle and took a deep swig.

Undoubtedly Gladys had now heard about his being dead. How was she taking it? He was perversely curious to know if she was sorry. And, Good God, his poor old mother! She had always predicted that he would end up badly, but he had presented her with a morally clean way of dying, a way that would induce even in his enemies a feeling of forgiving compassion. And Dot…? She would find out through the newspapers or over the radio. He could almost hear Myrtle telling Dot that she had the worst luck of any girl in the whole round world…He was foolishly toying with the idea of trying to disguise his voice and calling Dot on the telephone when he fell asleep…

Late the next morning, Cross awakened with a pale winter sun falling full into his eyes. He lay without moving, staring dully. Was this his room? Around him was a low murmur of voices and the subdued music of radios coming from other rooms. His body felt weak and he could not quickly orientate himself. He swung his feet to the floor, kicking over the whiskey bottle. For a moment he watched the bubbling liquid flow; then he righted the bottle, corked it, and the action helped to bring back in his mind the events of last night. He had quit, run off; he was dead.

He yearned for just one more glimpse of his mother, his three sons; he hungered for just one last embrace with Dot…But this was crazy. Either he went through with this thing or he did not; it was all or nothing. He was being brought gradually to a comprehension of the force of habit in his and others’ lives. He had to break with others and, in breaking with them, he would break with himself. He must sever all ties of memory and sentimentality, blot out, above all, the insidious tug of longing. Only the future must loom before him so magnetically that it could condition his present and give him those hours and days out of which he could build a new past. Yes, it would help him greatly if he went to New York; other faces and circumstances would be a better setting out of which to forge himself anew. But first he had to make sure that he was dead…

He washed himself and mulled over his situation. When a man had been born and bred with other men, had shared and participated in their traditions, he was not required of himself to conceive the total meaning or direction of his life; broad, basic definitions of his existence were already contained implicitly in the general scope of other men’s hopes and fears; and, by living and acting with them—a living and acting he will have commenced long before he could have been able to give his real consent—,he will have assumed the responsibility for promises and pledges made for him and in his name by others. Now, depending only upon his lonely will, he saw that to map out his life entirely upon his own assumptions was a task that terrified him just to think of it, for he knew that he first had to know what he thought life was, had to know consciously all the multitude of assumptions which other men took for granted, and he did not know them and he knew that he did not know them. The question summed itself up: What’s a man? He had unknowingly set himself a project of no less magnitude than contained in that awful question.

He looked through the newspapers, finding only more extended accounts of what he had heard last night on the radio. For the latest news he would have to buy today’s papers. Yes; and the Negro weekly papers would be upon the newsstands in the Black Belt neighborhoods tonight or in the morning. They would tell the tale; they would carry detailed stories of all Negroes who had been involved in the accident.

He spent the morning shopping for an overcoat and other necessities in a poor West Side working class district where he was certain that he would not encounter any of his acquaintances. He prodded himself to be frugal, for he did not know what the coming days would bring. How would he spend his time? Yes; he would lay in a pile of good books…No. What the hell was he thinking of? Books? What he had before him was of far more interest than any book he would ever buy; it was out of realities such as this that books were made. He was full of excitement as he realized that eventually he would not only have to think and feel this out, but he would have to act and live it out.

The relationship of his consciousness to the world had become subtly altered in a way that nagged him uneasily because he could not define it. His break with the routine of his days had disturbed the tone and pitch of reality. His repudiation of his ties was as though his feelings had been water and those watery feelings had been projected by his desires out upon the surface of the world, like water upon pavements and roofs after a spring rain; and his loyalty to that world, like the sun, had brightened that world and made it glitter with meaning; and now, since last night, since he had broken all of the promises and pledges he had ever made, the water of meaning had begun to drain off the world, had begun to dry up and leave the look of things changed; and now he was seeing an alien and unjustifiable world completely different from him. It was no longer his world; it was just a world…

He bought a tiny radio and went back to his hotel room. He was so spent from yesterday’s exertions that he slept again. In the late afternoon there was a soft tapping upon his door and he awakened in terror. Who was it? Had somebody tracked him down? Ought he answer? He tiptoed to the door in his stockinged feet and stooped and peered through the keyhole. It was a woman; he could see the falling folds of a polka dot dress. The landlady? The knock came again and he saw a tiny patch of white skin as the woman’s hand fell to her side. She was white…

He made sure that his gun was handy, then scampered back to bed and called out sleepily: “Who is it?”

“May I speak to you a moment?”

It was a woman’s voice. He hesitated, opened the door, and saw a young white girl of about eighteen standing before him.

“Gotta match?” she asked, lifting a cigarette to her mouth and keeping her eyes boldly on his face.

He caught on; she was selling herself. But was she safe? Was she stooling for the police?

“Sure,” he said, taking out his lighter and holding the flame for her.

“You’re new here,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I got in last night.”

“So I heard,” she smiled.

“Seems like news travels pretty fast around here.”

“Pretty fast for those who wanna find out things,” she said.

She had black, curly hair, bluish-grey-green deep-set eyes, was about five feet two in height and seemed to weigh around a hundred and five or six pounds. Her breasts were ample, her legs large but shapely; her lips were full but over-rouged and she reeked of too much cheap perfume.

“Having fun in the city, Big Boy?” She arched her eyebrows as she spoke, then looked past him into the interior of his room.

Ought he bother with her? He wanted to, but his situation was too delicate for him to get mixed up with this fetching little tart. Yet he was suddenly hungry for her; she was woman as body of woman…

“I don’t know anybody around here yet,” he said.

“Are you stingy with that fire water?” she asked, nodding toward his whiskey bottle sitting on the night table.

“Naw,” he laughed, making up his mind.

She entered slowly, glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes as she went past; he followed the movements of her body as she walked to the center of the room and sat, crossing her legs and tossing back her hair and letting her breasts take a more prominent place on her body. He closed the door and placed the bottle between them.

“What do they call you?” he asked, pouring her a drink.

“Jenny,” she said. “You?”

“Charlie, just Good-Time Charlie,” he said, laughing.

He saw her looking appraisingly about the room. “Traveling light, hunh?”

“Just passing through,” he said. “Heading west.”

She sipped her drink, then rose and turned on his radio; dance music came and she stood moving rhythmically. He rose and made dance movements with her, holding her close to him, seeing in his mind the sloping curves of her body.

“Want to spend the afternoon with me?” he asked.

“Why not?”

“Look, baby, seeing this is not the Gold Coast, what do you want?”

“I got to pay my rent,” she said flatly.

“The hell with that,” he told her. “How much do you want? That’s all I asked you.”

“I want five,” she said at last.

“I’ll give you three,” he countered.

“I said five, you piker—”

“I said three, and you can take it or leave it; I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Okay,” she said, shrugging.

“Let’s drink some more.”

“Suits me.”

When the dance music stopped she turned off the radio, pulled down the window shade, and rolled back the covers of the bed. Wordlessly, she began to undress and he wondered what she was thinking of. Clad in nylon panties, she came to him and held out her hand. Her breasts were firm and the nipples were pink.

“I’ll take it now, baby,” she said.

“But why now?” he demanded.

“Listen, I’m selling; you’re buying. Pay now or nothing doing,” she said. “I know how men feel when they get through.”

Cross laughed; he liked her brassy manner. Nobody taught her that; sense of that order was derived only through experience. He handed her three one-dollar bills which she put into the pocket of her dress, looking at him solemnly as she did so. She pulled off her panties and climbed into bed and lay staring vacantly.

“They could paint this damn place,” she said matter-of-factly.

“What?” he asked, surprised, looking vaguely around the room.

“They could paint that ceiling sometime,” she repeated.

Cross studied her, then laughed. “Yes; I guess they could,” he admitted.

“You’re not from Memphis,” she said suddenly.

He whirled and glared at her, a sense of hot danger leaping into his throat. Did she know something or was she merely guessing? Was he that bad an actor? If he had thought that she was spying on him, he would have grabbed the whiskey bottle and whacked her across the head with it and knocked her cold and run…Naw, she’s just fishing, he told himself. But I got to be careful…So shaken were his feelings by sudden dread that he did not want to get into bed with her.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“You don’t talk like it,” she said, puffing at her cigarette.

He relaxed. It was true that his accent was not completely of the Deep South. He drew upon the bottle to stifle his anxiety and when he took her in his arms he did not recall the fear that had scalded him. She responded so mechanically and wearily that only sheer physical hunger kept him with her. The edge gone from his desire, he lay looking at her and wondering how a woman so young could have achieved so ravaged a sense of life. His loneliness was rekindled and he lit a cigarette and grumbled: “You could have at least tried a little.”

“You’re not from Memphis,” she said with finality.

“You’re dodging the point,” he reminded her with anger in his voice. “I said that you could at least pretend when you’re in bed.”

“You think it’s important?” She looked cynically at him. “What do you want for three dollars?”

“You agreed to the price,” he said brusquely.

“Hell, that’s nothing,” she said casually, squinting her eyes against the smoke of her cigarette. “I might’ve done it for nothing. Why didn’t you ask me?”

She was fishing around to know him and he did not want it. He washed and dressed while she still lolled in the nude on his bed, her eyes thoughtful. He should not act now with these girls as he used to; things were changed with him and he had to change too. And she was taking her own goddamn time about leaving. Resentment rose in him as he realized that he had made less impression on her physical feelings than if he had spat into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls…

“Haven’t you got something to do?” he asked her.

“I can take a hint,” she said pleasantly, rolling off the bed and getting into her panties.

“Be seeing you,” she said after she had dressed.

“Not if I see you first.”

“You’ll be glad to see me if you’re in a certain mood,” she said; she touched him under the chin with her finger and left.

He lay on the bed, feeling spiteful toward even the scent of her perfume that lingered on in the room. He rose, opened the window wide, let in a blast of freezing air, and peered over the edge of the sill, his sight plunging downward eight floors to the street where tiny men and women moved like little black beetles in the white snow. I wouldn’t like to fall down there, he thought aimlessly and turned back into the room, closing the window.

He went down for lunch and got the afternoon newspapers. The final list of the dead was over one hundred, making the accident the worst in Chicago’s history. The mayor had appointed a committee to launch an investigation, for the cause of the tragedy was still obscure. The Herald-Examiner carried two full pages of photographs of some of the dead and Cross was pricked by a sense of the bizarre when he saw his own face staring back at him. He knew at once that Gladys had given that photograph to the newspapers, for she alone possessed the batch of old snaps from which it had been taken. By God, she really believes it, he thought with wry glee.

Then anxiousness seized him. If Jenny saw that photograph, would she not recognize him? He studied the photograph again; it showed him wearing football togs, sporting a mustache, and his face was much thinner and younger…No; Jenny wouldn’t recognize him from that…

Early that evening the snow stopped falling and Chicago lay white and silent under huge drifts that made the streets almost impassable. Cross was glad, for it kept down the number of pedestrians and lessened his chances of being seen by anyone he knew. Near midnight he went to 35th Street and bought a batch of Negro weeklies and rushed back to his room, not daring to open them on the street or in the trolley. There, on the front pages, were big photographs of himself. His funeral had been set for Monday afternoon at 3 P.M. at the Church of the Good Shepherd. He laughed out loud. It was working like a charm! He wondered vaguely, while downing a drink, just how badly mangled his body was supposed to have been. Then he saw the answer; an odd item in the Chicago Defender reported:

Subway officials stated that the body of Cross Damon had been so completely mangled that his remains had to be scooped up and wrapped in heavy cellophane before they could be placed in a coffin.

He giggled so long that tears came into his eyes.

A little after two o’clock that morning, when the snow-drenched streets were almost empty, he took a trolley to the neighborhood of his wife. He was afraid to loiter, for he was well-known in this area. From a distance of half a block he observed his home: lights were blazing in every window. She’s got a plenty to do these days, he said to himself, repressing a desire to howl with laughter. But as the faces of his three sons rose before him, he sobered. He was never to see them again, except like this, from a distance. His eyes misted. They were his future self, and he had given up that future for a restricted but more intense future…

He went next to 37th and Indiana Avenue and crept into a snow-choked alleyway back of Dot’s apartment building and figured out where her window would be. Yes, it was there, on the third floor…A light burned behind the shade. Was Dot really sorry? Had she wept over him? Or had her weeping been over her own state of unexpected abandonment? The light in her window went out suddenly and he wondered if she was going to bed. He hurried around to the street, watching like a cat for passersby, and secreted himself in a dark doorway opposite the entrance of the building in which she lived. Half an hour later he saw Dot and Myrtle come out, moving slowly through the snow and darkness with their heads and shoulders bent as under a weight of bewildered sorrow. He noticed that Myrtle was carrying a suitcase. Yes, Dot was no doubt on her way to see a doctor about the abortion. Only that could account for their having a suitcase with them. He could not have arranged things so neatly if he had really tried dying for real!

The next morning was Sunday and it was clear and cold, with a sharp, freezing wind sweeping in over the city from Lake Michigan. He felt driven to haunt the neighborhood of his mother. How was she taking his death? Her lonely plight saddened him more than anything else. She lived in an area that did not know him and he waited in a bar near a window to get a glimpse of her as she left for church. His overcoat was turned up about his chin and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. He smoked, toyed with a glass of beer, keeping his eyes hard upon the entrance of her house. True enough, at a quarter to eleven she came out, dressed in black, her face hidden by a veil, and picked her way gingerly over the deep snow toward her church some two blocks away. Cross felt hot tears stinging his cheeks for the first time since his childhood. He longed to run to her, fall on his knees in the snow and clasp her to him, begging forgiveness. His poor, sad, baffled old Mama…But if he went to her, she would collapse in the snow and might well die of the shock.

His worry that something might go wrong with his burial was what kept Cross awake the whole of the Sunday night before his funeral. Had there been no inquiries about the Negro’s body that they had mistaken for his own? Who had that man been? Would his family come forward at the last moment and ask questions? Maybe his wife would claim the body? In fact, anybody’s raising a question would endanger his whole plan. But perhaps no one had known that the Negro had been on the train. As he recalled now the man had seemed rather shabbily dressed. Perhaps the man’s wife, if he had had a wife, thought that he had run off. Cross chided himself for worrying. In the minds of whites, what’s one Negro more or less? If the rites went off without someone’s raising a question, then he would consider the whole thing settled.

Monday morning was bright and cold; the temperature dipped to ten below zero. Gusts of wind swept in from Lake Michigan, setting up swirling eddies of powdered snow in the quiet streets. Cross stood moodily at his window and stared out at the frozen world, occupied with the question of how he was to spy on his burial. The Chicago World had reported that his body had been laid out at the Jefferson Resting Home and that “his postal colleagues and a host of friends” had sent numerous floral wreaths; his death had been referred to as a “great loss to the South Side community”. He felt that if he could get a sneaking glimpse of Gladys and the funeral procession, he would feel certain in judging how soundly his death had been accepted. Spying upon the church was easy; he had, late one night, rented a top floor room in the building opposite the church, identifying himself to the old black landlady as John Clark, a student visiting Chicago as a tourist for a week. He had already made two visits to the room, bowing respectfully to the landlady, and had observed the church at leisure.

A little after ten that morning, just after he had returned from breakfast, Jenny came to see him and her manner was so friendly that one would have thought that she had known him for years. Cross was decidedly in no mood for her company, fearing that she might ask him where he was going when he was ready to leave to spy on his last rites.

“I got the blues today,” he growled at her.

“Maybe I can cheer you up,” she chirped, seating herself even though he had not asked her to. There was something in her manner that warned him to be on guard. She had a mouthful of chewing gum.

“Nothing to drink this morning?” she asked.

“Empty pocket, empty bottle,” he lied.

“What kind of work did you do in Memphis?” she asked.

“Why in hell do you want to know that?” he demanded.

“Just curious, that’s all,” she answered innocently, chewing vigorously. “Something tells me you got some money.”

“Yeah; I opened the safe with a bar of soap and got a million bucks,” he joshed her. “Now tell me, are you working for the police?”

She paled. Her jaws stopped moving. Then she said: “Well, I never…!”

“Then why in hell do you keep on questioning me?”

“You are scared of something!” she exclaimed.

She had trapped him so neatly that he wanted to slap her. Yet he knew that it was he who had betrayed his fear and made her suspicious of him. He decided that she was honest; but honest or not, he could not use her. Her present attitude might be buttressed by good faith, but she was tough and if she found out that he had something to conceal, might she not blackmail him?

“Look—Why don’t you tell Jenny about your troubles? Maybe we can team up together,” she said seriously.

“Forget it, Jenny. You’ll save yourself time.”

“You’re in no mood for talking today,” she said, rising. “See you when you’re feeling better.”

She let herself out of the room and he sat brooding. Maybe he ought to play safe and move? Was Jenny stooling for the police? But he had no criminal record and even if the police should question him, there was nothing they could pin on him. He had only a day to wait; he would remain where he was. Later, after the descent of the catastrophe, he wondered why he had not acted upon his sense of foreboding and moved…

It was nearing two o’clock when Cross, filled with trepidation, took a trolley to the South Side. He found himself being irresistibly drawn to Gladys’ home and, rashly, he boarded an “L” that passed in sight of the house and rode back and forth, snatching a quick glimpse of the front door each time the train sped past. He would ride a station past the house in one direction, get off, traverse the footbridge, and ride past the house again in the other direction to the station beyond it, get off again and return. It was not until nearly two-thirty that he saw any signs of life; the front door opened and Gladys and his mother—both dressed in deep black—came out upon the sidewalk and stood in the snow. Junior, Peter, and Robert followed, being led by a distant cousin of Gladys. Excited, Cross got off the train, concealed himself behind a billboard on the “L” platform, and saw a man garbed formally in black go up to Gladys, his mother, and the children, and tip his hat to them. No doubt the undertaker, Cross thought. His eyes lingered on his mother and his sons and, as they left, a light seemed to go out of the winter sky. He would never see them again…

His heart bubbled with hot panic when a voice sounded in his ear: “Do you know ’em?”

He spun and looked into the face of a young Negro dressed in the uniform of the “L” company. He had never seen the man before.

“No,” he answered, relaxing.

“That’s the family of a guy who was killed in the subway accident last week,” the man spoke in a detached voice. “I reckon they must be going to the funeral.”

“Oh,” Cross said, keeping his face averted. “I read about that.”

“Man, that guy wasn’t nothing but meatballs and spaghetti when the subway got through with ’im,” the man went on.

“What do you mean?” Cross asked.

“Brother, your blood is the tomato sauce. Your white guts is the spaghetti. And your flesh is the meat, see? You’d be surprised how like a plate of meatballs and spaghetti you look when you get minced up in one of those subway wrecks. Ha-ha-ha,” the man laughed cynically.

An “L” train rolled to a stop and Cross hurried into it; he had seen and heard enough. He rushed to his rented room and sat at a window overlooking the church entrance. Fifteen minutes later the hearse arrived. There’s Tom…! Tom was his old friend from the Post Office and he was one of the pallbearers. And there was Frank…And Pinkie…And Booker…And Joe Thomas…He could not make out the others, for their faces were turned. He watched them lift the black coffin and march slowly into the church. The undertaker’s assistants followed, carrying many wreaths of flowers inside. He saw the undertaker lead Gladys, his mother, and his three sons into the church. He opened the window a crack and caught an echo of a melancholy hymn…The service was so long that he wondered what the preacher could have found to say about him. He was certain, however, of one thing: whatever was being said had no relationship at all to him, his life, or the feelings he was supposed to have had.

An hour later the church doors opened and the crowd began to file out, first Gladys, then his mother; finally his three sons came, led by the preacher and the undertaker. Again he saw them sliding the black coffin into the hearse. Soon a long procession of black cars pulled off through the snow. It was over. He had witnessed a scene about which he could never in his life talk with anybody. And he did hanker to talk about it. When men shared normal experiences, they could talk about them without fear, but he had to hug this black secret to his heart.

The procession had gone and the church doors had shut. He had to go back to his hotel and prepare to catch a train for New York. But he did not move. He was empty, face to face with a sense of dread more intense than anything he had ever felt before. He was alone. He was not only without friends, their hopes, their fears, and loves, to buoy him up, but he was a man tossed back upon himself when that self meant only a hope of hope. The church across the street was still there, but somehow it had changed into a strange pile of white, lonely stone, as bleak and denuded of meaning as he was. And the snowy street, like the church, assumed a dumb, lifeless aspect. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed and stared about the room. His movements were mechanical. The dingy walls seemed to loom over against him, asking wordlessly questions that he could not answer. Nothing made meaning; his life seemed to have turned into a static dream whose frozen images would remain unchanged throughout eternity.

He told himself that he was brooding too much; he had to get out of this room. On the snow-cushioned sidewalk, his legs led him to a taxi, but when he reached his hotel, he did not want to go in. Instead he ambled into a nearby bar, THE CAT’S PAW, and ordered a whiskey. He drank eleven shots before he could feel the influence of the alcohol. He ordered his twelfth and the bartender told him: “If I were you, I’d get some air.”

“I can pay you,” Cross told him.

“That ain’t the point,” the bartender said. “Get rid of what you’ve got, then I’ll sell you some more.” The bartender studied him. “Worried about something, eh?”

He paid and went out. He was not drunk; there was simply no purpose in him. When he finally entered the hotel, he met Jenny in the corridor near the door of his room. Because she had no meaning, she meant everything to him now.

“Speak of the devil,” she greeted him, smiling.

“Hi,” he breathed.

“Look, I got a bottle,” she said, showing it to him. “How about it?”

“I don’t mind.”

He needed a drink. He felt her take hold of his hand and squeeze it.

“You’re freezing,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He unlocked the door and let her go in; he followed, pulled off his coat and flopped on the bed.

“You’re all in,” she commented sympathetically.

“Tired,” he said and closed his eyes.

“You must relax,” she said.

He was silently grateful when he felt her cool, soft hand moving slowly across his hot forehead. Her hand left him; he heard her pouring whiskey, felt the glass as she took his fingers and gently forced them about it. He pulled up and drank. She sat next to him on the bed, cradling her glass in her palms.

“Don’t you want to know anything about me?” she asked him.

“Jenny, you don’t understand,” he said kindly.

“I’m a little better than you think I am,” she said; she bent forward and fingered his ear.

“Maybe.”

“You could do a lot worse than me, and maybe you could do a lot better. But whatever it is, it’s not for keeps,” she told him.

“What are you trying to say?”

“Take me with you,” she said. “When you’re tired of me, then dump me. I don’t care. I want to get out of Chicago.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Her soft arm went around his neck and his nostrils were full of the scent of her hair; he drained his glass and a moment later he heard her ask: “What’s the matter? If you talk about it, it’ll be easier.”

She searched for his mouth and kissed him. His world was a blur. He needed what she was trying to give him but he was afraid.

“Why do you bother about me?” he asked.

“’Cause I like you. Ain’t that enough?”

“Guess so,” he mumbled. He was alone, empty. “Give me another drink.”

She poured the glasses full. He drank again, stood, swayed, tugged at his tie.

“What’re you doing?”

“Going to bed…”

“Wait, I’ll help you undress,” she said. “You’re three sheets to the wind.”

His limbs were like rubber. She aided him in pulling off his clothes, rolled back the blanket and pushed him into bed. His eyes closed; he heard her moving about, pulling down the shade, locking the door. Then he felt the sensual smoothness of her skin as she slid into bed beside him. She blended her body with his and he could feel the tender spread of her fingers on his back. His senses were dreaming. He looked at her and she was not a dangerous girl; those deep, tranquil, bluish-grey-green eyes were dark and helpful now and the heat of her body was filling him with thankfulness.

“Can’t you talk to me?” she asked him.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I would. Just try.”

He laughed, took her face between his palms and stared at her, feeling foolishly proud of the irony of his life.

“I’m dead,” he said.

Her lips parted in bewilderment and she pushed his hands roughly from her face. She looked off a second and then back to him.

“You’re nuts,” she said.

He wanted to tell her. He knew now that she was not working for the police, but for herself. She needed a man and had fastened her hope on him. If she had been well-known to him, he would never have had the impulse to tell her. But a strange girl was different and he would be leaving soon. Dammit, he had to tell somebody just to make sure that his situation was not a fantasy of his own mind. He was too much alone and it was insupportable.

“I’m in a funny fix,” he began. “You remember that subway accident last week? Well, I was in it.”

“You were hurt in it? Is that what’s making you act so funny?”

“I wasn’t really hurt,” he continued, knowing that he ought not talk, but hearing the words spilling out in spite of himself. “Listen, they found a body down there all mangled and they think it’s mine…”

“Are you sure you weren’t hurt?” Her eyes were round with concern.

“No. I wasn’t hurt,” he went on, nettled that she was not believing him. “Today, just two hours ago, they buried that body thinking that it was mine…”

She pulled abruptly away from him, rose, walked across the room and got her cigarettes. She lit one and sat near him.

“Are you trying to shit me? Now, come on; tell me what you’ve done.”

Cross buried his face in the pillow to stifle his laughter. She did not believe him. He knew that his story was wild, but he had not counted upon so much outright disbelief.

“This is funny,” he chuckled.

“What’s so goddamn funny?” she snapped at him.

“You asked me to tell you, now you don’t believe me.”

“If you had done something like that, you wouldn’t tell me,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because the insurance companies would want to know about it,” she explained. “And you’re smarter than that.”

He grew sober. Her intelligence was frightening.

“All right,” he said, relieved. “I’m lying.” He stood and got his bathrobe and struggled into it. “I’m not dead, then.”

“Where’re you going?” she asked.

“Down the hall to see a man about a coffin,” he said.

He lumbered into the corridor, feeling swamped by confusion. This damn girl was making him lose control of the project he had planned. I’m really crazy to talk to her, he reproached himself. He resolved that upon his return from the bathroom he was going to get dressed and get the hell out of the city as fast as a train could carry him. And from now on he would keep firm hold on himself. He turned a bend in the corridor, his head lowered in reflection; he drew in his breath sharply as he felt his body colliding with that of another man. Before his senses could register what was happening, he heard a familiar voice bursting in his ears and saw an old, familiar smile of incredulous astonishment spreading over a fat, black face.

“As I live and breathe! You’re either Cross or his twin!”

Cross stared at the face and had the stupid desire to shake his head and make it vanish. He was looking into the eyes of a man he had known for six years! Like he, the man wore a bathrobe and had evidently just come from the bathroom. He was done for; there was no way out of this except…He had to decide what to do quickly! Tension made him hot as fire; he had to check a crazy impulse to wave his arm and try to sweep this man from sight and keep his freedom. It was big, fat, black Joe Thomas who stood in front of him, the same man he had seen acting as a pallbearer around his coffin earlier that afternoon!

“Speak, man! They say you’re dead, but you ain’t no ghost and I damn well know it! We just put your coffin in the ground, man! What the hell is this?” Joe’s eyes were dancing in his fat, black face; he threw out his hands, hesitated, then clapped both of them on Cross’s shoulders. “I got to touch you to believe it!” Joe’s face was a mixture of fear and gladness. “They all think you’re dead, and here you are in a cat house with the chippies! Good God Almighty! I feel weak…” Joe blinked, his lips hanging open. “I just came in here to knock off a piece of tail ’fore going to work—Hell, the whole town’s talking ’bout how you died—” Joe rocked back on his heels and burst into a gale of hysterical laughter. “This is a new way to cover up cunt hunting! Oh, Jesus, this is hot!” Joe sobered for a moment; he was struggling with himself to adjust his mind to what his eyes saw. “But, say something! You are Cross, ain’t you?”

“Yes,” Cross heard himself speaking. “I’m Cross.”

“Well, don’t be ashamed of letting me catch you in a whorehouse, man,” Joe said, blinking and trying to understand the strange expression that shrouded Cross’s face. “Come on in here and let me talk to you.” Joe grabbed Cross’s hand and dragged him forward. He unlocked a door and pulled Cross inside a room. Cross’s eyes darted about. The bed was unmade, the shades drawn, and a dim light glowed on the ceiling. Joe’s clothing was flung pell-mell over the back of a chair. Cross’s fingers ached to blot out this black man who grinned with bewilderment.

“Sit down, man,” Joe spluttered. “Tell me what this is…”

Joe shut the door and Cross heard the click of the lock; that meant that no one could come in without warning; he was alone with Joe…Joe flopped on the bed, his eyes full on Cross, waiting for an explanation. Cross moved on cat’s feet to the center of the room, noticing the window which had the exact position of the window in his room, that window through which he had peered only a few hours ago and looked at the distant, snow-drenched streets far below…He then stared at the almost empty whiskey bottle on the night table. Tension was so tight in him that he felt his skull would burst. Joe saw him gazing at the bottle.

“You want a drink, hunh? I scared you, didn’t I?” Joe took the bottle and drained the whiskey into a glass. “This bottle’s dead. But we’ve got another one on the way.” He sat the bottle on the floor and handed the tumbler to Cross. “I reckon I’m about the last man on earth you ever expected to see, hunh?”

Cross emptied the glass with one swallow, and smiling tightly, said: “That’s right, Joe.”

“You are Cross!” Joe shouted and slapped his thighs. “For a minute, I thought maybe I was making a fool out of myself. God, I’m sweating—! Cross, you’re the goddamndest man God ever made…”

Cross reached for the neck of the empty whiskey bottle and lifted it.

“Ain’t no more whiskey in that bottle, man,” Joe said. “I just sent Ruth down for another fifth. She’ll be back in a minute. Sit down, man! Don’t be scared…Lord, I can’t get over this!”

“When’s this Ruth coming back?” Cross asked quietly.

“In a minute,” Joe said, a shadow of disquiet flickering over his face. He brightened quickly. “Say, who you’re shacking up with in here? Bertha, Mamie, Della, or…”

“Jenny,” Cross said.

“She’s great!” Joe approved. “Boy, she can go when she feels like it. She’s got some build…”

Joe went on talking and Cross stared at him. He had to do something. But what? This clown was tearing down his dream, smashing all he had so laboriously built up. And there he sat: fat, black, half-laughing and half-scared, with beads of sweat popping on his forehead, his black chest showing and his bare legs sprawled out from the bed, his blue silk bathrobe flowing around him…

“God, but you’re sly, Cross,” Joe went on. “Ain’t you gonna tell me what happened? I didn’t know you knew about this place. But there ain’t no better place to get over the blues, is it? Kind of crummy here, but the gals are nice. Hell, man, if you ain’t gonna say nothing, I’ll tell ’em. They made a mistake in that damned church today. I’m gonna call up Pink. He’ll die laughing…” Joe rose from the bed.

Cross grasped the neck of the bottle firmly; his arm trembled; his fingers gripped the bottle so hard that he thought the glass would crush in his palm. He lifted the bottle high in the air. Joe’s lips moved soundlessly, his eyes black pools of mute protest. Joe was frozen, waiting, his lips open and about to utter a question and then Cross brought down the bottle with a crashing blow on Joe’s head. Just before the blow landed Cross heard Joe utter in tones of deep amazement: “Say?” The bottle caught Joe on the temple, bursting from the force of the blow and Joe fell slowly backwards without having lifted a finger; he lay still, his thick lips hanging grotesquely open. Cross moved now with the speed of a panther. He let up the shade and a tide of greyish light swept into the room; he opened the window and a blast of freezing air turned his breath to steam. He turned and faced the inert form sprawled on the bed in its bathrobe. He grabbed Joe’s right arm and slid his left arm under Joe’s legs and lifted him as one would a sick child. He stood a moment, looking at Joe’s black, quiet face, and then he looked at the open window. He struggled to the window with the body, hoisted it up and for a moment the body was poised in space. He pushed it through and shut the window at once, all in one swift, merciless movement. He turned back to the room, picked up the glass shards of whiskey bottle and opened the door. The corridor was empty. He went out and hurried to the bathroom and secreted the shards atop a tall, wooden cabinet. He examined himself minutely in the full mirror and saw no telltale signs except sweat on his face. He mopped his brow with the bottom of his bathrobe, then stood still, listening intently. He heard faint voices and the muffled music of radios. Time seemed to be flowing on normally. Through the window of the bathroom he could see that night was falling upon the frozen city. He headed for his room, feeling unsteady in his legs. He hesitated before going in, trying to control himself. Again he mopped sweat from his face, then opened the door of his room. Jenny still lay on the bed.

“I thought maybe you had flushed down the drain, you took so long,” she said.

He sank into a chair, fighting down a wild, foolish impulse to tell her what he had done. She rose, smiling, and went to him; he pushed her violently away.

“What’s the matter with you? You’re trembling and wringing wet…” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “Say, are you on the needle or something…?”

“Leave me alone,” he muttered.

“I wonder what you’re up to,” she said, turning away uneasily.

A knock came at the door. Cross stiffened and felt he could not breathe. He would not have been too surprised if the door had opened and Joe had walked into the room. But he had tossed Joe out of that window; or had he? He struggled to sort reality from fantasy. The knock came again, louder this time.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Jenny asked him.

“You answer it,” Cross said.

“Jenny!” a woman’s voice called through the door.

“Yeah?” Jenny answered, going to the door and opening it.

A tall, fleshy blonde woman stood in the doorway with a bottle of whiskey under her arm.

“Hello, Ruth,” Jenny said. “What’s the matter?”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you,” the woman called Ruth said. Her eyes looked about the room, resting at last on Cross. “But Joe isn’t here, is he?”

“No, honey,” Jenny said, shrugging. “I haven’t seen him.”

Ruth’s lips curled in scorn. “That black bastard’s run out on me,” she hissed. “If he’s dumped me without paying, I’ll kill him the next time I see him, so help me God! But I don’t understand…All his clothes are still there.”

“Oh, he’ll come back,” Jenny smiled. “He always does.”

“He tried a new trick,” Ruth blazed. “He sent me down for a bottle of liquor and took a powder.” Ruth forced a smile for Cross. “I’m sorry to bother you with my troubles. But, you know, the fool left his clothes behind…You reckon he could be two-timing me? Maybe he’s in some other room…?”

“Might be,” Jenny said, laughing at the possibility.

“I’ll leave you now,” Ruth said, her eyes baffled.

Jenny closed the door and turned to Cross, chuckling: “Ruth and her Joe. I do believe she’s in love with him, but he doesn’t give a damn about her.”

“Who’s Joe?” Cross asked listlessly.

“A colored postal clerk who comes here all the time,” she told him as she sat on the bed again, her hands folded modestly over her pubic hair. “He’s Ruth’s star client; he even keeps his bathrobe and slippers in her room. God, he’s a scream. Jet black, fat…A regular clown…Spends his money like water…Listen to this: He once told me…”

Cross was not listening though his eyes were on her face. He was wondering how Joe’s body had fallen and where…Had it landed on the street? He wanted to open the window and look out, but he knew that would have aroused questions in Jenny’s mind. He had done a horrible thing; he had killed so swiftly and brutally that he hardly recognized what he had done as he recalled it to his mind. It was he who had made that assault on Joe in that room; yes, he had done that to save himself. He heard Jenny laughing.

“…don’t you think so?” she was asking.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

“Hell, you’re not even listening!” she said angrily. “At least Joe’s a good sport!”

“Well, go to him,” Cross told her, relishing his irony.

If Joe’s body had landed on the street in the snow, then it would soon be seen by someone and there would be an outcry. But maybe it had dropped into a deep drift? He was excited by such a prospect. If that had happened, no one would see it for awhile…He blinked when Jenny rose from the bed and came to him; she caught his hand and pulled him to his feet. Gently, she forced him to the bed, climbed in with him and drew the covers over them.

“Charlie, what’s the matter?” she asked in a whisper. “Talk to me…”

Maybe at any moment now a knock would come at the door and it would be about Joe. He heard footsteps pass in the corridor outside and wondered if it was Ruth still hunting for her Joe…He had had no choice; it had been either he or Joe. He had known it the moment he had looked into that fat, black, laughing face.

“Your body is trembling,” Jenny whispered. “I wish I could help you!”

She was getting on his nerves. Why didn’t she leave…?

“You’re always watching me, questioning me,” he complained in a distant voice.

“You’re too goddamn fucking suspicious!” she cursed him, curling her lips back over her teeth.

He looked at her; there was an animal-like quality in her that made him like her, and that quality showed most clearly when she was angry.

“Okay, baby, spill your story,” he consented. “You’ve been wanting to talk to me. Now, I’m listening…”

He lifted himself on an elbow, his eyes on her face, but he was really seeking over the snowdrifts outside, looking for Joe’s body.

“You sure are a great help,” she complained, her anger vanishing. “I’ll try—Look, Charlie, you’re black and I’m white—That’s what this goddamn country says, but it’s the bunk, and you know it and I know it. They say it to keep us apart, don’t they?”

He nodded, not quite understanding what she had said. Maybe he had made a mistake in killing Joe like that…? God, he had planned to be free, and now he had killed…

“…I’d bet a million dollars that I’ve lived a much harder life than you have. I grew up in the slums of a small rotten town in the middle of Kansas. My father was a drunkard and a socialist of a sort…”

He was conscious that the more she talked the better she talked. The gal’s got some sense…But wouldn’t they raid the hotel when they found Joe’s body…?

“…he was always yelling about the rights of Negroes and fighting for the underdog. My mother was the janitor in the town school. If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t ’ve even learned to read and write. My mother really supported us, brought us up and nursed father when he had the D.T.’s. She was the only decent person I’ve ever known in my life…Surprised to hear me say things like that, hunh?”

He was looking at her, but was wondering what the police would say about finding Joe’s body clad only in a bathrobe…

“…and I spotted you as an educated guy after you’d said only two words. I respect education…It’s too late for me to get one now, I reckon. But I want one; really, I do.”

He nodded his head as she spoke, telling her that he was following her, but he was only reacting to the general sense of her words.

“…everybody in our little town looked down on us. Me, my brothers and sisters, we were the drunkard’s children, the scum of the earth. Then I got in trouble with a boy, got knocked up, and had to have an abortion. You wouldn’t think it, Charlie, but ’til two years ago I didn’t know where babies came from. Honest to Pete! I thought they came out of women’s bowels…Isn’t that crazy? But I know now. And how! But let me get back to the story. You’re listening, aren’t you? You’re not bored?”

“Oh, no; go ahead,” he said; he might be lost already. It was good that he had his gun; if the police found out about him, well, he would blow his brains out…

“…and when I got knocked up, the whole town knew it. My father drove me out of the house. I lived in a dump for awhile, then got rid of the child. It was hell; I was sick with a fever of one hundred and four for three days. I thought I was a dead duck. Mama finally made father let me come back home. But just to walk down the street to the store to buy a loaf of bread was hell…When I passed people, they’d stop talking and just stare at me…I ran off and came to Chicago. The first week I worked in a Greek restaurant; like a dope, I went out with the Greek. He raped me…”

He wondered why she felt so deep a sense of inferiority; he was black, but he had never felt that humble in the face of life. And Joe? Maybe the sirens would start howling soon…?

“…sounds crazy, hunh? But I’m not asking for sympathy. The hell with it. I’m young. I’ll fight, work. Now, why am I telling you all this? You said you were going west, didn’t you? I want to go to California—”

“Movies?” he asked.

“Hell, no. I’m not pretty,” she said.

Cross studied her face; she was much prettier than she thought.

“Then why California?”

“I just like the sunshine and want to be as far from Kansas and my family as I can get,” she said. “Take me with you, won’t you? I could be of some use, couldn’t I? I don’t care if you’re colored. The hell with that crap—”

“Jenny,” he began. “It won’t work—”

“Why not? You can trust me.”

“But my life—No. It won’t work at all.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what you’ve done,” she said.

Cross smiled ruefully. She doesn’t know what she’s saying…“Look, baby, I like you. I believe you. But forget it, honey. It’s too complicated to explain.”

She stood and her face grew red and her eyes blazed with anger. Would he have to do something to keep her quiet? Was she going to threaten him and make him take her with him?

“Why am I so different?” she demanded. “Do you loathe me? What’s wrong with me…?” Tears welled in her eyes. “Only last week Pearl Bland got a ride to New York with a guy with dough,” she said bitterly. “Me? I can’t even get a Negro to trust me!” She bent to him and asked: “Why? Tell me why…”

“Come here, Jenny,” he said.

He folded her in his arms. Good God, this child was bitter! In despair she began kissing him with passion, still weeping. He relaxed. Why not let her make him forget? He could not control the flow of events now anyway; he was probably already lost…Any minute the cops would be knocking on the door. What did he have to lose? He pressed his lips to Jenny’s and this time he knew that she was allowing herself to be more of a woman because she wanted his trust. When the spasm was over he lay with his hand gently touching her face, mutely thanking her for the benediction that she had shed upon his distraught senses.

“Darling, what’s your real name?” she asked him quietly.

The respite was over; he felt danger again. He had to shake this girl off him quickly. But, what about Joe? He had pushed Joe out of that window and time had flowed on as though nothing had happened. No one here knew his name or that he had known Joe. So, when they found Joe’s body, there would be no thought of him in connection with his death. They might even think that Ruth had done it. He lay still, plotting. He would not hurt Jenny; killing her would be a sure way of putting the police on his trail. He would fool her and ditch her. She thought that he was heading west. All right; agree to take her, dump her at the last moment, and strike out for New York alone. Cunning was better than violence; he must not allow himself to be confronted again with the unexpected, as he had been with Joe…

“You really want to come with me?”

Her arms tightened about his neck in gratitude.

“Where’re we going?” she asked.

“We’ll take a bus to Denver, then later we’ll go to the Far West,” he said.

“But we have to have dough. How much have you got?”

“Leave that to me,” he argued. “I’ll get you to the West Coast, if you want to go.”

“When do we leave?”

“Tonight.” He rolled swiftly from the bed and began washing up. “I’ll go down for the tickets now.”

“I’ll believe it when I see those tickets,” she said, rising and commencing to dress also.

“You better start packing,” he told her. “How much luggage have you got?”

“Just a suitcase.” She studied him, then rubbed her fingers together. “I need some nylons and things…”

He gave her ten dollars.

“Aw, come on,” she exploded. “Be a sport.”

“I’ll give you more tomorrow,” he said. “Now, go.” He pushed her out of the door, looked both ways in the corridor, then shut the door and locked it. He hurried to the window and opened it. A clear night sky sent a sheen over the snow-covered world. He stared down, searching for Joe’s body. Ah…There it was, on that roof! He could see it lying straight out, a black mark on the white snow. The soft snow had no doubt cushioned its fall and the impact of the body on the roof had not been heard. He had time to get away before anyone discovered it. He closed the window and stood in the center of the room. Why had that damn fool come upon him at that time? But he could not think of Joe now; he had to plan how to ditch Jenny…

He rode down in the elevator with Buck who was grumbling: “Jesus! Why can’t that bitch leave me alone?” He spoke to no one in particular. “She keeps yapping at me about Joe, Joe…What the hell do I care about Joe? It ain’t my job to keep track of her damn men! These whores make me sick. Let a bobby pin get lost, and they come running to me.”

“Don’t let ’em break you down,” Cross told him.

“You damn right I won’t,” Buck seethed with anger. “I don’t do my day’s work at night, like they do, flat on their backs. Man, a woman’d make a man jump out of a window; she would!”

Cross walked from the lobby on legs he did not feel. He knew that Buck knew nothing about how Joe had died, but his talking of jumping from a window had almost paralyzed him. His body was seized with ague and he felt so weak that he went into an alleyway and sank down upon an empty wooden soda water case under the spreading glare of a street lamp. He started when a door opened and an aproned man came out with a garbage can and dumped its contents near him; the man glanced curiously at Cross, then went back inside, slamming the door and bolting it securely. Cross rested his wrists on his knees and his eyes traveled without purpose over the steaming pile of refuse, the top of which was crowned with a mound of wet, black coffee grounds that gleamed in the light of the street lamp; some of the grounds spilled over a bloodstained Kotex which still retained the curving shape of having fitted tightly and recently against the lips of some vagina; there was a flattened grapefruit hull whose inner pulpy fibres held a gob of viscous phlegm; there was the part of a fried sausage with grease congealed white in the porous grains of meat; there was the crumpled cellophane wrapping from a pack of cigarettes glittering with tiny beads of moisture; there was a brass electric socket still holding its delicate filigreed web of wires even though its glass globe had been shattered; there was a bone from a piece of roast beef still holding traces of red and grey meat; there was a lemon rind molded to a light green color; there was a clump of cigarette butts whose ends were blackened and whose tips were stained red from the rouge of a woman’s lips; there was a limp wad of lettuce whose leaves glistened with a fine film of oil; there was a clean piece of wood jutting out with a shining nail bent at the end of it; there were several egg shells showing bits of yellow yolk; there was the stump of a cigar bearing the marks of a man’s teeth; and there was a clump of fluffy dust freshly gathered from some floor…

His blood felt chilled. He had to shake off this dead weight and move on. He pulled to his feet and took a cab to La Salle Street Railroad Station and went directly to the reservation window.

“Have you any sleeping accommodations for New York?”

“For tonight?” the clerk asked.

“For the earliest possible train,” Cross said.

“Just a minute,” the clerk said.

Cross waited nervously while the clerk telephoned.

“We have one, a lower 13,” the clerk informed him.

“Okay. Fix it up. When does the train leave?”

“At six on track eight, sir.”

He paid, received the tickets, then rushed by cab to the Greyhound Bus Terminal and bought two tickets to Denver. Back in the hotel, he settled his bill in full and rode up in the elevator to the eighth floor. Jenny was waiting for him at the door of his room with her suitcase. She smiled warmly, but there was nervousness in her manner. When they were inside, he handed her her ticket for the bus.

“Where’s your ticket?” she asked suspiciously.

“Here,” he said, showing it to her. He had thought that she would ask that; it was why he had bought two tickets. The extra money he had paid for his ticket was his insurance that she would believe in him long enough for him to take the six o’clock train to New York. When Joe’s body was discovered or when any word was ever raised about the identification of that body found in the subway wreck, nothing of him must come into the mind of Jenny.

“You know where the Greyhound Bus Terminal is?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“The bus leaves at eight. I’ve got to see some people; I’ll be gone about an hour.” He looked at his watch. “It’s five now. I’ll be back at six. We’ll eat and then we’re off. Now, give me your suitcase and I’ll check it at the Bus Terminal.”

With his suitcase and hers, he got into a cab, checked her suitcase at the Bus Terminal and then rode over to the La Salle Street Railroad Station. A porter guided him to his coach. He showed his reservation and ticket to the conductor, got on, and, when he was in his compartment, he locked the door.

He cursed softly: That damn fool Joe…! And Jenny did not know how lucky she was. From now on he had to cope with this impulse of his to confide. If circumstances had been just a little different, he would have had to kill Jenny too, or give up the game. He had thought he was free. But was he? He was free from everything but himself. Loneliness had driven him to confess to Jenny, and fear could have made him kill her as he had killed Joe. He kept his fists tightly clenched as he waited impatiently for the train to pull out. At last he heard the distant calling:

“Alll aboooooard…!”

He stood at the window as the train began to move. A light snow was raining softly down upon the world. Two hours from now Jenny would be searching frantically for him at the bus station. And she would never know that he had done her the greatest favor of her life.

But what was he to do with this conflict of his? This urge to confide and the fear of the danger of confiding? The outside world had fallen away from him now and he was alone at the center of the world of the laws of his own feelings. And what was this world he was?

The dreary stretches of Chicago passed before his window; it was a dim, dead, dumb, sleeping city wrapped in a dream, a dream born of his frozen impulses. Could he awaken this world from its sleep? He recalled that pile of steaming garbage, the refuse the world had rejected; and he had rejected himself and was bowed, like that heap of garbage, under the weight of endurance and time.

As the train wheels clicked through the winter night, he knew where his sense of dread came from; it was from within himself, within the vast and mysterious world that was his and his alone, and yet not really known to him, a world that was his own and yet unknown. And it was into this strange but familiar world that he was now plunging…