‘Mick,’ Bubber said. ‘I come to believe we all gonna drown.’

It was true that it like to never quit raining. Mrs. Wells rode them back and forth to school in her car, and every afternoon they had to stay on the front porch or in the house. She and Bubber played Parcheesi and Old Maid and shot marbles on the living-room rug. It was nearing along toward Christmas time and Bubber began to talk about the Little Lord Jesus and the red bicycle he wanted Santa Claus to bring him. The rain was silver on the windowpanes and the sky was wet and cold and gray. The river rose so high that some of the factory people had to move out of their houses. Then when it looked like the rain would keep on and on forever it suddenly stopped. They woke up one morning and the bright sun was shining. By afternoon the weather was almost warm as summer. Mick came home late from school and Bubber and Ralph and Spareribs were on the front sidewalk. The kids looked hot and sticky and their winter clothes had a sour smell. Bubber had his slingshot and a pocketful of rocks. Ralph sat up in his wagon, his hat crooked on his head, and he was fretful. Spareribs had his new rifle with him. The sky was a wonderful blue.

‘We waited for you a long time, Mick,’ Bubber said. ‘Where you been?’

She jumped up the front steps three at a time and threw her sweater toward the hat rack. ‘Practicing on the piano in the gym.’

Every afternoon she stayed after school for an hour to play. The gym was crowded and noisy because the girls’ team had basketball games. Twice today she was hit on the head with the ball. But getting a chance to sit at a piano was worth any amount of knocks and trouble. She would arrange bunches of notes together until the sound came that she wanted. It was easier than she had thought. After the first two or three hours she figured out some sets of chords in the bass that would fit in with the main tune her right hand was playing. She could pick out almost any piece now. And she made up new music too. That was better than just copying tunes. When her hands hunted out these beautiful new sounds it was the best feeling she had ever known.

She wanted to learn how to read music already written down. Delores Brown had taken music lessons for five years. She paid Delores the fifty cents a week she got for lunch money to give her lessons. This made her very hungry all through the day. Delores played a good many fast, runny pieces—but Delores did not know how to answer all the questions she wanted to know. Delores only taught her about the different scales, the major and minor chords, the values of the notes, and such beginning rules as those.

Mick slammed the door of the kitchen stove. ‘This all we got to eat?’

‘Honey, it the best I can do for you,’ Portia said.

Just cornpones and margarine. As she ate she drank a glass of water to help wash down the swallows.

‘Quit acting so greedy. Nobody going to snatch it out your hand.’

The kids still hung around in front of the house. Bubber had put his slingshot in his pocket and now he played with the rifle. Spareribs was ten years old and his father had died the month before and this had been his father’s gun. All the smaller kids loved to handle that rifle. Every few minutes Bubber would haul the gun up to his shoulder. He took aim and made a loud pow sound.

‘Don’t monkey with the trigger,’ said Spareribs. ‘I got the gun loaded.’

Mick finished the cornbread and looked around for something to do. Harry Minowitz was sitting on his front porch banisters with the newspaper. She was glad to see him. For a joke she threw up her arm and hollered to him, ‘Heil!’

But Harry didn’t take it as a joke. He went into his front hall and shut the door. It was easy to hurt his feelings. She was sorry, because lately she and Harry had been right good friends. They had always played in the same gang when they were kids, but in the last three years he had been at Vocational while she was still in grammar school. Also he worked at part-time jobs. He grew up very suddenly and quit hanging around the back and front yards with kids. Sometimes she could see him reading the paper in his bedroom or undressing late at night. In mathematics and history he was the smartest boy at Vocational. Often, now that she was in high school too, they would meet each other on the way home and walk together. They were in the same shop class, and once the teacher made them partners to assemble a motor. He read books and kept up with the newspapers every day. World politics were all the time on his mind. He talked slow, and sweat stood out on his forehead when he was very serious about something. And now she had made him mad with her.

‘I wonder has Harry still got his gold piece,’ Spareribs said.

‘What gold piece?’

‘When a Jew boy is born they put a gold piece in the bank for him. That’s what Jews do.’

‘Shucks. You got it mixed up,’ she said. ‘It’s Catholics you’re thinking about. Catholics buy a pistol for a baby soon as it’s born. Some day the Catholics mean to start a war and kill everybody else.’

‘Nuns give me a funny feeling,’ Spareribs said. ‘It scares me when I see one on the street.’

She sat down on the steps and laid her head on her knees. She went into the inside room. With her it was like there was two places—the inside room and the outside room. School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. The songs she thought about were there. And the symphony. When she was by herself in this inside room the music she had heard that night after the party would come back to her. This symphony grew slow like a big flower in her mind. During the day sometimes, or when she had just waked up in the morning, a new part of the symphony would suddenly come to her. Then she would have to go into the inside room and listen to it many times and try to join it into the parts of the symphony she remembered. The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.

Spareribs stuck his dirty hand up to her eyes because she had been staring off at space. She slapped him.

‘What is a nun?’ Bubber asked.

‘A Catholic lady,’ Spareribs said. ‘A Catholic lady with a big black dress that comes up over her head.’

She was tired of hanging around with the kids. She would go to the library and look at pictures in the National Geographic. Photographs of all the foreign places in the world. Paris, France. And big ice glaciers. And the wild jungles in Africa.

‘You kids see that Ralph don’t get out in the street,’ she said.

Bubber rested the big rifle on his shoulder. ‘Bring me a story back with you.’

It was like that kid had been born knowing how to read. He was only in the second grade but he loved to read stories by himself—and he never asked anybody else to read to him. ‘What kind you want this time?’

‘Pick out some stories with something to eat in them. I like that one a whole lot about them German kids going out in the forest and coming to this house made out of all different kinds of candy and the witch. I like a story with something to eat in it.’

‘I’ll look for one,’ said Mick.

‘But I’m getting kinda tired of candy,’ Bubber said. ‘See if you can’t bring me a story with something like a barbecue sandwich in it. But if you can’t find none of them I’d like a cowboy story.’

She was ready to leave when suddenly she stopped and stared. The kids stared too. They all stood still and looked at Baby Wilson coming down the steps of her house across the street.

‘Ain’t Baby cute!’ said Bubber softly.

Maybe it was the sudden hot, sunny day after all those rainy weeks. Maybe it was because their dark winter clothes were ugly to them on an afternoon like this one. Anyway Baby looked like a fairy or something in the picture show. She had on her last year’s soirée costume—with a little pink-gauze skirt that stuck out short and stiff, a pink body waist, pink dancing shoes, and even a little pink pocketbook. With her yellow hair she was all pink and white and gold—and so small and clean that it almost hurt to watch her. She prissed across the street in a cute way, but would not turn her face toward them.

‘Come over here,’ said Bubber. ‘Lemme look at your little pink pocketbook——’

Baby passed them along the edge of the street with her head held to one side. She had made up her mind not to speak to them.

There was a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and when Baby reached it she stood still for a second and then turned a handspring.

‘Don’t pay no mind to her,’ said Spareribs. ‘She always tries to show off. She’s going down to Mister Brannon’s café to get candy. He’s her uncle and she gets it free.’

Bubber rested the end of the rifle on the ground. The big gun was too heavy for him. As he watched Baby walk off down the street he kept pulling the straggly bangs of his hair. ‘That sure is a cute little pink pocketbook,’ he said.

‘Her Mama always talks about how talented she is,’ said Spareribs. ‘She thinks she’s gonna get Baby in the movies.’

It was too late to go look at the National Geographic. Supper was almost ready. Ralph tuned up to cry and she took him off the wagon and put him on the ground. Now it was December, and to a kid Bubber’s age that was a long time from summer. All last summer Baby had come out in that pink soirée costume and danced in the middle of the street. At first the kids would flock around and watch her, but soon they got tired of it. Bubber was the only one who would watch her as she came out to dance. He would sit on the curb and yell to her when he saw a car coming. He had watched Baby do her soirée dance a hundred times—but summer had been gone for three months and now it seemed new to him again.

‘I sure do wish I had a costume,’ Bubber said.

‘What kind do you want?’

‘A real cool costume. A real pretty one made out of all different colors. Like a butterfly. That’s what I want for Christmas. That and a bicycle!’

‘Sissy,’ said Spareribs.

Bubber hauled the big rifle up to his shoulder again and took aim at a house across the street. ‘I’d dance around in my costume if I had one. I’d wear it every day to school.’

Mick sat on the front steps and kept her eyes on Ralph. Bubber wasn’t a sissy like Spareribs said. He just loved pretty things. She’d better not let old Spareribs get away with that.

‘A person’s got to fight for every single thing they get,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’ve noticed a lot of times that the farther down a kid comes in the family the better the kid really is. Youngest kids are always the toughest. I’m pretty hard ’cause I’ve a lot of them on top of me. Bubber—he looks sick, and likes pretty things, but he’s got guts underneath that. If all this is true Ralph sure ought to be a real strong one when he’s old enough to get around. Even though he’s just seventeen months old I can read something hard and tough in that Ralph’s face already.’

Ralph looked around because he knew he was being talked about. Spareribs sat down on the ground and grabbed Ralph’s hat off his head and shook it in his face to tease him.

‘All right!’ Mick said. ‘You know what I’ll do to you if you start him to cry. You just better watch out.’

Everything was quiet. The sun was behind the roofs of the houses and the sky in the west was purple and pink. On the next block there was the sound of kids skating. Bubber leaned up against a tree and he seemed to be dreaming about something. The smell of supper came out of the house and it would be time to eat soon.

‘Lookit,’ Bubber said suddenly. ‘Here comes Baby again. She sure is pretty in the pink costume.’

Baby walked toward them slowly. She had been given a prize box of popcorn candy and was reaching in the box for the prize. She walked in that same prissy, dainty way. You could tell that she knew they were all looking at her.

‘Please, Baby——’ Bubber said when she started to pass them. ‘Lemme see your little pink pocketbook and touch your pink costume.’

Baby started humming a song to herself and did not listen. She passed by without letting Bubber play with her. She only ducked her head and grinned at him a little.

Bubber still had the big rifle up to his shoulder. He made a loud pow sound and pretended like he had shot. Then he called to Baby again—in a soft, sad voice like he was calling a little kitty. ‘Please Baby— Come here, Baby——’

He was too quick for Mick to stop him. She had just seen his hand on the trigger when there was the terrible ping of the gun. Baby crumpled down to the sidewalk. It was like she was nailed to the steps and couldn’t move or scream. Spareribs had his arm up over his head.

Bubber was the only one that didn’t realize. ‘Get up, Baby,’ he hollered. ‘I ain’t mad with you.’

It all happened in a second. The three of them reached Baby at the same time. She lay crumpled down on the dirty sidewalk. Her skirt was over her head, showing her pink panties and her little white legs. Her hands were open—in one there was the prize from the candy and in the other the pocketbook. There was blood all over her hair ribbon and the top of her yellow curls. She was shot in the head and her face was turned down toward the ground.

So much happened in a second. Bubber screamed and dropped the gun and ran. She stood with her hands up to her face and screamed too. Then there were many people. Her Dad was the first to get there. He carried Baby into the house.

‘She’s dead,’ said Spareribs. ‘She’s shot through the eyes. I seen her face.’

Mick walked up and down the sidewalk, and her tongue stuck in her mouth when she tried to ask was Baby killed. Mrs. Wilson came running down the block from the beauty parlor where she worked. She went into the house and came back out again. She walked up and down in the street, crying and pulling a ring on and off her finger. Then the ambulance came and the doctor went in to Baby. Mick followed him. Baby was lying on the bed in the front room. The house was quiet as a church.

Baby looked like a pretty little doll on the bed. Except for the blood she did not seem hurt. The doctor bent over and looked at her head. After he finished they took Baby out on a stretcher. Mrs. Wilson and her Dad got into the ambulance with her.

The house was still quiet. Everybody had forgotten about Bubber. He was nowhere around. An hour passed. Her Mama and Hazel and Etta and all the boarders waited in the front room. Mister Singer stood in the doorway. After a long time her Dad came home. He said Baby wouldn’t die but that her skull was fractured. He asked for Bubber. Nobody knew where he was. It was dark outside. They called Bubber in the back yard and in the street. They sent Spareribs and some other boys out to hunt for him. It looked like Bubber had gone clear out of the neighborhood. Harry went around to a house where they thought he might be.

Her Dad walked up and down the front porch. ‘I never have whipped any of my kids yet,’ he kept saying. ‘I never believed in it. But I’m sure going to lay it onto that kid as soon as I get my hands on him.’

Mick sat on the banisters and watched down the dark street. ‘I can manage Bubber. Once he comes back I can take care of him all right.’

‘You go out and hunt for him. You can find him better than anybody else.’

As soon as her Dad said that she suddenly knew where Bubber was. In the back yard there was a big oak and in the summer they had built a tree house. They had hauled a big box up in this oak, and Bubber used to love to sit up in the tree house by himself. Mick left the family and the boarders on the front porch and walked back through the alley to the dark yard.

She stood for a minute by the trunk of the tree. ‘Bubber—,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s Mick.’

He didn’t answer, but she knew he was there. It was like she could smell him. She swung up on the lowest branch and climbed slowly. She was really mad with that kid and would have to teach him a lesson. When she reached the tree house she spoke to him again—and still there wasn’t any answer. She climbed into the big box and felt around the edges. At last she touched him. He was scrouged up in a corner and his legs were trembling. He had been holding his breath, and when she touched him the sobs and the breath came out all at once.

‘I—I didn’t mean Baby to fall. She was just so little and cute—seemed to me like I just had to take a pop at her.’

Mick sat down on the floor of the tree house. ‘Baby’s dead,’ she said. ‘They got a lot of people hunting for you.’

Bubber quit crying. He was very quiet.

‘You know what Dad’s doing in the house?’

It was like she could hear Bubber listening.

‘You know Warden Lawes—you heard him over the radio. And you know Sing Sing. Well, our Dad’s writing a letter to Warden Lawes for him to be a little bit kind to you when they catch you and send you to Sing Sing.’

The words were so awful-sounding in the dark that a shiver came over her. She could feel Bubber trembling.

‘They got little electric chairs there—just your size. And when they turn on the juice you just fry up like a piece of burnt bacon. Then you go to Hell.’

Bubber was squeezed up in the corner and there was not a sound from him. She climbed over the edge of the box to get down. ‘You better stay up here because they got policemen guarding the yard. Maybe in a few days I can bring you something to eat.’

Mick leaned against the trunk of the oak tree. That would teach Bubber all right. She had always managed him and she knew more about that kid than anybody else. Once, about a year or two ago, he was always wanting to stop off behind bushes and pee and play with himself awhile. She had caught on to that pretty quick. She gave him a good slap every time it happened and in three days he was cured. Afterwards he never even peed normal like other kids—he held his hands behind him. She always had to nurse that Bubber and she could always manage him. In a little while she would go back up to the tree house and bring him in. After this he would never want to pick up a gun again in all his life.

There was still this dead feeling in the house. The boarders all sat on the front porch without talking or rocking in the chairs. Her Dad and her Mama were in the front room. Her Dad drank beer out of a bottle and walked up and down the floor. Baby was going to get well all right, so this worry was not about her. And nobody seemed to be anxious about Bubber. It was something else.

‘That Bubber!’ said Etta.

‘I’m shamed to go out of the house after this,’ Hazel said.

Etta and Hazel went into the middle room and closed the door. Bill was in his room at the back. She didn’t want to talk with them. She stood around in the front hall and thought it over by herself.

Her Dad’s footsteps stopped. ‘It was deliberate,’ he said. ‘It’s not like the kid was just fooling with the gun and it went off by accident. Everybody who saw it said he took deliberate aim.’

‘I wonder when we’ll hear from Mrs. Wilson,’ her Mama said.

‘We’ll hear plenty, all right!’

‘I reckon we will.’

Now that the sun was down the night was cold again like November. The people came in from the front porch and sat in the living-room—but nobody lighted a fire. Mick’s sweater was hanging on the hatrack, so she put it on and stood with her shoulders bent over to keep warm. She thought about Bubber sitting out in the cold, dark tree house. He had really believed every word she said. But he sure deserved to worry some. He had nearly killed that Baby.

‘Mick, can’t you think of some place where Bubber might be?’ her Dad asked.

‘He’s in the neighborhood, I reckon.’

Her Dad walked up and down with the empty beer bottle in his hand. He walked like a blind man and there was sweat on his face. ‘The poor kid’s scared to come home. If we could find him I’d feel better. I’ve never laid a hand on Bubber. He oughtn’t be scared of me.’

She would wait until an hour and a half was gone. By that time he would be plenty sorry for what he did. She always could manage that Bubber and make him learn.

After a while there was a big excitement in the house. Her Dad telephoned again to the hospital to see how Baby was, and in a few minutes Mrs. Wilson called back. She said she wanted to have a talk with them and would come to the house.

Her Dad still walked up and down the front room like a blind man. He drank three more bottles of beer. ‘The way it all happened she can sue my britches off. All she could get would be the house outside of the mortgage. But the way it happened we don’t have any comeback at all.’

Suddenly Mick thought about something. Maybe they would really try Bubber in court and put him in a childrens’ jail. Maybe Mrs. Wilson would send him to reform school. Maybe they would really do something terrible to Bubber. She wanted to go out to the tree house right away and sit with him and tell him not to worry. Bubber was always so thin and little and smart. She would kill anybody that tried to send that kid out of the family. She wanted to kiss him and bite him because she loved him so much.

But she couldn’t miss anything. Mrs. Wilson would be there in a few minutes and she had to know what was going on. Then she would run out and tell Bubber that all the things she said were lies. And he would really have learned the lesson he had coming to him.

A ten-cent taxicab drove up to the sidewalk. Everybody waited on the front porch, very quiet and scared. Mrs. Wilson got out of the taxi with Mister Brannon. She could hear her Dad grinding his teeth together in a nervous way as they came up the steps. They went into the front room and she followed along after them and stood in the doorway. Etta and Hazel and Bill and the boarders kept out of it.

‘I’ve come to talk over all this with you,’ Mrs. Wilson said.

The front room looked tacky and dirty and she saw Mister Brannon notice everything. The mashed celluloid doll and the beads and junk Ralph played with were scattered on the floor. There was beer on her Dad’s workbench, and the pillows on the bed where her Dad and Mama slept were right gray.

Mrs. Wilson kept pulling the wedding ring on and off her finger. By the side of her Mister Brannon was very calm. He sat with his legs crossed. His jaws were blue-black and he looked like a gangster in the movies. He had always had this grudge against her. He always spoke to her in this rough voice different from the way he talked to other people. Was it because he knew about the time she and Bubber swiped a pack of chewing-gum off his counter? She hated him.

‘It all boils down to this,’ said Mrs. Wilson. ‘Your kid shot my Baby in the head on purpose.’

Mick stepped into the middle of the room. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she said. ‘I was right there. Bubber had been aiming that gun at me and Ralph and everything around there. He just happened to aim it at Baby and his finger slipped. I was right there.’

Mister Brannon rubbed his nose and looked at her in a sad way. She sure did hate him.

‘I know how you all feel—so I want to come to the point right now.’

Mick’s Mama rattled a bunch of keys and her Dad sat very still with his big hands hanging over his knees.

‘Bubber didn’t have it in his mind beforehand,’ Mick said. ‘He just——’

Mrs. Wilson jabbed the ring on and off her finger. ‘Wait a minute. I know how everything is. I could bring it to court and sue you for every cent you own.’

Her Dad didn’t have any expression on his face. ‘I tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much to sue for. All we got is——’

‘Just listen to me,’ said Mrs. Wilson. ‘I haven’t come here with any lawyer to sue you. Bartholomew—Mister Brannon—and I talked it over when we came and we just about agree on the main points. In the first place, I want to do the fair, honest thing—and in the second place, I don’t want Baby’s name mixed up in no common lawsuit at her age.’

There was not a sound and everybody in the room sat stiff in their chairs. Only Mister Brannon halfway smiled at Mick, but she squinted her eyes back at him in a tough way.

Mrs. Wilson was very nervous and her hand shook when she lighted a cigarette. ‘I don’t want to have to sue you or anything like that. All I want is for you to be fair. I’m not asking you to pay for all the suffering and crying Baby went through with until they gave her something to sleep. There’s not any pay that would make up for that. And I’m not asking you to pay for the damage this will do to her career and the plans we had made. She’s going to have to wear a bandage for several months. She won’t get to dance in the soirée—maybe there’ll even be a little bald place on her head.’

Mrs. Wilson and her Dad looked at each other like they was hypnotized. Then Mrs. Wilson reached around to her pocketbook and took out a slip of paper.

‘The things you got to pay are just the actual price of what it will cost us in money. There’s Baby’s private room in the hospital and a private nurse until she can come home. There’s the operating room and the doctor’s bill—and for once I intend the doctor to be paid right away. Also, they shaved all Baby’s hair off and you got to pay me for the permanent wave I took her to Atlanta to get—so when her hair grows back natural she can have another one. And there’s the price of her costume and other little extra bills like that. I’ll write all the items down just as soon as I know what they’ll be. I’m trying to be just as fair and honest as I can, and you’ll have to pay the total when I bring it to you.’

Her Mama smoothed her dress over her knees and took a quick, short breath. ‘Seems to me like the childrens’ ward would be a lot better than a private room. When Mick had pneumonia——’

‘I said a private room.’

Mister Brannon held out his white, stumpy hands and balanced them like they was on scales. ‘Maybe in a day or two Baby can move into a double room with some other kid.’

Mrs. Wilson spoke hard-boiled. ‘You heard what I said. Long as your kid shot my Baby she certainly ought to have every advantage until she gets well.’

‘You’re in your rights,’ her Dad said. ‘God knows we don’t have anything now—but maybe I can scrape it up. I realize you’re not trying to take advantage of us and I appreciate it. We’ll do what we can.’

She wanted to stay and hear everything that they said, but Bubber was on her mind. When she thought of him sitting up in the dark, cold tree house thinking about Sing Sing she felt uneasy. She went out of the room and down the hall toward the back door. The wind was blowing and the yard was very dark except for the yellow square that came from the light in the kitchen. When she looked back she saw Portia sitting at the table with her long, thin hands up to her face, very still. The yard was lonesome and the wind made quick, scary shadows and a mourning kind of sound in the darkness.

She stood under the oak tree. Then just as she started to reach for the first limb a terrible notion came over her. It came to her all of a sudden that Bubber was gone. She called him and he did not answer. She climbed quick and quiet as a cat.

‘Say! Bubber!’

Without feeling in the box she knew he wasn’t there. To make sure she got into the box and felt in all the corners. The kid was gone. He must have started down the minute she left. He was running away for sure now, and with a smart kid like Bubber it was no telling where they’d catch him.

She scrambled down the tree and ran to the front porch. Mrs. Wilson was leaving and they had all come out to the front steps with her.

‘Dad!’ she said. ‘We got to do something about Bubber. He’s run away. I’m sure he left our block. We all got to get out and hunt him.’

Nobody knew where to go or how to begin. Her Dad walked up and down the street, looking in all the alleys. Mister Brannon telephoned for a ten-cent taxi for Mrs. Wilson and then stayed to help with the hunt. Mister Singer sat on the banisters of the porch and he was the only person who kept calm. They all waited for Mick to plan out the best places to look for Bubber. But the town was so big and the little kid was so smart that she couldn’t think what to do.

Maybe he had gone to Portia’s house over in Sugar Hill. She went back into the kitchen where Portia was sitting at the table with her hands up to her face.

‘I got this sudden notion he went down to your house. Help us hunt him.’

‘How come I didn’t think of that! I bet a nickel my little scared Bubber been staying in my home all the time.’

Mister Brannon had borrowed an automobile. He and Mister Singer and Mick’s Dad got into the car with her and Portia. Nobody knew what Bubber was feeling except her. Nobody knew he had really run away like he was escaping to save his life.

Portia’s house was dark except for the checkered moonlight on the floor. As soon as they stepped inside they could tell there was nobody in the two rooms. Portia lighted the front lamp. The rooms had a colored smell, and they were crowded with cut-out pictures on the walls and the lace table covers and lace pillows on the bed. Bubber was not there.

‘He been here,’ Portia suddenly said. ‘I can tell somebody been in here.’

Mister Singer found the pencil and piece of paper on the kitchen table. He read it quickly and then they all looked at it. The writing was round and scraggly and the smart little kid hadn’t misspelled but one word. The note said:

Dear Portia,

I gone to Florada. Tell every body.

Yours truly,

Bubber Kelly

They stood around surprised and stumped. Her Dad looked out the doorway and picked his nose with his thumb in a worried way. They were all ready to pile in the car and ride toward the highway leading south.

‘Wait a minute,’ Mick said. ‘Even if Bubber is seven years old he’s got brains enough not to tell us where he’s going if he wants to run away. That about Florida is just a trick.’

‘A trick?’ her Dad said.

‘Yeah. There only two places Bubber knows very much about. One is Florida and the other is Atlanta. Me and Bubber and Ralph have been on the Atlanta road many a time. He knows how to start there and that’s where he’s headed. He always talks about what he’s going to do when he gets a chance to go to Atlanta.’

They went out to the automobile again. She was ready to climb into the back seat when Portia pinched her on the elbow. ‘You know what Bubber done?’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Don’t you tell nobody else, but my Bubber done also taken my gold earrings off my dresser. I never thought my Bubber would have done such a thing to me.’

Mister Brannon started the automobile. They rode slow, looking up and down the streets for Bubber, headed toward the Atlanta road.

It was true that in Bubber there was a tough, mean streak. He was acting different today than he had ever acted before. Up until now he was always a quiet little kid who never really done anything mean. When anybody’s feelings were hurt it always made him ashamed and nervous. Then how come he could do all the things he had done today?

They drove very slow out the Atlanta road. They passed the last line of houses and came to the dark fields and woods. All along they had stopped to ask if anyone had seen Bubber. ‘Has a little barefooted kid in corduroy knickers been by this way?’ But even after they had gone about ten miles nobody had seen or noticed him. The wind came in cold and strong from the open windows and it was late at night.

They rode a little farther and then went back toward town. Her Dad and Mister Brannon wanted to look up all the children in the second grade, but she made them turn around and go back on the Atlanta road again. All the while she remembered the words she had said to Bubber. About Baby being dead and Sing Sing and Warden Lawes. About the small electric chairs that were just his size, and Hell. In the dark the words had sounded terrible.

They rode very slow for about half a mile out of town, and then suddenly she saw Bubber. The lights of the car showed him up in front of them very plain. It was funny. He was walking along the edge of the road and he had his thumb out trying to get a ride. Portia’s butcher knife was stuck in his belt, and on the wide, dark road he looked so small that it was like he was five years old instead of seven.

They stopped the automobile and he ran to get in. He couldn’t see who they were, and his face had the squint-eyed look it always had when he took aim with a marble. Her Dad held him by the collar. He hit with his fists and kicked. Then he had the butcher knife in his hand. Their Dad yanked it away from him just in time. He fought like a little tiger in a trap, but finally they got him into the car. Their Dad held him in his lap on the way home and Bubber sat very stiff, not leaning against anything.

They had to drag him into the house, and all the neighbors and the boarders were out to see the commotion. They dragged him into the front room and when he was there he backed off into a corner, holding his fists very tight and with his squinted eyes looking from one person to the other like he was ready to fight the whole crowd.

He hadn’t said one word since they came into the house until he began to scream: ‘Mick done it! I didn’t do it. Mick done it!’

There were never any kind of yells like the ones Bubber made. The veins in his neck stood out and his fists were hard as little rocks.

‘You can’t get me! Nobody can get me!’ he kept yelling.

Mick shook him by the shoulder. She told him the things she had said were stories. He finally knew what she was saying but he wouldn’t hush. It looked like nothing could stop that screaming.

‘I hate everybody! I hate everybody!’

They all just stood around. Mister Brannon rubbed his nose and looked down at the floor. Then finally he went out very quietly. Mister Singer was the only one who seemed to know what it was all about. Maybe this was because he didn’t hear that awful noise. His face was still calm, and whenever Bubber looked at him he seemed to get quieter. Mister Singer was different from any other man, and at times like this it would be better if other people would let him manage. He had more sense and he knew things that ordinary people couldn’t know. He just looked at Bubber, and after a while the kid quieted down enough so that their Dad could get him to bed.

In the bed he lay on his face and cried. He cried with long, big sobs that made him tremble all over. He cried for an hour and nobody in the three rooms could sleep. Bill moved to the living-room sofa and Mick got into bed with Bubber. He wouldn’t let her touch him or snug up to him. Then after another hour of crying and hiccoughing he went to sleep.

She was awake a long time. In the dark she put her arms around him and held him very close. She touched him all over and kissed him everywhere. He was so soft and little and there was this salty, boy smell about him. The love she felt was so hard that she had to squeeze him to her until her arms were tired. In her mind she thought about Bubber and music together. It was like she could never do anything good enough for him. She would never hit him or even tease him again. She slept all night with her arms around his head. Then in the morning when she woke up he was gone.

But after that night there was not much of a chance for her to tease him any more—her or anybody else. After he shot Baby the kid was not ever like little Bubber again. He always kept his mouth shut and he didn’t fool around with anybody. Most of the time he just sat in the back yard or in the coal house by himself. It got closer and closer toward Christmas time. She really wanted a piano, but naturally she didn’t say anything about that. She told everybody she wanted a Mickey Mouse watch. When they asked Bubber what he wanted from Santa Claus he said he didn’t want anything. He hid his marbles and jack-knife and wouldn’t let anyone touch his story books.

After that night nobody called him Bubber any more. The big kids in the neighborhood started calling him Baby-Killer Kelly. But he didn’t speak much to any person and nothing seemed to bother him. The family called him by his real name—George. At first Mick couldn’t stop calling him Bubber and she didn’t want to stop. But it was funny how after about a week she just naturally called him George like the others did. But he was a different kid—George—going around by himself always like a person much older and with nobody, not even her, knowing what was really in his mind.

She slept with him on Christmas Eve night. He lay in the dark without talking. ‘Quit acting so peculiar,’ she said to him. ‘Less talk about the wise men and the way the children in Holland put out their wooden shoes instead of hanging up their stockings.’

George wouldn’t answer. He went to sleep.

She got up at four o’clock in the morning and waked everybody in the family. Their Dad built a fire in the front room and then let them go in to the Christmas tree and see what they got. George had an Indian suit and Ralph a rubber doll. The rest of the family just got clothes. She looked all through her stocking for the Mickey Mouse watch but it wasn’t there. Her presents were a pair of brown Oxford shoes and a box of cherry candy. While it was still dark she and George went out on the sidewalk and cracked nigger-toes and shot firecrackers and ate up the whole two-layer box of cherry candy. And by the time it was daylight they were sick to the stomach and tired out. She lay down on the sofa. She shut her eyes and went into the inside room.