walk up the block and around—no. That wouldn’t work, either. He’d have the cheese eaten, but that man across the street who worked on the B&O would be up and he’d look out and see him.
Christ. All right. Here’s what he’d do. He’d go into the bathroom, run a tub of water like that jackass Nevan Dolan had done—it was all anybody who could talk was talking about last night at the tavern—and wait for a heart attack to kill him and if that didn’t work, he’d put his straight razor next to him on the bathtub ledge and slice his wrists open and then that would take care of everything.
Okay. That’s what he’d do, and that would be fine—oh, and he’d be sure to shut the bathroom door so the cat wouldn’t get upset or eat anything he shouldn’t. Somebody would come for the cat eventually. It was a loud damn cat.
He flung himself out of bed, not bothering with robe or slippers, barreled out of the bedroom and lurched down through the length of the house to the bathroom. He weaved a little, the soles of his feet cold on the floor, and leaned over the toilet bowl and threw up another time.
He stood up.
He was so hungry he couldn’t think. He wasn’t going to kill himself, he was going to eat, and he didn’t care if it was lard or a chunk of ice or a dry teabag. He ran as well as a drunk man can run down the back stairs to the kitchen, threw open the icebox door, and saw what he’d completely forgotten about, the end of a ham he had been keeping to make soup. The brown rind covered mostly fat but a little bit of flesh, and he could taste the salt of it right there in his mouth. He pulled it out with the block of lard and threw them both down on the counter top next to the sink, pulled out the big carving knife, and began to cut into the ham. The first bite was half-fat, cold, thick, and soft, with a greasy aftertaste that turned his stomach. Treyf, some deceased place in his mind said, to which he answered, Shut up, you bastard. I eat what I please.
The ham was not going to be enough. He saw the bag that held the onion roll on top of the icebox, took it out and tried a bite, but it was so stale he could barely manage to rip off a mouthful, and the hard crust scraped the inside of his cheek and his tongue.
The slip, he said to himself, just fill out the slip. It doesn’t matter. Just fill it out.
But he wouldn’t open that front door, he knew that. He could go around out back, though, he thought, if he did it right now, if he checked off the boxes on the slip, put on his overcoat and his shoes, and went out the back very quietly. He could do that, surely he could.
The alley smelled of old water sitting, lichen growing on the small stones of the cement, cold brick, and tar. This, what the out-of-doors smelled like, he barely noted, but he watched for rats and garbage cans so as not to run into either. The rear of the funeral home took up most of what would be its yard, and he stepped out from the back corner of that building out onto Pratt Street, under a street light. He clutched the milk order slip tighter in his hand, pulled his overcoat around him like a bathrobe, and walked gently up the half-block, turned and in less than a minute was in front of his house. He looked up and down the street, saw not a light on nor a shade up, laughed to himself in quiet triumph, and tucked the order slip into the wooden crate, between two milk bottles. He’d even ordered cream this time, and an extra dozen of eggs, and another loaf of bread. Just the thought of the food filled him up, and he knew he could survive until the truck came by.
Saturday Morning: All Right, Steve
As he turned to retrace his steps to the alley, he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of a small man coming up to him, slowly, and in fact he was not at all certain at first that he was not seeing a ghost. But the man’s footsteps made sound, and the man himself seemed to be breathing hard and heavily as if the act of breathing was cutting into some part of him, and that Young could hear the cutting, not of flesh but of bone or, going by the insides of a chicken, of the thick cartilage that separated the lungs from the chest. Then Young saw that it was not a man, but a boy, that cat-swinging boy who beat his dog and who thought he was in love with that foolish girl, Connie. Young always called him Steve, but he knew that wasn’t his name.
The boy came right up to him and stopped. He didn’t seem to want to do anything else. Young waited.
“I need to get me to the B&O,” the boy said in a whisper.
Young didn’t say anything.
“I need to get there,” he said again. He was forcing the words out, and sounded like he might be crying. “I can’t make it.”
And then he had to pause and breathe some more, and then he said a word that Young immediately knew was not a word he often said, maybe not one that he ever said.
“Please.”
Not Help me, but Please, and hearing that Young would help him any way that he could, and he had not known that before, either.
“Okay, Steve,” he said.
Young Mr. Emerson took a deep breath, and despite his frailty grabbed Petie, whose name the boy’s really was, by the hand and dragged him into his house through the front door, “For I am damned if I shall walk through the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad without socks on,” he said. He was no longer hungry and he didn’t care who might be watching. He forced Petie into a chair in the living room, where the cat immediately jumped on Petie’s lap and he began to stroke it with one finger as he stared out into the middle of the floor, and wept it seemed only because he could not help it.
“I’ll be just a minute,” Young said to him when he saw this, but when Petie didn’t respond he put out his hands as if to embrace him, but didn’t touch him, then straightened himself again. “I’ll be right back,” he said, paused, turned, and went upstairs.
He dressed in his Sunday clothes, including a bow tie, but moved quickly and didn’t take a bit longer than putting on his everyday things would have done. He pulled on dress stockings, with garters to finish, then his shoes, then put his overcoat back on over everything, tapped his way back downstairs, got his hat from the cupboard, and entered the living room, finding Petie as he’d left him.
“All right then!” Young said brightly, as if Petie were his own son and they were meeting again after many years, and it was his job to figure out what they were going to do and talk about. “Let us essay the historical haunts of the rail yard,” he said what he hoped was gaily, and it came to him that he was speaking as he used to do, back at the newspaper, like an educated man, a man who had a life of interest with significance to spare. This frightened him, but he didn’t know why, but nor did he care to stop.
Petie didn’t move, and it came to Young that possibly he couldn’t, so he took the boy by one hand, extended his other arm around his back, and lifted him as gently as he could.
“Aaaah,” Petie cried, and the sound of it nearly broke Young’s heart.
“I’m sorry, boy,” he said. “Do you not want to go? We don’t have to go. I can get you home if you want.”
“Please,” Petie said again, and Young knew that he did not mean that he wanted to go home.
“All right!” Young said again brightly and far too loudly. “We’re off to the races, then. Come along, now,” and he steered Petie through the three doors, banging his own body through the screen door, not hearing the pump as it wheezed the screen shut behind them.
They took the three steps to the pavement, turned, and, step by excruciating step, Young holding Petie like a dance partner, his good arm still around the boy’s waist, his poor hand lightly holding the boy’s hand, they shuffled down the block.
They did not speak another word the entire forty-five minutes, as Young estimated, that it took them to walk the half dozen blocks to the B&O. The sun still not yet up, they had not encountered a soul on the street, nor a single vehicle other than a taxi that slowed to indicate a question to which Young waved the negative with his head. Petie’s steps were as labored as those of a very old man, his breath thick and sharp, stepping down off of and up on to the curbs taking every bit of attention he had. Still, Young could tell his thoughts were