There was something wrong in this; and there was something ropy, milky, undefined in all the porches of his blood, so that, George felt, had Baxter’s flesh been cut or broken, had he bled, there would have been a ropy, milkweed mucus before blood came. He carried pictures in his pockets, photographs from Cuba, so he said, of shining naked whores in their rank white flesh and hairiness, in perverse and Latin revels with men with black mustaches, and he spoke often of experiences he had had with girls in town, and with negro women.
All this George remembered with a rush of naked vividness.
But he remembered also a kindness, a warmth and friendliness, equally strange and sudden, which Baxter had; something swift and eager, wholly liberal, which made him wish to share all he had—the sausages and sandwiches which he brought with him to school, together with all his enormous and delicious lunch—offering and thrusting the rich bounty of his lunch box, which would smell with an unutterable fragrance and delight, at the other boys with a kind of eager, asking, and insatiable generosity. And at times his voice was gentle, and his manner had this same strange, eager, warm, and almost timid gentleness and friendliness.
George remembered passing the butcher shop once, and from the basement, warm with its waft of fragrant spices, he suddenly heard Baxter screaming:
“Oh, I’ll be good! I’ll be good!”—and that sound from this rough, brutal boy had suddenly pierced him with an unutterable sense of shame and pity.
This, then, was Baxter as George had known him, and as he remembered him when the butcher spoke of him that day. And as the butcher spoke his hard and toneless words of judgment, George felt a wave of intolerable pity and regret pass over him as he remembered Baxter (although he had not known him well or seen him often), and knew he never would come back again.
CHAPTER 8
The Child by Tiger
One day after school, Monk and several of the boys were playing with a football in the yard at Randy Shepperton’s. Randy was calling signals and handling the ball. Nebraska Crane was kicking it. Augustus Potterham was too clumsy to run or kick or pass, so they put him at center where all he’d have to do would be to pass the ball back to Randy when he got the signal. To the other boys, Gus Potterham was their freak child, their lame duck, the butt of their jokes and ridicule, but they also had a sincere affection for him; he was something to be taken in hand, to be protected and cared for.
There were several other boys who were ordinarily members of their group. They had Harry Higginson and Sam Pennock, and two boys named Howard Jarvis and Jim Redmond. It wasn’t enough to make a team, of course. They didn’t have room enough to play a game even if they had had team enough. What they played was really a kind of skeletonized practice game, with Randy and Nebraska back, Gus at center, two other fellows at the ends, and Monk and two or three more on the other side, whose duty was to get in and “break it up” if they could.
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, late in October, and there was a smell of smoke, of leaves, of burning in the air. Bras had just kicked to Monk. It was a good kick too—a high, soaring punt that spiraled out above Monk’s head, behind him. He ran back and tried to get it, but it was far and away “over the goal line”—that is to say, out in the street. It hit the street and bounded back and forth with that peculiarly erratic bounce a football has.
The ball rolled away from Monk down towards the corner. He was running out to get it when Dick Prosser, Sheppertons’ new negro man, came along, gathered it up neatly in his great black paw, and tossed it to him. Dick turned in then, and came on around the house, greeting the boys as he came. He called all of them “Mister” except Randy, and Randy was always “Cap’n”—” Cap’n Shepperton.” This formal address—“Mr.” Crane, “Mr.” Potterham, “Mr.” Webber, “Cap’n” Shepperton—pleased them immensely, gave them a feeling of mature importance and authority.