I looked at him carefully. I knew then he was the kind of guy who laughs way down deep when he laughs at all.
He said, “I’ll use that in a book of case histories some time. But it won’t include yours. What made you throw that in?” When I didn’t answer, he got up and moved to a chair behind me where I couldn’t see him. “You can quit testing, Sonny. I’m good enough for your purposes.”
I clenched my jaws so hard, my back teeth hurt. Then I relaxed. I relaxed all over. It was wonderful. “All right,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say anyihing, but I had that feeling again that he was laughing. Not at me, though.
“How old are you?” he asked me suddenly.
“Uh—fifteen.”
“Uh—fifteen,” he repeated. “What does the ‘uh’ mean?”
“Nothing. I’m fifteen.”
“When I asked your age, you hesitated because some other number popped up. You discarded that and substituted ‘fifteen.’ ”
“The hell I did! I am fifteen!”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.” His voice came patiently. “Now what was the other number?”
I got mad again. “There wasn’t any other number! What do you want to go pryin’ my grunts apart for, trying to plant this and that and make it mean what you think it ought to mean?”
He was silent.
“I’m fifteen,” I said defiantly, and then, “I don’t like being only fifteen. You know that. I’m not trying to insist I’m fifteen.”
He just waited, still not saying anything.
I felt defeated. “The number was eight.”
“So you’re eight. And your name?”
“Gerry.” I got up on one elbow, twisting my neck around so I could see him. He had his pipe apart and was sighting through the stem at the desk lamp. “Gerry, without no ‘uh!’ ”
“All right,” he said mildly, making me feel real foolish.
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
Eight, I thought. Eight.
“It’s cold in here,” I complained.
Eight. Eight, plate, state, hate. I ate from the plate of the state and I hate. I didn’t like any of that and I snapped my eyes open. The ceiling was still gray. It was all right. Stern was somewhere behind me with his pipe, and he was all right. I took two deep breaths, three, and then let my eyes close. Eight. Eight years old. Eight, hate. Years, fears. Old, cold. Damn it! I twisted and twitched on the couch, trying to find a way to keep the cold out. I ate from the plate of the—
I grunted and with my mind I took all the eights and all the rhymes and everything they stood for, and made it all black. But it wouldn’t stay black. I had to put something there, so I made a great big luminous figure eight and just jet it hang there. But it turned on its side and inside the loops it began to shimmer. It was like one of those movie shots through binoculars. I was going to have to look through whether I liked it or not.
Suddenly I quit fighting it and let it wash over me. The binoculars came close, closer, and then I was there.
Eight. Eight years old, cold. Cold as a bitch in the ditch. The ditch was by a railroad. Last year’s weeds were scratchy straw. The ground was red, and when it wasn’t slippery, clingy mud, it was frozen hard like a flowerpot. It was hard like that now, dusted with hoar-frost, cold as the winter light that pushed up over the hills. At night the lights were warm, and they were all in other people’s houses. In the daytime the sun was in somebody else’s house too, for all the good it did me.
I was dying in that ditch. Last night it was as good a place as any to sleep, and this morning it was as good a place as any to die. Just as well. Eight years old, the sick-sweet taste of porkfat and wet bread from somebody’s garbage, the thrill of terror when you’re stealing a gunnysack and you hear a footstep.
And I heard a footstep.
I’d been curled up on my side. I whipped over on my stomach because sometimes they kick your belly. I covered my head with my arms and that was as far as I could get.
After a while I rolled my eyes up and looked without moving. There was a big shoe there. There was an ankle in the shoe, and another shoe close by. I lay there waiting to get tromped. Not that I cared much any more, but it was such a damn shame. All these months on my own, and they’d never caught up with me, never even come close, and now this. It was such a shame I started to cry.
The shoe took me under the armpit, but it was not a kick. It rolled me over. I was so stiff from the cold, I went over like a plank. I just kept my arms over my face and head and lay there with my eyes closed. For some reason I stopped crying. I think people only cry when there’s a chance of getting help from somewhere.
When nothing happened, I opened my eyes and shifted my forearms a little so I could see up. There was a man standing over me and he was a mile high. He had on faded dungarees and an old Eisenhower jacket with deep sweat-stains under the arms. His face was shaggy, like the guys who can’t grow what you could call a beard, but still don’t shave.
He said, “Get up.”
I looked down at his shoe, but he wasn’t going to kick me. I pushed up a little and almost fell down again, except he put his big hand where my back would hit it. I lay against it for a second because I had to, and then got up to where I had one knee on the ground.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I swear I felt my bones creak, but I made it. I brought a round white stone up with me as I stood. I hefted the stone. I had to look at it to see if I was really holding it, my fingers were that cold. I told him, “Stay away from me or I’ll bust you in the teeth with this rock.”
His hand came out and down so fast, I never saw the way he got one finger between my palm and the rock, and flicked it out of my grasp. I started to cuss at him, but he just turned his back and walked up the embankment toward the tracks. He put his chin on his shoulder and said, “Come on, will you?”
He didn’t chase me, so I didn’t run. He didn’t talk to me, so I didn’t argue. He didn’t hit me, so I didn’t get mad. I went along after him. He waited for me. He put out his hand to me and I spit at it. So he went on, up to the tracks, out of my sight. I clawed my way up. The blood was beginning to move in my hands and feet and they felt like four point-down porcupines. When I got up to the roadbed, the man was standing there waiting for me.
The track was level just there, but as I turned my head to look along it, it seemed to be a hill that was steeper and steeper and turned over above me. And next thing you know, I was lying fiat on my back looking up at the cold sky.
The man came over and sat down on the rail near me. He didn’t try to touch me. I gasped for breath a couple of times, and suddenly felt I’d be all right if I could sleep for a minute—just a little minute. I closed my eyes. The man stuck his finger in my ribs, hard. It hurt.
