The Soldier's Lady (19 page)

But he was gone.

He ran and ran and ran. Whether he cried he could never remember. To run himself to exhaustion was the sole remedy for his confusion and anguish. When he came to himself a few hours later, his fingers were still clutched around the eight cents, and he was aware that he was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger.

Old habits returned. He pilfered half a loaf of bread and an apple or two and gradually, sometime after nightfall, returned to the only home he had ever known.

He crept up the stairs, somehow knowing that it would be best for the landlord not to be aware of his presence. The door opened to his touch, for it did not even have a lock. He crept inside and to his familiar corner.

Now at last he cried . . . cried himself into a sound and
dreamlessly forgetful sleep . . . and slept until morning.

He rose as usual, took one last forlorn look about the place, cried briefly again to see the vacant bed of his mother, empty and lifeless, and then left, never to return.

S
TREETS FOR A
H
OME

16

E
VEN THE STREETS OF A CITY, WHEN ONE HAS
someone
else
to live for, can give life and energy and even smiles. But when mere survival is the only objective, the streets of a city become cold and hard. And such they now became for the young black orphan.

The faces from which he had always derived the camaraderie of shared humanity now became adversarial. His own contentment, which had reflected twinkling eyes and teeth ready to glisten in a bright smile toward friend or stranger, now took on a calculating expression of suspicion, greed, and wariness. The innocence of childhood vanished, replaced by the cunning of avarice. The pickpocket replaced the boyish opportunist.

How one lives without a home in a city will always be a mystery to those unacquainted with the invisible subterranean workings of life for those who call the streets themselves home. He met others of his kind—old men, tramps, crooks, con men, hobos. Among them were men of honor, and others who would slit a man's throat for a few dollars.
Life among them all taught him to read character, taught him to keep on his toes, taught him to sleep—whether under bridge or in vacant alley—with an ear always cocked for danger. It also subtly revealed, though he did not yet recognize this most valuable of life's lessons, the truth that every man is on his way through life in one direction or another, eternally bound for one of two very different and opposite destinations.

As the months became a year, then two years, he grew and took on the gradual shape and form of teenage masculinity. His features hardened, his eyes narrowed. He became an angry black youth whose very gait drew the looks of the police, whom he now avoided.

He could no longer flit about the city unnoticed. No longer a cute little boy, he began to appear dangerous, which the look on his face did nothing to contradict. Stealing became more difficult because wherever he went, eyes were upon him. He looked suspicious and thus drew unfriendly stares.

A day came. A day of crisis, a day of destiny, a day of decision.

The boy, thirteen now, though he looked older, had fallen in with a rowdy group of half a dozen young thugs who prowled the streets with no good on their minds. Two or three had already been in jail for petty crimes. Remarkably, for youth is not only blind but also a little stupid, the younger ones looked up to these and sought to curry their favor with impressive deeds of ever more serious mischief.

They were out late one afternoon, roaming the streets looking for what might provide an easy target, venturing a
little closer than was their custom to the white part of the city in hopes of slipping into some shop as a group and distracting the store owner with pretended shoplifting while one of their number sneaked behind the counter and pilfered the till. But there were crowds and occasional police about, and thus far their plans had come to naught.

A white man approached along the boardwalk. The first of their number slowed and looked him over, muttering a few threatening words as if sizing him up and wondering how much money he might have on his person. One by one they slowly passed him, until the last of their number, the youngest, came face to face with the tall commanding stranger. Something about the man's face drew him and he glanced up. The eyes of the white man and black youth met.

A sudden look of shock and astonishment spread over the man's face. The boy saw it and it startled him. His steps slowed. The two stared at each other a brief moment before a voice interrupted the silence.

“Duff . . . hey, Duff, whatchu doin', man? Come on . . . quit starin' at dat ol' white man an' let's go.”

The boy pulled his gaze away and hurried to catch up with the others. Their running steps echoing along the boards were soon gone. Still the man stood in amazement, watching as they disappeared from sight.

Later that same night, the group of street toughs had still not had their thirst satisfied for excitement and conquest. They had been watching the shop of a certain jeweler for several days and this was the night their leader had chosen to raise the stakes of his deadly cat-and-mouse
game with the police. Being the seventeen-year-old street thug he was, the fact that he planned to use his younger accomplices as decoys was not something he divulged to them.

He waited until after midnight when the streets were deserted. He signaled to his small gang to follow him to the vicinity of the store. There he would place them in position—two as sentries watching the street in both directions, two others to break in with him, and the last to make himself seen and run off in the wrong direction if anyone came.

They were some two hundred yards from the store when the youngest, feeling a growing anxiety in his stomach, begun to lag a few steps behind. Duff was afraid and he knew it. But he could not dare admit it to the others. Yet as they neared the store he slowed still more and fell all the farther behind, first only a step or two, then four, then—

Suddenly a bright light shone in his face. Trembling from head to foot, he stared into the blinding whiteness.

He froze in terror.

He became vaguely aware of the figure of a large man in the midst of the light.

“Don't go with them,” said a commanding voice.

His comrades heard it too. They stopped to see a figure step from out of the shadows of a building into their path.

“Hit's dat crazy ol' man we seen earlier,” shouted one. “Git him!”

The ringleader turned and ran back, angered at this interruption of his plans. He went straight for the white man. As he approached, the glint of a knife blade flickered in the light of a distant street lantern.

But the man was shrewder than the young troublemakers
gave him credit for, and twice as strong as any two or three of them together. He waited for the attack, then with invisibly deft speed grabbed the older boy's wrist as he advanced and twisted it viciously.

A sharp cry of pain sounded in the night. The steel blade clattered to the boardwalk. Still holding the boy's wrist as if he would break his arm, the man forced him to his knees. The boy yelled in helpless fury.

“You young fool—what did you take me for!” the man said. “Now you get away from me and don't come back. If I see you again, next time I will break both your arms and personally walk you straight to the police station.”

He let go his grip.

Swearing violently, the ringleader retrieved his knife and ran off, followed by his young admirers.

In the fifteen or twenty seconds that the skirmish had taken, the bright light faded from the vision of the young black boy who had been following. The exchange of words had sounded distant and muffled to his ears. He was still in a trance, watching and listening to events from which he had suddenly become detached. He saw . . . he heard . . . yet within his own brain time seemed to stand still.

He now saw the man, whom he too recognized from earlier in the day, though he was still enveloped in a glow of fading brightness no earthly source could account for. He could also see the shadowy forms of what he had thought were his friends. In truth they were no friends at all, for they failed utterly in the first and primary test of friendship—they did not seek for his best, only what would gratify themselves. But the forms of his companions were dark, distant, and shadowy. Though they were but fifteen
or twenty feet away, he could barely make out their voices, as if they came from far away through a tunnel of darkness.

Gradually the sound of their retreating footsteps came to his ears as the gang of boys disappeared into the night. He took several steps toward them, trying to follow. But his feet were leaden.

“Come on, Duff,” called a voice after him. He stepped toward the sound in a living dream. But slowly the voices and running footsteps faded into the blackness of night.

Fearfully he turned back. There stood the strange man of the light only a few feet away. He stood bathed in the glow of an eerie brightness coming from behind him.

A chill swept through him. What was this! Had he fallen and whacked his head? Was he dreaming? Had he fallen asleep somewhere and would wake up any instant? Or was he going crazy! What was this light in the middle of the city in the dead of night?

He turned again. The dark tunnel was still spread out in the opposite direction. One faint final,
Come . . . on . . . Duff!
came from it. He spun around yet again. There still lay a path of brightness. Back and forth he looked two or three more times in bewilderment. He knew he must follow one path or the other.

Still the strange man stood silently waiting between the two.

“Your life is in front of you, boy,” now said the man. “Your whole life—right here, right now. Every choice makes you who you are. This is where it begins—with this choice, this moment. You've made some bad ones. But they can be put behind you in an instant. Don't be a fool, like those others. They are no friends. But I will be your
friend. They will lead you nowhere but to trouble. Turn to the light and let them go. I want you to come with me.”

One more fleeting look to the right and then to the left, then gradually the vision of light and the dark tunnel faded. He was alone on a deserted street in the middle of the night.

All around was silence. A white man, a complete stranger, stood in front of him, waiting.

He felt his eyes begin to fill with the hot tears of loneliness. A hand clasped his shoulder. He looked up. The man was staring deeply into his eyes.

“What will it be, son?” he said. “I will force you to do nothing you do not choose to do. Will you go with me?”

A moment more the boy waited, then slowly nodded his head.

Without another word, the man led him away. He remembered nothing more of how the rest of the night passed.

M
ENTOR

17

T
HE BOY WOKE UP WITH DAYLIGHT STREAMING
through two windows above a warm bed in which he slept. He had never slept in a bed with actual sheets and blankets and a mattress in his life. He had no idea where he was.

Gradually the events of the strange night returned to his consciousness.

His natural instinct was to flee. But almost as quickly, he realized the folly of the idea. He had never lain in anything so soft and clean and comfortable in his life. It felt good! Why would he run from this?

Now he realized that he was wearing some kind of strange clothing. It was clean and soft like the bed. And he didn't smell anymore—his body was clean too.

A door opened. The man from yesterday walked in. He was carrying a tray.

“Good morning, son!” he said. “How did you sleep?”

“Uh . . . okay, I reckon.”

“Would you like some fresh orange juice?”

“Uh, sure,” he replied. The man handed him the glass on the tray. He sat up, took it, tasted it, and then drank it down in a single long gulp.

He handed the man the glass and looked up at him. “Uh . . . thanks,” he said. “I ain't neber had dat before.” His forehead wrinkled in question. “Why'd you bring me here, mister? Who is you, anyway?”