Mischief Read online

  “She’s comforted,” spat Nell. Then she changed. “But thank you for asking,” she said in a sweet whine that had a threat to it, somehow. “I guess you mean well. But I really can’t ask you in here. I don’t know who you are or this man—”

  Joseph plucked his mother from the doorway roughly.

  “Good night, then,” Parthenia said forlornly and, as Nell closed them out, “If I was white I wouldn’t—”

  “Shush!” said her son. “Hurry up. Get the elevator. Get home. She’s trouble.”

  “Trouble,” his mother murmured.

  “You ought to know better, Ma. I told you. We can’t fool around that white girl. Believe me, not that one!”

  “I wasn’t fooling. Something’s bad wrong, Joseph. Baby’s mother’s not there. I can’t feel happy about it.”

  “Listen, Ma, you better feel happy because you can’t win. You know that, don’t you? You can’t stick your nose in that white girl’s affairs, if you’re right a million times over.” He rang for the elevator, jittering.

  “No child,” said Parthenia gravely, as they waited, “no child gets off the nightmare as quick as that No child, Joseph. Nobody’s child.”

  “You can’t do anything, Ma. Forget it, can’t you?”

  The elevator stopped. The door slid. Parthenia’s enormous foot hesitated. But she stepped in, at last, and Joseph sighed as they sank down.

  He heard her mutter, “No, I wouldn’t go.”

  “Shall we stop for a bite?” said he in nervous animation. “You hungry, Ma?” She didn’t answer. “Ma?”

  “I don’t believe I’ll stop, tonight, boy,” Parthenia said.

  “Not hungry?” He grasped her arm and pushed her off the elevator, around the bend, to the back way out.

  Parthenia said, looking at the stars, “No, I’d make a fuss. I wouldn’t go.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “… niggers!” said Nell.

  All of a sudden, all Jed’s cool purpose to depart was burned up in the flame of his raging need to tell her off.

  “You damn wildcat! Dope! Fool! What’s the idea of doing what you did? What’s the idea of swatting him down like that? What in hell did you think you were doing? What kind of cockeyed dream was in your stupid brain? Answer me!”

  He shook her. The dark dress was too short. Also, it was cut to fit a more matronly body. So she looked younger and less sophisticated, but also older and dowdier. Her head went back on her neck, as a snake’s head poises to strike, and her tiny mouth over the sharp tiny chin looked venomous. Her face with the yellowish glow to the unlined skin was no age one could guess or imagine.

  “Answer me!”

  She was angry. “What’s the matter with you?” she cried. “You didn’t want to be seen, did you? Did you?”

  He could see her pupils, pin points in the fields of blue.

  “You’re the one who’s a dope!” cried Nell. “You didn’t want him to see you? Well? He was walking right in there.”

  “So you’d just as leave murder the man, eh? Just for walking? So you don’t care whether he lives or dies? Do you?”

  “He’s not going to die,” she said scornfully. “I didn’t hit him so hard.”

  “The hell you didn’t! You hit him as hard as you damn well could. Just luck that you didn’t …”

  “Did you want to be seen?” she hissed.

  “So you did me a favor? Don’t do me no more.” He flung her to one side of him, holding both her wrists in one hand. It crossed his mind that time was sifting by. It began to look as if no one had sounded any alarm to authority. Nothing was happening. He yanked her along as he went to peer through the window blinds.

  The dame across the court was just standing there. He could see her hands on the back of that chair.

  He swung Nell back into the center of the room. She stumbled, unresisting, although she looked a little sullen. She said, “I thought you didn’t want to be seen in here. You acted like it.”

  He looked at her. “Just a point,” he said dryly. “The little man had a perfect right to walk in there if he wanted to. He wasn’t doing a thing he shouldn’t do.” Nothing happened to her face, no change of expression. He might as well have said it in Choctaw, or something. “Didn’t think of that, eh? I suppose,” he mocked, “you ‘just weren’t thinking’?”

  “I thought you didn’t want him to see you.”

  “So, you shut his eyes. That’s logical. That’s great!” Jed wanted to slap her, hit her, worse than he had ever wanted to hit anything smaller than he was. He took his hands off her as if she would soil them. “O.K. Where did it get you? What did it do for you?”

  She didn’t seem to follow.

  “I was going. Remember? I’m still going. I’m going faster and farther, if that’s possible. And don’t think you can frame me with any lying yarn,” he stormed. “I’ll be gone,” he snapped his fingers, “like smoke! You don’t know who I am, my name, where I came from, or where I’m going to be. And you’ll never see me again in this world, Nelly girl. The point I’m trying to make. You might as well … might a hell of a lot better … have let your Uncle Eddie show me out! Do you get that? Can you?”

  She said nothing. But she moved a little bit, working around, he thought, to put herself between him and the door. He laughed. “Single track, your mind. One-idea-Nell. One at a time is all you can handle? Listen, you never had a chance to keep me here since I found out you were a baby sitter. Never. Not a chance. All your monkeyshines …”

  “Why not?” she said.

  “Say I’m allergic,” said Jed shortly, “and skip it. I’ve got nothing against kids.” His hand chopped the air nervously. “That’s got nothing to do with it. They let me alone, I let them alone. Nothing to me.” He didn’t like this line. He shifted, quickly. “Start thinking about yourself, and think fast, Nell. How you’re going to get out of the jam you got yourself into, I couldn’t say.”

  “I’ll get out of it,” she murmured carelessly.

  He didn’t hear. He was listening for something else. “It’s quiet in there,” he muttered.

  “She’s all right,” said Nell, carelessly. Her lids seemed to swell at the outsides of her eyes, puffing drowsily.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her nothing to be scared of. Somebody just fell down.” Suddenly Nell laughed, showing her teeth. “Somebody did,” she giggled.

  “How true,” said Jed thoughtfully. His anger churned inside of him still, but he had the upper hand of it. He had an uneasy feeling that he had better not indulge in so simple a response. He stepped around one of the beds and looked into the bathroom. “Eddie’s going to be missed, you know. Naturally, you didn’t think of that.”

  “He won’t be missed,” she said indifferently. “He’s off duty.” She sat down and put her ankles together and looked at her feet. Her toes made a miniature sashay.

  Eddie was about the same, still out, breathing better. Jed turned around.

  Nell fell back on her elbows, smiling up. “Take me dancing?” she said coquettishly. “Johnee?”

  “Dancing!” he exploded.

  “Uncle Eddie’s not on the elevator now.” She seemed to think she was explaining something!

  He wanted to say, I’d just as soon take a cobra dancing. But he said, “And? Who sits with the baby, in the meantime?”

  “It’s a dumb job,” she said. “I don’t like it”

  His lips parted, closed, parted. He sat down, facing her. It seemed important to make plain what it was she left out of her calculations. It seemed important to try reason out against unreason. It seemed necessary to try to cut through a wall of fog, to clear things up. “You’re in a mess,” he said, rather patiently. “Don’t you know that?”

  “What mess?” She was sulky.

  “You bop this guy, this Uncle Eddie. O.K. Now, what’s going to happen? Look ahead a little bit. The Joneses come home from the party. There’s a body in the bathroom. What are you going to say?”
>
  “It’s only Uncle Eddie,” she murmured.

  Jed took his head in his hands. He meant to make a semihumorous exaggeration of the gesture, but it fooled him. He was holding his head for real.

  “Now, listen carefully,” he said. “What’s going to happen? Future tense. Consequences. You ever heard of them?”

  She used a word that rocked him with the unexpectedness of its vulgarity. “—, Uncle Eddie isn’t going to say it was me who hit him.”

  He had to admit that he himself had reasoned along this line. For a moment, he was stopped. “O.K.,” he resumed patiently. “So Eddie won’t tell on you. Then, what is the story? Did he knock himself out? What did knock him out? Who? Don’t you see, you’ve got to have an answer?”

  “I can say you did it,” she answered placidly.

  “After I’m gone, you’ll say it!” He was furious.

  “Unless we’re out dancing.”

  He stood up. This time he spit it out of his mouth. “I’d just as soon take a cobra dancing as you.”

  “You asked me when you first—”

  “Then,” he snapped. “That was before I knew what I was getting into. Now I see you do the way you do, I retract, believe me.” He paced. “Why don’t you think, first! That’s what I can’t understand. You swat him down without a brain in your head working. Can’t you imagine what’s going to happen? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Ever plan? Ever figure ahead? What’s wrong with you, anyhow? How come you do the way you do?” He looked coldly down. “I think you’re insane.”

  It’s easy to say. The word falls off the tongue. This was the first rime Jed had ever said it, in perfect sincerity. He did think she was insane.

  She lifted her head, on the neck, slowly. It was the neck that lifted, as if it uncoiled. She said a few ugly words. Then she was screeching and clawing at him and biting his self-defending hands with savage teeth and her shrill refrain was, “No, I’m not! No, I’m not! Take it back! You take it back!”

  He handled her, but it wasn’t easy. He got her in a locking hold and he shut her mouth with his hand. “Cut it out! Cut it! You’ll scare the kid. You’ll have the cops in here.”

  She was still screeching, as well as she could, “Take it back!”

  “O.K. O.K. I take it back. If that does you any good. So you’re a model of foresight and wisdom. So anything! So cut it out!”

  She cut it out. She seemed satisfied. It was necessary to her that the word not be used. The word “insane.” But it was a matter of words. The words “I take it back” were just as potent. Which, thought Jed grimly, is insane.

  He felt chilled. He did not want this to be true. She was a crazy kid, a wild kid, in the slang sense. Only in the vernacular. She was all mixed up and she didn’t know how to stop and think. He told himself that was it But he felt sad and chilly. He didn’t know what to do. She was limp in his hold. Then he knew she was not so limp, but too happy to be held so tightly.

  He loosed her, warily. He said, vaguely, “Why should we fight? Makes too much noise.” He listened. There was no sound from the child’s room and he let out his breath. “Good thing she didn’t begin to howl again. I can’t take any more of that.”

  Nell said, “I know.” A flicker of contempt crossed her face. “I understand about the future,” she muttered.

  “I talk too much, sometimes.” He was trying to be careful. “What I need … Finish the bottle with me?” He took it out of his pocket. “Good thing this didn’t get smashed in the excitement.” He looked vaguely around. “Aw, what’s a glass?” He tipped the bottle.

  She took it from him with both hands. The notion of drinking out of the bottle seemed to tickle her.

  He said, “Say, where did the Joneses go?”

  “Why?” Her voice was as careless as his.

  “I was wondering how late— Was it theater? Or a party someplace?” He feigned relaxing.

  She still had the bottle in both hands. Carrying it, she walked between the beds and sat down near the head of one of them. “I don’t know,” she said vaguely.

  “Shindig, eh? That sounds like a party. Somebody’s apartment?”

  “Your turn.” She gave him the bottle. Her face was full of mischief. She said, “I understand about the future, Johnee. Everybody does.”

  “I guess so,” Jed said.

  She took a slip of paper off the table between the beds, where the phone was. She began to pleat it in her fingers. “You think I’m stupid?” she asked, looking sidewise.

  “Everybody’s stupid, sometimes. Looks kinda stupid of the Joneses not to say where they’d go. What if the kid got sick or something?”

  “Oh?” Nell said brightly. “You mean they should have thought ahead? About the future?”

  “Did I say something about the future, ever?” He grinned. He was thinking, I got under her skin, though. Must have. He felt better.

  Nell tore the paper idly into fancy bits. When Jed passed over the bottle she let the bits fall on the carpet. Too late, Jed saw them fall. He received, in a telepathic flash, the news. What had been on the paper. Why she had torn it How she had foxed him. And the news of her sly laughter.

  He was chagrined. He kept himself from showing it, he hoped, and from anger. They may know at the desk downstairs, he comforted himself, where the kid’s folks went. He said, and perhaps this was the result of the damped-down anger, “Say, what was this about a fire?”

  “Fire?” Nell smoothed the bedspread. She cocked her head. She seemed willing to talk about fire if that’s what he wanted to talk about. It didn’t mean anything to her.

  “I got a little bit of what your Uncle Eddie was saying.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Was it your house, burned? Your parents? I thought he said so.” She didn’t answer. “Upset you, Nell?”

  “That’s what they say,” she said demurely.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, doctors. Uncle Eddie. Aunt Marie.” She frowned. “Aunt Marie went to the show tonight.”

  “Where was the fire?”

  “Home.”

  “Some small town, was it?”

  “It wasn’t big.” She curled up her legs.

  Small, all right, Jed thought to himself, if they let this one loose. But he said to himself, quickly, No, no, there must have been some testing. Yet his thoughts went somberly on. Probably, Eddie showed up ready and willing and anxious to take her far, far away. Probably, the town would just as soon not face up to it. Nell wouldn’t be any of. the town’s business, far, far away.

  “So it was an accident,” he said, making a statement. “Well, I’ll tell you something. The future’s one thing you got to look out for. The past is another. Because the past adds up. You know that?”

  She frowned.

  “This accident. Your father and mother both died in it?”

  “It was an accident.” He heard the jump of her voice to a higher pitch. He knew it was a threat. It warned, Look out! It reminded him of that screeching tantrum. It warned, Be careful! Danger! Touchy!

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” he drawled, nevertheless, “and it’s a funny thing. You take one accident, why, that’s too bad. Everybody’s sorry. Poor Nell.” She was curled up as tense as a coiled spring. He tried to fix her gaze, but it was all blueness. He kept on drawling, “But you take two accidents, that’s different. That’s not the same. It’s really funny how, after a second accident, right away, the first accident doesn’t look so much like an accident, any more.”

  Her face went blank, either because he’d hit her with an idea, or she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Good thing to keep in mind,” he said lazily.

  She said, “They didn’t do anything to me.” Her face was sullen. But Jed felt a sick wave of absolute knowledge.

  He watched her. He said, as quietly and steadily as he could, “What I’m saying … the first time is different. But things like that have a way of piling up. It gets harder. Because it counts. It adds. One
and one make more than two. They make questions. So, maybe you better not get walking in your sleep,” he finished gently.

  She didn’t move. He thought, I got it over.

  And the bottle was empty. He gathered himself to get up, now, and go quietly.

  Miss Eva Ballew believed in many things. One of them was duty. She walked toward the telephone. One of them was justice. She walked back to the chair.

  But however strong her beliefs and her conscience, Miss Ballew was a physical coward and knew it and all her life had fought her weakness. Now, she realized full well that she had been prodded too many times … three times … and she was taking too long … much, much too long … to make up her mind what she ought to do.

  Sometimes, if you take time to decide, the need to do anything passes of itself … Miss Ballew reproached herself with bitter shame and she walked toward the phone.

  But …

  She walked to the chair. She banged her fist on the chair back and the pain helped her. Justice. Very well. If justice won, it was because this was going to take more physical courage, and she was a coward, and she wished to deny her cowardice.

  She went to the dresser and got her purse, not to be naked without it, once away from her room. She left the room and, flogging herself, marched around the hollow square of the eighth floor.

  Nell hadn’t moved. Jed, all the way up, standing, said, “So long.” He felt a little pulse of compassion for her, who was lost, and had no inner compass to find the way again. “Be seeing you.”

  Once more, and briskly, somebody’s knuckles knocked on 807’s door.

  Nell was up, lynx eyed.

  “Oh no,” said Jed softly. “Oh no, my lady, not again! Not this time!”

  He faded. Towers faded, the way he had to go, through the door to the kid’s room, to 809 … and closed it behind him.

  CHAPTER 13

  Miss Ballew rapped again. Because she was afraid, she did her best to be angry. She knew someone was in there. Did they think they could lie low?

  The door opened so swiftly it surprised her. A girl in a dark dress, not a very big girl, not very old, looked at her with blue, blue eyes and said, with an effect of stormy anger, although her voice was low, “What do you want?”