Freeman Walker. David Allen Cates
for me babe,” she said.
Embarrassed and angered, I said, “I paid for you.”
“Not for that,” she said.
I ignored her and pinned her down. She fought under me, scratched my face and back and head, tried to gouge my eyes, but I endured the pain and drank first from one breast and then from the other until she had no more milk to give and I felt her body go completely limp beneath me.
“What kind of man are you?” I heard her ask.
I detached from her and sat up drunk on cruelty and mother’s milk. I could feel blood trickle from the scratches on my face and neck and head. She lay on her back, her hair spread around her head like a dark pool. She sneered and her face contorted in anguish and mirth.
“I see you now,” she said, and gave a scornful laugh. “You’re just a cross-eyed babe yourself and you want for a mum.”
Her words stung, and in my embarrassment and sudden rage I slapped her. She put her hands to her face and rolled away, curled up. I raised my tingling hand to strike her again. And I might have, I would have, if she hadn’t spoken again.
“Go away now,” she said, and the tone of her voice drained me suddenly of my mysterious wrath. “Go,” she said again, and so I lowered my hand, dressed, and left.
Later, the heat of that violence still racing in my veins, my scratches scabbing and my unwashed blood dried on my skin, I lay on my straw mattress back in my closet. I heard Mr. Perry come home singing joyfully. As usual, I lay curled on my side with my back to the door when I heard it open. I heard his breathing change as he lowered himself to his knees behind me. I must have looked the same to him, lying like that in the dark. How could he have known that I’d sacrificed the smooth skin on my neck and the back of my head to the nails of a desperate whore? How could he have known what was racing through my heart and that, instead of a gently curled boy, he was about to touch a tiger crouched and ready to spring?
It seemed forever waiting for that first touch. I knew where it would come, of course. On the back of my neck. His fingers would linger there a moment, and then slowly move up the back of my head, sending tingles down my spine. He would stroke my head slowly, and soon I’d become aware of something else. I’d feel the floor begin to move slightly, hear his rapid breathing. His fingers would stay on my head, stay steady, smooth, while his other hand pleasured himself. That was how it would go. His gentle petting of my head and hair. Our mutual thoughts of someone else . . .
But not this time. This time he paused behind me. I knew he was kneeling and I could hear him breathing. I waited for what seemed an eternity there in the dark. Was he weeping? Praying?
“I’ve won it, Jimmy,” he said. “The big one! And before I could lose it all a fire broke out below and we all ran into the street.”
I stayed still, controlling my soaring emotions, and when I didn’t move, that was when I felt his fingers finally touch me. It was as though he’d flicked a switch and unleashed a physical power I could not control. For I honestly had no plan in my head. But feeling his fingers suddenly on my face, I spun and took his hand with such force that I felt his bones crunch. He sucked in air and I watched the outline of his body shrink.
“I need it,” I said.
I heard him wheeze with pain. “I’ve little with me,” he said.
“Liar.”
He reached into his pocket with his free hand and turned it inside out. A few coins jingled out against the floor.
“I need more,” I said, and squeezed until his body collapsed and he was crippled beneath the pain of my grip.
“Jesus, Jimmy, I’ve given most of it to Le Chat!”
“How much?”
“Enough, Jimmy. Enough to change everything.”
“Get it back.”
“How?”
I thought I heard him sob. I put both of my hands around his one and squeezed as hard as I could and watched his old frame begin to writhe on the dark floor in front of me.
“I’ve loved you, Jimmy, you know I—”
I squeezed harder to shut him up, but it didn’t work.
“Jesus, Jimmy,” he gasped. “You only had to ask.”
A FREE PERSON CAN betray someone. A free person has that choice. To scheme or not. To lie or not. To steal, to flee. These are all choices of free men and women, and so I made mine.
Lying was easy. I loved my imagined future as a warrior hero even more than I loved the truth. Not even close. So I told Mr. Perry I’d meet up with him later and split the loot, although I had no intention of doing that. A ship was sailing that night, and my scheme on the night of the plan was to go directly from Le Chat’s to the ship—I’d already reserved a space in steerage with my own few coins.
“And the rest?” the captain had asked.
Enough, Jimmy—enough to change everything!
“I’ll have it,” I told him.
That night I skirted quickly out the door past cries from the gin house across the street, around the corner and through a pack of children running wild in rags. I stepped around an old man pulling a squeaking cart that carried the stinking dead. At the next corner under a gaslight, a sick dog walked a circle, around and around and around like a drunk. Was it walking after death, or was death walking after it? That was what my mother would have asked. If you knew the answer, you might know your fate. But you also might not. You might need to know if the dog was black or brown or spotted, male or female, and in the dark, passing quickly, I didn’t see. Oh, the mystery!
I climbed the stairs to Le Chat’s flat and opened it slowly—Mr. Perry had left it unlocked—and stepped into the darkness. I could hear nothing—and then movement on the bed. A throat cleared. A cough. I stood perfectly still until my eyes adjusted to the dark and I could see a lump under the blankets move.
This was not the plan. They were supposed to be out. They weren’t supposed to be back. But I was in now, and I knew no way to go but forward. I crouched and slid on my belly across the floor, and then slowly, slowly, under the bed. I could taste dust and my heart pounded so loudly in my ears I was sure they’d hear it. And sure enough, one of them woke, for the mattress swayed with his weight and then a pair of bare feet swung down to the floor. It must have been Le Chat, because he limped across the room to the window, and he lifted the sash and stood in front of the open window. I could smell his urine in the fresh air. Then he limped back to the bed, lay down, and made a cat-like noise—was this the sound of frolicking? Indeed. I heard a murmur and then . . . something else. How long could Mr. Perry endure it? I expected at any minute he would bolt, and then where would I be?
I’ve loved you, Jimmy, you know I—
I slid my hands frantically over the floorboards searching for loose ones I could lift with my fingers. I had a knife on my belt, and it had somehow slipped under me and poked my thigh and hipbone, but I dared not lift myself to move it, free it, for fear my movement would be felt under the mattress. To calm myself, I imagined I was rescuing somebody—which of course I was. I took a slow hero’s breath, and slid my fingers once again along the lines between the boards until I found a widening. I wedged in my finger and the board moved. I stopped breathing, then deliberately started again. I tilted the board slowly onto its edge and put my palm under to slide it off. Above me the men moved more briskly on the mattress. I reached into the hole and pulled out a sack of gold coins the size of two fists. I squeezed it hard to keep the coins from clanking together, and also to keep my hand from shaking. Still on my belly, I wormed my way slowly out from under the bed toward the door. I felt that at any moment I’d be seen or heard and so I prepared myself to leap up and kill. I had a knife and would use it. I would not be denied now. I didn’t want to kill—but I knew I could, and I knew I would!