“There we are.”
All blinking for different reasons, they entered the hall. He followed till Mrs. Richards announced, “Now,” and continued, “I want you—what is your name?—to walk up in front.”
It was surprisingly easy to say, “Kidd,” as he stepped around the children.
“Pardon?” Mrs. Richards asked.
“Kidd. Like Captain Kidd.”
“Like Billy the Kid?” Bobby asked.
“Yeah.”
“Neither of them were terribly nice people,” said June.
“The Cisco Kid,” Bobby said. Then, with raised eyebrows and small smile, droll as an adult of thirty: “Pow, pow…?”
“Bobby, stop!”
He walked with Mrs. Richards. Her heels clunked; his sandal lisped, his bare foot hardly whispered.
As they reached the elevators there was noise above. They looked at the stairwell door with its wire-webbed glass and EXIT in red letters across it. Trundling footsteps grew louder—
(His hand pressed against his leg, across one turn of chain.)
—grew louder still, till shadows crossed the glass. The footsteps, dropping below, softened.
Mrs. Richards’ hand, grey as twigs from fire, hung against the wall by the elevator bell. “Children,” she said. “It must be children. They run up and down the stairs, in the hall, banging on the walls, the doors. They don’t show themselves, you know. That’s because they’re afraid.” Her voice, he realized, was hoarse with terror. “They’re afraid of us. They don’t have to be. We’re not going to hurt them. I just wish they wouldn’t do that. That’s all. I just wish they wouldn’t.”
Two separate elevators opened.
From one a man said, “Oh,” a little gruffly. “Honey. It’s you. Scared me to death. Where’re you going?”
From the other came a faint wind, from a long way up or a long way down.
“Arthur! Oh, Arthur, this is Kidd! Edna Brown sent him to help. We’re taking him to see the new apartment.”
He shook the large, moist hand.
“Pleased,” Arthur Richards said. The closing door k-chunked his shoulder, retreated, then tried to close again.
“Edna sent him over to help us with the cleaning and the moving.”
“Oh. Edna coming over later?”
“She said she’d try this afternoon, Mr. Richards.”
K-chunk.
“Good. Hey, let’s get in this thing before it knocks me down.” Mr. Richards guffawed. His white collar made folds in his fleshy neck. His hair was so pale, possible white was lost in the gloom. “Sometimes I think this thing doesn’t like me. Come in.”
K-chunk.
They ducked through. The door sealed them into darkness.
“19” hung, orange, on the black.
“Arthur,” Mrs. Richards said in the humming dark, “they’ve been running in the hall, again. They came and beat on the door. Twice. Once this morning, and once right after Kidd came. Oh, I was so glad he was there!”
“That’s all right, honey,” Mr. Richards reassured. “That’s why we’re moving.”
“Management has just got to do something. You say you have been down to the office and told them?”
“I’ve been down. I told them. They said they’re having difficulty right through here. You’ve got to understand that, sweetheart. We’re all having difficulty.”
June breathed beside him. She was the closest person to him in the elevator.
“You’d know how upsetting it was if you ever heard it, Arthur. I don’t see why you can’t take a day off of work. Just so you’d know.”
“I’m sure it’s upsetting.”
The door opened; in the hall he could see two ceiling globes were working.
Mrs. Richards looked across her husband’s chest. “They wouldn’t do it if Arthur was home.”
“Where do you work, Mr. Richards?” he asked as they got out.
“MSE…Maitland Systems Engineering. Honey, I wish I could take off from work. But things are even more confused there than they are here. This just isn’t the time for it. Not now.”
Mrs. Richards sighed and took out a key. “I know, dear. You’re sure Management said it would be all right?”
“I told you, honey, I got the key from them.”
“Well, they never answered my letter. They answered in two days when I wrote them last year about the plaster in June’s bedroom.” The key went in with a sound like gravel. “Anyway—” she looked across Mr. Richards’ chest again—“this is where we’re going to move to.”
She strode into the pale blue room through rattling mountains of brown paper. “The lights,” she said. “Try the lights.”
Mr. Richards and June and Bobby waited in the doorway.
He stepped inside, flicked the switch.
The ceiling light flared, went Pppp!, and out.
June, behind him, let a small cry.
“That’s only the bulb. At least you have some power.”
“Oh, we can fix that,” Mr. Richards said and came inside. “Come on, kids. Get inside now.”
June and Bobby squeezed through shoulder to shoulder, but remained sentinel at the jambs.
“What else has to go beside this paper?”
“Well.” Mrs. Richards righted a cane bottom chair. “There’re the other rooms, furniture and stuff.” Brown paper roared about her shins. “All sorts of junk. And the dirt. And then of course, we’ll have to move our own things up.”
Blinds, fallen from one fixture, dangled their crushed aluminum slats to the floor. “Just take those all down. It’ll be a nice apartment when it’s clean.”
“Did you know the people who lived here before?”
“No,” Mrs. Richards said. “No. We didn’t know them. Now all you have to do is clean these out.” She walked into the kitchen and opened a broom closet. “Mop, pail, Spic-n’-span. Everything.” She came back. “There’s all sorts of things in the other rooms.”
“What were they doing with all this paper?”
“I dunno,” Bobby said uneasily from the doorway.
Stepping into the lichenous leaves, his bare foot came down on wood, wire, glass: krak! He jerked his foot, kicking away paper.
The break in the cover-glass went through both faces: Framed in black wood, husband and wife, bearded and coiffed, posed in nineteen-hundreds clothing. He picked it up from the papers. The loose glass ground.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Richards asked, stepping around more overturned furniture.
“I guess I broke it,” trying to feel, without looking, if he had cut his foot.
Between the parents, in matching sailor suits, a sister and her two brothers (one younger, one older) looked serious and uncomfortable.
“It was just lying on the floor.”
Mrs. Richards took it from him. The hanging-wire rattled on the cardboard backing. “Isn’t that something. Who do you suppose they are?”
“The people who lived here before—?” June stepped up, then laughed. “Oh, it couldn’t be. It’s so old!”
“Daddy,” Bobby said from the doorway.
“Yes?”
“I think Kidd wants to use the bathroom.”
June and Mrs. Richards both turned.
“I mean,” Bobby said, “he’s just been living in the park, and stuff; he’s real dirty.”
Mrs. Richards sucked her teeth and June only just did not say, “Oh, Bobby!”
Mr. Richards said, “Well…” smiling, and then, “Um…” and then, “Well…sure.”
“I am sort of scroungy,” he admitted. “I could use a washup, after I finish work up here.”
“Sure,” Mr. Richards repeated, heartily. “I’ve got a razor you can use. Mary’ll give you a towel. Sure.”
“In this room—” Mrs. Richards had leaned the photograph against the wall and was trying to open a door now—“I don’t know what they put in this room.”
He went to take the knob. Something scraped as he shoved the door in a few inches. A few inches more and he could peer: “Furniture, ma’am. I think the whole room is filled up with furniture.”