‘What?’
‘Militant Democracy or Fascism.’
‘Don’t you like Republicans?’
‘Shucks,’ Harry said. ‘That’s not what I mean.’
He had explained all about the Fascists one afternoon. He told how the Nazis made little Jew children get down on their hands and knees and eat grass from the ground. He told about how he planned to assassinate Hitler. He had it all worked out thoroughly. He told about how there wasn’t any justice or freedom hi Fascism. He said the newspapers wrote deliberate lies and people didn’t know what was going on in the world.
The Nazis were terrible--everybody knew that. She plotted with him to kill Hitler. It would be better to have four or five people in the conspiracy so that if one missed him the others could bump him off just the same. And even if they died they would all be heroes. To be a hero was almost like being a great musician.
‘Either one or the other. And although I don’t believe in war I’m ready to fight for what I know is right’
‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I’d like to fight the Fascists. I could dress up like a boy and nobody could ever tell. Cut my hair off and all.’
It was a bright winter afternoon. The sky was blue-green and the branches of the oak trees in the back yard were black and bare against this color. The sun was warm. The day made her feel full of energy. Music was hi her mind. Just to be doing something she picked up a ten-penny nail and drove it into the steps with a few good wallops. Their Dad heard the sound of the hammer and came out in his bathrobe to stand around awhile. Under the tree there were two carpenter’s horses, and little Ralph was busy putting a rock on top of one and then carrying it over to the other one. Back and forth. He walked with his hands out to balance himself. He was bowlegged and his diapers dragged down to his knees. George was shooting marbles. Because he needed a haircut his face looked thin.
Some of his permanent teeth had already come--but they were small and blue like he had been eating blackberries. He drew a line for taw and lay on his stomach to take aim for the first hole. When their Dad went back to his watch work he carried Ralph with him. And after a while George went off into the alley by himself. Since he shot Baby he wouldn’t buddy with a single person.
‘I got to go,’ Harry said. ‘I got to be at work before six.’
‘You like it at the cafe? Do you get good things to eat free?’
‘Sure. And all kinds of folks come in the place. I like it better than any job I ever had. It pays more.’
‘I hate Mister Brannon,’ Mick said. It was true that even though he never said anything mean to her he always spoke in a rough, funny way. He must have known all along about the pack of chewing-gum she and George swiped that time. And then why would he ask her how her business was coming along--like he did up in Mister Singer’s room? Maybe he thought they took things regular. And they didn’t. They certainly did not. Only once a little water-color set from the ten-cent store. And a nickel pencil-sharpener.
‘I can’t stand Mister Brarmon.’
‘He’s all right,’ Harry said. ‘Sometimes he seems a right queer kind of person, but he’s not crabby. When you get to know him.’
‘One thing I’ve thought about,’ Mick said. ‘A boy has a better advantage like that than a girl. I mean a boy can usually get some part-time job that don’t take him out of school and leaves him time for other things. But there’s not jobs like that for girls. When a girl wants a job she has to quit school and work full time. I’d sure like to earn a couple of bucks a week like you do, but there’s just not any way.’
Harry sat on the steps and untied his shoestrings. He pulled at them until one broke. ‘A man comes to the cafe named Mr.Blount. Mr. Jake Blount. I like to listen to him. I learn a lot from the things he says when he drinks beer. He’s given me some new ideas.’
‘I know him good. He comes here every Sunday.’
Harry unlaced his shoe and pulled the broken string to even lengths so he could tie it in a bow again. ‘Listen’--he rubbed his glasses on his lumberjack in a nervous way--‘You needn’t mention to him what I said. I mean I doubt if he would remember me. He don’t talk to me. He just talks to Mr. Singer.
He might think it was funny if you--you know what I mean.’
‘O.K.’ She read between the words that he had a crush on Mister Blount and she knew how he felt. ‘I wouldn’t mention it.’
Dark came on. The moon, white like milk, showed in the blue sky and the air was cold. She could hear Ralph and George and Portia in the kitchen. The fire in the stove made the kitchen window a warm orange. There was the smell of smoke and supper.
‘You know this is something I never have told anybody,’ he said. ‘I hate to realize about it myself.’
‘What?’
‘You remember when you first began to read the newspapers and think about the things you read?’
‘Sure.’
‘I used to be a Fascist. I used to think I was. It was this way.
You know all the pictures of the people our age in Europe marching and singing songs and keeping step together. I used to think that was wonderful. All of them pledged to each other and with one leader. All of them with the same ideals and marching in step together. I didn’t worry much about what was happening to the Jewish minorities because I didn’t want to think about it. And because at the time I didn’t want to think like I was Jewish. You see, I didn’t know. I just looked at the pictures and read what it said underneath and didn’t understand. I never knew what an awful thing it was. I thought I was a Fascist. Of course later on I found out different.’
His voice was bitter against himself and kept changing from a man’s voice to a young boy’s.
‘Well, you didn’t realize then--’ she said.
‘It was a terrible transgression. A moral wrong.’
That was the way he was. Everything was either very right or very wrong--with no middle way. It was wrong for anyone under twenty to touch beer or wine or smoke a cigarette. It was a terrible sin for a person to cheat on a test, but not a sin to copy homework. It was a moral wrong for girls to wear lipstick or sun-backed dresses. It was a terrible sin to buy anything with a German or Japanese label, no matter if it cost only a nickel.
She remembered Harry back to the time when they were kids.
Once his eyes got crossed and stayed crossed for a year. He would sit out on his front steps with his hands between his knees and watch everything. Very quiet and cross-eyed. He skipped two grades in grammar school and when he was eleven he was ready for Vocational. But at Vocational when they read about the Jew in ‘Ivanhoe’ the other kids would look around at Harry and he would come home and cry. So his mother took him out of school. He stayed out for a whole year.
He grew taller and very fat. Every time she climbed the fence she would see him making himself something to eat in his kitchen. They both played around on the block, and sometimes they would wrestle. When she was a kid she liked to fight with boys--not real fights but just in play. She used a combination jujitsu and boxing. Sometimes he got her down and sometimes she got him. Harry never was very rough with anybody. When little kids ever broke any toy they would come to him and he always took the time to fix it. He could fix anything. The ladies on the block got him to fix their electric lights or sewing-machines when something went wrong. Then when he was thirteen he started back | at Vocational and began to study hard. He threw papers and worked on Saturdays and read. For a long time she didn’t see much of him--until after that party she gave. He was very changed.