At five o’clock, bored and exhausted, they were finished. Sister Mary Ethelbert lined them up for final inspection. Arturo’s toes ached from bearing his full weight. In weariness he rested himself on his heels. It was a moment of carelessness for which he paid dearly. Sister Mary Ethelbert’s keen eye just then observed a bend in the line, beginning and ending at the top of Arturo Bandini’s head. He could read her thoughts, his weary toes rising in vain to the effort. Too late, too late. At her suggestion he and August changed places.
His new partner was a kid named Wilkins, fourth-grader who wore celluloid glasses and picked his nose. Behind him, triumphantly sanctified, stood August, his lips sneering implacably, no word coming from him. Wally O’Brien looked at his erstwhile partner in crestfallen sadness, for Wally too had been humiliated by the intrusion of this upstart sixth-grader. It was the end for Arturo. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispered to August.
‘You dirty –’ he said. ‘Wait’ll I get you outside.’
Arturo was waiting after practice. They met at the corner. August walked fast, as if he hadn’t seen his brother. Arturo quickened his pace.
‘What’s your hurry, Tall Man?’
‘I’m not hurrying, Shorty.’
‘Yes you are, Tall Man. And how would you like some snow rubbed in your face?’
‘I wouldn’t like it. And you leave me alone – Shorty.’
‘I’m not bothering you, Tall Man. I just want to walk home with you.’
‘Don’t you try anything now.’
‘I wouldn’t lay a hand on you, Tall Man. What makes you think I would?’
They approached the alley between the Methodist church and the Colorado Hotel. Once beyond that alley, August was safe in the view of the loungers at the hotel window. He sprang forward to run, but Arturo’s fist seized his sweater.
‘What’s the hurry, Tall Man?’
‘If you touch me, I’ll call a cop.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that.’
A coupe passed, moving slowly. Arturo followed his brother’s sudden open-mouthed stare at the occupants, a man and a woman. The woman was driving, and the man had his arm at her back.
‘Look!’
But Arturo had seen. He felt like laughing. It was such a strange thing. Effie Hildegarde drove the car, and the man was Svevo Bandini.
The boys examined one another’s faces. So that was why Mamma had asked all those questions about Effie Hildegarde! If Effie Hildegarde was good looking. If Effie Hildegarde was a ‘bad’ woman.
Arturo’s mouth softened to a laugh. The situation pleased him. That father of his! That Svevo Bandini! Oh boy – and Effie Hildegarde was a swell-looking dame too!
‘Did they see us?’
Arturo grinned. ‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘He had his arm around her, didn’t he?’
August frowned.
‘That’s bad. That’s going out with another woman. The Ninth Commandment.’
They turned into the alley. It was a short cut. Darkness came fast. Water puddles at their feet were frozen in the growing darkness. They walked along, Arturo smiling. August was bitter.
‘It’s a sin. Mamma’s a swell mother. It’s a sin.’
‘Shut up.’
They turned from the alley on Twelfth Street. The Christmas shopping crowd in the business district separated them now and then, but they stayed together, waiting as one another picked his way through the crowd. The street lamps went on.
‘Poor Mamma. She’s better than that Effie Hildegarde.’
‘Shut up.’
‘It’s a sin.’
‘What do you know about it? Shut up.’
‘Just because Mamma hasn’t got good clothes . . .’
‘Shut up, August.’
‘It’s a mortal sin.’
‘You’re dumb. You’re too little. You don’t know anything.’
‘I know a sin. Mamma wouldn’t do that.’
The way his father’s arm rested on her shoulder. He had seen her many times. She had charge of the girls’ activities at the Fourth of July celebration in the Courthouse Park. He had seen her standing on the courthouse steps the summer before, beckoning with her arms, calling the girls together for the big parade. He remembered her teeth, her pretty teeth, her red mouth, her fine plump body. He had left his friends to stand in the shadows and watch as she talked to the girls. Effie Hildegarde. Oh boy, his father was a wonder!
And he was like his father. A day would come when he and Rosa Pinelli would be doing it too. Rosa, let’s get into the car and drive out in the country, Rosa. Me and you, out in the country, Rosa. You drive the car and we’ll kiss, but you drive, Rosa.
‘I bet the whole town knows it,’ August said.
‘Why shouldn’t they? You’re like everybody else. Just because Papa’s poor, just because he’s an Italian.’
‘It’s a sin,’ he said, kicking viciously at frozen chunks of snow. ‘I don’t care what he is – or how poor, either. It’s a sin.’
‘You’re dumb. A saphead. You don’t savvy anything.’
August did not answer him. They took the short path over the trestle bridge that spanned the creek. They walked in single file, heads down, careful of the limitations of the deep path through the snow. They took the trestle bridge on tiptoe, from railroad tie to tie, the frozen creek thirty feet below them. The quiet evening spoke to them, whispering of a man riding in a car somewhere in the same twilight, a woman not his own riding with him. They descended the crest of the railroad line and followed a faint trail which they themselves had made all that winter in the comings and goings to and from school, through the Alzi pasture, with great sweeps of white on either side of the path, untouched for months, deep and glittering in the evening’s birth. Home was a quarter of a mile away, only a block beyond the fences of the Alzi pasture. Here in this great pasture they had spent a great part of their lives. It stretched from the backyards of the very last row of houses in the town, weary frozen cottonwoods strangled in the death pose of long winters on one side, and a creek that no longer laughed on the other. Beneath that snow was white sand once very hot and excellent after swimming in the creek. Each tree held memories. Each fence post measured a dream, enclosing it for fulfillment with each new spring. Beyond that pile of stones, between those two tall cottonwoods, was the graveyard of their dogs and Suzie, a cat who had hated the dogs but lay now beside them. Prince, killed by an automobile; Jerry, who ate the poison meat; Pancho the fighter, who crawled off and died after his last fight. Here they had killed snakes, shot birds, speared frogs, scalped Indians, robbed banks, completed wars, reveled in peace. But in that twilight their father rode with Effie Hildegarde, and the silent white sweep of the pasture land was only a place for walking on a strange road to home.
‘I’m going to tell her,’ August said.
Arturo was ahead of him, three paces away. He turned around quickly. ‘You keep still,’ he said. ‘Mamma’s got enough trouble.’
‘I’ll tell her. She’ll fix him.’
‘You