Peewee/Chapter 7

The certainty as to the identity of the big man did not, however, tell Peewee who the women were, and he speculated upon this as the younger woman led him back into the other room. The colored girl, he saw, had gone. The dress was gone, too. She must, he thought, have taken it away with her. The man stood gazing down at him.

"Are you hungry?" the man inquired.

"Yes sir," Peewee replied at once. There was never but one answer to this question.

"What is it you like best to eat?"

Peewee reflected; the question opened attractive possibilities. "Strawberries," he decided.

"Go out and get some strawberries," the man said to the younger woman.

The woman went out. The man paced slowly ​about the room, thinking. Peewee watched him questioningly. Was it possible the man was going to give him strawberries? His directions to the woman indicated that, but experience had taught Peewee to guard against disappointment. The return of the woman bringing the berries confirmed the man's intention. Peewee looked on expectantly while she washed the berries and put them in a dish upon the table; she put sugar on them and spread bread with butter.

"This what you wanted?" the man inquired.

"Yes, sir."

"Say, 'yes, grandfather'"

Peewee eyed the berries. "Yes, grandfather."

The man pointed to the older woman. "Call her 'grandmother'," he directed.

"Yes, grandmother," said Peewee.

The man motioned to the other woman. "Call her 'Aunt Nettie'."

"Yes, Aunt Nettie."

"You're always to call us by those names, never by anything else. Do you understand?"

Peewee reflected. His father's family, he had ​appreciated, were anxious—those of them who knew—to deny his relation to them; his mother's family, as it now appeared, was not only eager to claim the relationship but insisted that he should claim it too. The reason for this, he could not guess. He had no more wish to be related to them than to the Markyns, but he could smell the strawberries.

The younger woman set a chair and helped Peewee up into it. He took a spoon in one dirty hand and bread and butter in the other. It was, he thought, with his mouth full of bread and berries, inexplicable that Mrs. Markyn had called Lampert "rough." A man who gave boys strawberries must, it appeared to him, be classified as kind. And Lampert proceeded to give further evidence of that.

"How'd you like to have strawberries every day?" he asked.

"I'd like it."

"Grandfather," Lampert warned.

"I'd like it, grandfather."

"Even in winter when they have to be grown in hothouses?"

​"Yes, grandfather."

"How'd you like to have nice clothes—warm ones for winter and cool ones for summer?"

"I'd like it."

"How'd you like to have a nice bed to sleep in, in a nice room?"

"I'd like it."

"How'd you like to have roller skates? How'd you like to have a bicycle? How'd you like to have an automobile to ride in?"

"I'd like them, grandfather."

"All right; I'll get you all those things."

Peewee stared at Lampert in amazement. He perceived the discrepancy between Lampert's promise and the surroundings in which he lived; he perceived also the man's sincerity in promising. Lampert intended to get him these things; he had apparently no doubt of his ability to get them. Peewee, looking at the women, saw in their faces comprehension and confidence in this ability. He himself stopped doubting. He shook with excitement so that he spilled his berries.

The elder woman, when he had finished, took ​the dishes and washed them at the sink. Lampert continued to pace up and down; he appeared to be continuing, silently, the same line of thought.

"That ain't all," he broke out. "What you going to be when you grow up?"

Peewee observed him silently; ideas upon this question had been fixed in him by his relationship to Jeffrey Markyn, Second, but the contrast between what he meant to be and what he was, prevented his confiding them.

"You don't understand," Lampert decided. "There's men that work for other men and get paid what they want to pay 'em and get fired when they want to fire 'em; and there's men that sit in offices and have big houses and servants; they work when they want to work. Which do you want to be?"

"Like that," said Peewee.

"What business?"

Peewee's reply was instantaneous. "Trucks!" Nothing had so impressed him with the importance of the family to which he was misallied as their ownership of trucks.

​His life was made of what moved upon the streets; he admired taxicabs but he worshipped trucks.

"That's right!" Lampert exclaimed. "That's what it'll be. I'll see to it that you own trucks!"

Peewee studied him in bewilderment. Did he mean what he said? The man's tone had been again utterly sincere, and Lampert's own excitement confirmed this sincerity. Peewee surrendered himself to contemplation of what these things must mean for him. He would have at some delightful time a desk where he would sit and give orders to clerks and drivers; he would have a big house—a house bigger than his father's; he would give parties to guests dressed as he had seen people dress to attend the theater, and Mrs. Markyn would be there. She, in these imaginings, underwent no ageing, though Peewee himself had become grown up. The magnificence of this future dwarfed even the promised enjoyments of the present, but left him still impatient to have the fulfillment of Lampert's promises begin at once. He would ​have been content with the smallest of the things—the roller skates.

The elder woman moved about household affairs; Lampert had seated himself with his forehead in his hands. He was planning, Peewee decided, the best way of getting the things. Peewee was beginning to adore Lampert. The younger woman washed Peewee's face and hands at the sink, and he submitted meekly to this indignity, which had become unimportant. She spread a coverlet and pillow on the floor in the inner room.

"You sleep in there," she directed.

He judged that she thought it time for him to go to bed; it was unusually early for him, but he lay down obediently. It was useless, for thought prevented him from sleeping. Would the fulfillment of Lampert's promises begin to-morrow? Would he have to wait longer than that? The morning might bring the skates and bicycle. He heard the two women come in and go to bed; he heard Lampert go to bed upon the couch. It was plain, therefore, that the ​morning was the earliest anything could be expected.

Peewee awoke at daylight, but lay still until he heard the others getting up. The younger woman went out early—he thought, to work. When, later, Lampert went out, he waited eagerly for his return. The older woman idled about the slatternly rooms or sat still doing nothing. The morning passed. When, in the afternoon, Lampert came back, he did not bring anything. Peewee, disappointed, wanted to inquire, but decided nothing would be gained by questions. The woman went out to do her marketing, and it drew toward four o'clock.

Suddenly Lampert sprang up and listened. Someone had asked a question in the court and the voice, though not the words, echoed by the enclosing walls, stirred Peewee queerly but indefinitely. It appeared also to have stirred Lampert. He went to the window and looked out and then spun quickly around.

"You get in there!" he ordered roughly.

Peewee sped into the smaller room. Lampert ​came and closed the door upon him. Whoever had spoken in the court—it must be that person, he thought—was coming up the stairs. He heard Lampert open and close the outer door; then, as the voice he had heard spoke again, still unintelligibly but now in the next room, his flesh prickled. Was the man who had come in his father? The timbre of the voice seemed to tell him that, but he could not be certain.

He waited, listening. The voice spoke again and seemed to be demanding something. Lampert replied, collectedly and harshly. Peewee shook with anxiety. What was going on? He crept closer to the door, crouched there he presently could begin to distinguish words.

"I'm letting you do the asking?" It was Lampert who had said this.

He could not make out the words of the reply. Then he again heard Lampert:

"Do your talking. I expected that."

"You come to my house; you ask to see my wife."

This was the other and Peewee could hear ​plainly now; the man had perhaps changed his position in the room. "You mouth some indefinite and untrue story about my supporting a child somewhere. You pretend not to know the parentage of the child or why I am interested in it."

"That was just a starter, Markyn."

Peewee's body drew together at the name. Coupled with the voice it gave him certainty. This was his father. Had someone told his father he was there? He considered that there was no need to be afraid, as Lampert would protect him.

"The law has a name for such an act as that, and punishes it." His father had said that.

"I ain't worrying."

"If you had come to me—"

"It didn't look good to me to go to you. I wanted you to come to me."

"I comprehended that."

"The reason I went to her was so you'd have to come here."

This must mean that Lampert was the one who had told Mrs. Markyn about Peewee. Peewee ​had suspected that, but now he was not willing to believe that of Lampert. Still, she had known the name, and he could not find any other meaning for the words.

"That is the reason then for your telephoning the address here to my office to-day."

"That's right. I wanted you to know where I was, and hurry you."

There was a long silence. Were the men speaking too low for him to hear? Had they left the room? Apparently neither of these suppositions were true, for at last he heard his father's tones again, but now they were queerly changed and flattened.

"How much is it that you want?"

"To keep away from her, you mean?"

"Yes; and to let this rest in every way."

"That's two things, Markyn; take 'em one at a time. How much do I want for promising to keep away from her? Nothing."

"Then I don't understand."

"It's plain, ain't it?"

"Still—I don't understand."

"I don't intend to go to her again. It ain't ​necessary. When I went to her I didn't have the boy."

Peewee stiffened. The boy? That was himself. Lampert had told his father he was here, or at least had told enough so that his father must suspect that he was here. Why had he told him that? He was no longer so sure of Lampert's kindness.

There was again silence. Peewee thought that Lampert was expecting a reply; his voice came again presently.

"See that you get me right," it said. "I have the boy."

When there was still no answer, his voice went on gloatingly. "What was the second of those things you mentioned? How much do I want to let this rest? I want whatever ought to be coming to the boy. I want a home for him and for his grandparents—that's me and Mrs. Lampert. I want credit at the grocery. I want a car for him and me and her to go driving in."

Peewee comprehended. It was not Lampert who would give him the things; it was his father whom Lampert expected would give them.

​"The law prescribes the allotment to the child in such a case as this." His father was speaking now. "But I'm willing to do much more than it decrees. I'm anxious to have him taken care of, Lampert."

"That's twice you've spoken of law. If there's any going to law to be done, I'll be the one that does it. You're afraid of law. Goin' to law in this thing means scandal. Scandal don't bother me. I'm getting old—too old to like to work. The best job I ever had a man named Markyn fired me from. Before that, that same man took my daughter. Her boy—his boy, too—looks so much like that man that anyone can see that he's his son. Maybe I'll have to show people the boy. How do I know the boy wasn't born in wedlock? That's for the law to find—not me. I didn't know so much about my daughter all those years! I ain't afraid of scandal. But how about its worrying you? How about its worrying Mrs. Markyn?"

"I am willing to do for the boy anything that is within reason, Lampert."

Peewee straightened excitedly. He perceived ​that Lampert's promises were going to be fulfilled. His father and Lampert would come to an agreement. It did not matter, he comprehended now, that Lampert might have let his father suspect that he was here. It might even be necessary for Lampert to open the door between the rooms and show him to his father, since Lampert's possession of him was the reason for the agreement.

"Let's talk this over." This was his father.

"You're right, we'll talk it over. What we'll talk over is how much you're going to do. I'm thinking of my daughter. She lived hard and rough. Her mother grieved about her; she didn't like to hear folks talk. You started her that way. A girl like that had ought to pick up something in her life and leave a bank-account for her old father and her mother. If she don't what's the use of living in that way? I always thought she'd leave a little pile for us. She didn't. She would if you'd done by her as you'd ought. What you didn't do then for her it's right that you ought to do now for us and for the boy."

​Peewee began to comprehend. Lampert might not expect his father to agree to all that he was going to ask, but his father would agree to part of it. Peewee knew the ways of chicanery, for he had lived among people who practiced them and talked about them, and he had heard people say that they would like to get a rich man into the position which his father would be in. When Lampert had received in the beginning as much as he could get, he would begin to ask for more. There would be no place where his father would find it possible to stop, until perhaps Peewee even owned his father's trucks, as Lampert had promised him. For his father, when he had once commenced giving, could not escape from Lampert except by openly acknowledging Peewee, and he would not do this because of Mrs. Markyn. Peewee could have all these things. Perhaps, besides that, he could still see Mrs. Markyn without her knowing who he was.

But he felt, he discovered, uncomfortable when he thought of seeing Mrs. Markyn. It would be ridiculous, he had comprehended pre​cociously when she had spoken to him about how to tell what it was right to do, for him to think in that connection of his dissolute mother; but the fact that she had told him that made him think in that way about herself. Suppose he should take what Lampert would get for him and then, in some way, Mrs. Markyn should find it out. Would she think better or worse of a boy who had been getting things in that manner? It did not require reasoning to perceive that she would think less of the boy. The fact was instinctive and incontrovertible that she would feel sorry that she had kissed that boy and that she would unquestionably hate him.

If he had not been shut up in that room, he decided, he would simply have gone away. Then, if she found this out he could tell her that he had not had anything to do with it.

Peewee went to the window and looked out. A rope used for drying clothes ran through a pulley fastened to the sash. A boy—even a small boy—by standing on the window sill could reach the rope, and need merely lean upon it and he could step from the window ​sill to the stair-railing below it and a little to one side.

His father's voice, then Lampert's voice, were sounding in the other room, as he climbed out upon the sill. He balanced himself upon the railing and jumped down upon the stair. He choked and his eyes filled with tears as he ran down the stairs, across the court and out into the street. If he could have had just one of all those things—perhaps the skates—it would not, he thought, have been so hard. He had never had anything like that but he had seen other boys have them. After a moment he blinked the tears away and began to look from side to side to see whether anything interesting was happening in the street.