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 shut up about this.’
‘It’s against the Ninth Commandment. Mamma’s our mother, and I’m going to tell.’
Arturo spread his legs and blocked the path. August tried to step around him, the snow two feet deep on either side of the path. His head was down, his face set with disgust and pain. Arturo took both lapels of his mackinaw and held him.
‘You keep still about this.’
August shook himself loose.
‘Why should I? He’s our father, ain’t he? Why does he have to do that?’
‘Do you want Mamma to get sick?’
‘Then what did he do it for?’
‘Shut up! Answer my question. Do you want Mamma to be sick? She will if she hears about it.’
‘She won’t get sick.’
‘I know she won’t – because you’re not telling.’
‘I am too.’
The back of his hand caught August across the eyes.
‘I said you’re not going to tell!’
August’s lips quivered like jelly.
‘I’m telling.’
Arturo’s fist tightened under his nose.
‘You see this? You get it if you tell.’
Why should August want to tell? What if his father was with another woman? What difference did it make, so long as his mother didn’t know? And besides, this wasn’t another woman: this was Effie Hildegarde, one of the richest women in town. Pretty good for his father; pretty swell. She wasn’t as good as his mother – no: but that didn’t have anything to do with it.
‘Go ahead and hit me. I’m telling.’
The hard fist pushed into August’s cheek. August turned his head away contemptuously. ‘Go ahead. Hit me. I’m telling.’
‘Promise not to tell or I’ll knock your face in.’
‘Pooh. Go ahead. I’m telling.’
He tilted his chin forward, ready for any blow. It infuriated Arturo. Why did August have to be such a damn fool? He didn’t want to hit him. Sometimes he really enjoyed knocking August around, but not now. He opened his fist and clapped his hands on his hips in exasperation.
‘But look, August,’ he argued. ‘Can’t you see that it won’t help to tell Mamma? Can’t you just see her crying? And right now, at Christmas time too. It’ll hurt her. It’ll hurt her like hell. You don’t want to hurt Mamma, you don’t want to hurt your own mother, do you? You mean to tell me you’d go up to your own mother and say something that would hurt the hell out of her? Ain’t that a sin, to do that?’
August’s cold eyes blinked their conviction. The vapors of his breath flooded Arturo’s face as he answered sharply. ‘But what about him? I suppose he isn’t committing
