The Children by Howard Fast Page A

couldn’t put too much heart into it. This was not fighting. This was slaughter, more or less.
    Afterward, Shomake sat on the curb, sobbing to himself. All over, his body ached, but there was more hurt than that in his heart, and he was not able to throw it off the way Ishky had. Why had Christ died, if the world was only this?
    The sun, so hot, only made him suffer more. False beauty. He wanted to go home and put his head in his mother’s lap, but that would not solve the whole thing. Still, he had to solve it.
    Maybe—if he went to Ishky—He sat there sobbing and thinking for a long time. Maybe if he went to Ishky, they could go and look for the magic garden again. Then, for the first time, he smiled a little, remembering the garden the way Ishky had described it. And it was so near—only in the back of Ishky’s house.
    If you could go into the garden, just like that, couldn’t you stay there? And then, maybe, you could stay there all the time.
    Awkwardly, he got to his feet, and he began to shamble up the block. There, sure enough, was Ishky, and Marie was with him.
    â€œHey, Ishky,” he called.
    Ishky began to swagger. He wondered what Shomake would think, seeing him holding Marie’s hand like that.
    â€œHey, Ishky!”
    Marie turned up her nose.
    â€œWanna play, Ishky?”
    â€œHe’s a dirdy wop,” Marie confided to Ishky.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWanna find duh gaden?”
    And then Shomake stood stunned and forlorn; Ishky had swaggered past without ever noticing him.

ELEVEN

    N OW—THE FIGHT BETWEEN BLACKBELLY AND OLLIE . Y OU must understand why this fight was inevitable, and how out of this fight developed the compact gang formation which divided the block into two distinct parts.
    The last time they had fought, Blackbelly had mashed Ollie’s head with a broken bottle; but if Ollie resented anything about this, it was the fact that the bottle had not come into his hand before it came into Blackbelly’s. A broken bottle was legal enough in any fight.
    Out of that, Ollie began to vision his gang, a close, well-knit gang to drive the Negroes out of the lower end of the block. Now, Ollie was no fool; more than that, he was a person who thought a great deal. He knew that he hated the Negroes. In the upper part of the block, he was king; but when he walked down the block he took his safety into his hands. He thought of a time when the block would be his, from east to west. It meant beating the Negroes, and that meant organizing a gang. But when it came to organizing, he was strangely helpless.
    This is the way the combination between Ishky and Ollie came about—after Ollie had heard of Ishky’s feat of leaping from the roof.
    W HAT HAVE I done to Shomake now? He used to be my friend, and now? Now I walk past him, and even though I see the expression upon his face, it doesn’t affect me.
    (Ishky, what do you know of a woman, except to worship her?)
    Afterward, I would say to myself, “It is all Marie’s fault.” Yet how is that possible? I love Marie, and to me she is the perfect woman above all other women. So how can the fault be Marie’s?
    Now, in spite of what I have done to Shomake,’I am quite happy.
    â€œY’like tuh read, Marie?”
    â€œSometimes. What’s duh gaden?”
    â€œJus’ sumpen I tol’ Shomake.”
    â€œHe’s a dumb wop.”
    â€œYeah—y’like ’venture stories?”
    â€œSometimes. Where’s duh gaden?”
    â€œWhat gaden?”
    â€œDuh one yuh tol’ Shomake about.”
    â€œI dunno.”
    â€œDen whyya talkin’ all about a gaden?”
    â€œJus’ fer fun.”
    She glanced sidewise at him, and then she said, “Is it dark in duh gaden?”
    â€œI dunno.”
    â€œAwright—take yer pissy gaden. See if I care.”
    H OW IS IT that I can’t tell Marie about the garden? I told Shomake about it, and I