I knowed by then what was manners and stood up so as not to shame her, but he didn’t put out his hand nor acknowledge the introduction in any other wise, but went back to the marble counter and fixed a tray of cookies and sweetmeats and had them delivered before me by means of the little colored boy.
“Isn’t that kind,” said Mrs. Pendrake. She picked her muff from the spare chair. “I wonder, dear, whether while you are occupied with these, you might permit me to finish my shopping. I must make several more purchases and should not forgive myself for tiring you on your first day out.”
It was always such a pleasure for me to hear her speak, I sometimes failed to gather the sense of it. So it was now. I didn’t realize she was leaving me there until she touched my shoulder and went to the door, having to open it for herself, for that manager kept his back turned then, though a minute later when two ugly, scrawny females who I recognized as the wife of an elder of our church and her old-maid sister prepared to go, he sprang out and in his oily fashion bowed them on to the walk.
Well, I thought, if he thinks he’s going to get the better part of my dollar with them cakes, he is wrong. I wasn’t hungry, anyway, and grew a little resentful that Mrs. Pendrake hadn’t recalled the doctor saying I should go easy on sweets. Feeling sulky, I gazed up to the ceiling of that place and saw my old tormentor, the woman of the saloon picture, printed on it. It must have been the thought of Luke English, for I remembered what he said about the whore at Mrs. Lizzie’s. He no doubt had lied, but I knowed where Mrs. Lizzie’s was, over a saloon at the other end of town, and there was sure whores there, which you could see hanging in the windows, and sometimes if you was a boy my age they would call down: “I’ll grow you up for a dollar.”
It’d fix Mrs. Pendrake right if I went over there with her dollar. She hadn’t ought to have left me alone, I was thinking. I got up and went to the counter to pay my bill, realizing then that I wouldn’t have a dollar left, for that soda water was a nickel apiece and maybe that skunk would charge for them cakes though I hadn’t ate a one, and yet I was sort of relieved at not having to go to Mrs. Lizzie’s. I was a real mess at that time of my life, never having an idea but it was canceled by the next.
The skunk, however, wasn’t there; I don’t know where he went, leaving behind an old fellow with a handlebar mustache who allowed my reckoning was already taken care of. So I still had my dollar, which seemed unfortunate when I reached the street, for a great weakness hit me in the hamstrings. I looked up and down for Mrs. Pendrake, wishing I could see her so I wouldn’t have to go no further. There was nothing in the world I wanted so little as a whore at that moment, but I felt it was a challenge once I had got up instead of waiting in the soda-water place.
Then I saw the tracks of her boots in the slush. I couldn’t tell you what made them distinguishable from the other footprints; I just knowed them, for I was familiar with her every particular. I could smell a room and tell you if she had been in it during the last two days. That’s the one respect in which my senses hadn’t got blunted while living in town. Them tracks went along the walk, down to the corner, took a left, north another block, again a left—I followed them though pretending to be dawdling along like a sappy kid—and when they had took that second left onto a residential street running parallel to and behind the block of shops, I understood she had lied.
Halfway along the block was an alley that run back to the commercial street. A cart had been through it but lately, pulled by a mule led by a colored man about seventy years of age: an Indian would have knowed the age of the mule as well.
Anyway, right along this alley had gone Mrs. Pendrake’s little boots, out towards the shops again, except when they come to the back of one of the stores, they turned through a gate, crossed a short yard past the privy, up to a door, and ended.
I paused at the fence, for here come that colored fellow with his cart again, and sure enough he looked about seventy and was leading a big mule. Negroes was great for talking like Lavender of what secrets is seen in eggs and so on, but I believe the reason why they knowed everything in those days was they was always trucking things through back alleys, cleaning up bedrooms and the like, and you can pick up a lot of dirt that way without even looking for it. He bid me the time of day and went creaking past, and then a black dog begun to growl on the other side of the alley and then hushed.
