330
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Look. 1 haven't seen Sonny for over a year, I'm not sure I'm
going to do anything. Anyway, what the hell
can
1
do?"
"That's right," he said quickly, "ain't nothing you can do.
Can't much help old Sonny no more,
1
guess."
It was what
1
was thinking and
so
it seemed to me he had no
right to say it.
"I'm surprised at Sonny, though," he went on-he had a funny
way of talking, he looked straight ahead
as
though he were talking
to himself-"I thought Sonny was a smart boy,
1
thought he was
too smart to get hung."
"I guess he thought so too,"
1
said sharply, "and that's how
he got hung. And how about you? You're pretty goddamn smart,
1
bet."
, Then he looked directly at me, just for a minute. " 1 ain't smart,"
he said.
"If
1 was smart, I'd have reached for a pistol a long time
ago."
"Look. Don't tell
me
your sad story, if it was up to me, I'd give
you one." Then 1 felt guilty-guilty, probably, for never having sup–
posed that the poor bastard
had
a story of his own, much less a sad
one, and 1 asked, quickly, "What's going to happen to him now?"
He didn't answer this. He was off by himself some place. "Funny
thing," he said, and from his tone we might have been discussing the
quickest way to get to Brooklyn, "when 1 saw the papers this
morning, the first thing I asked myself was if 1 had anything to do
with it. 1 felt sort of responsible."
I began to listen more carefully. The subway station was on the
corner, just before us, and 1 stopped. He stopped, too. We were in
front of a bar and he ducked slightly, peering in, but whoever he
was looking for didn't seem to be there. The juke box was blasting
away with something black and bouncy and I half watched the bar
maid as she danced her way from the juke box to her place behind
the bar. And 1 watched her face as she laughingly responqed to
something someone said to her, still keeping time to the music. When
she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still–
struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore.
"I never
give
Sonny nothing," the boy said finally, "but a long
time ago I come to school ' high and Sonny asked me how
it
felt."
He paused, I couldn't bear to watch him, 1 watched the barmaid,
