484
PARTISAN REVIEW
stones on either side of it. His eyes began to move from child to
child around the table as
if
he were hunting for one particular one
of them. Finally they stopped on Mary Fortune sitting next to her
grandfather. "You done this to us," he muttered.
"I didn't," she said but there was no assurance in her voice.
It was only a quaver, the voice of a frightened child.
Pitts got up and said, " Come with me," and turned and walked
out, loosening his belt as he went, and to the old man's complete
despair, she slid away from the table and followed him, almost ran
after him, out the door and into the truck behind him, and they
drove off.
This cowardice affected Mr. Fortune as if it were his own. It
made him physically sick. "He beats an innocent child," he said to
his daughter, who was apparently still prostrate at the end of the
table, "and not one of you lifts a hand to stop him."
"You ain't lifted yours neither," one of the boys said in an un–
dertone and there was a general mutter from that chorus of frogs.
"I'm an old man with a heart condition," he said. "I can't
stop an ox."
"She put you up to it," his daughter murmured in a languid
listless tone, her head rolling back and forth on the rim of her chair.
"She puts you up to everything."
"No child never put me up to nothing!" he yelled. "You're no
kind of a mother! You're a disgrace! That child is an angel! A
saint!" he shouted in a voice so high that it broke and he had to
scurry out of the room.
The rest of the afternoon he had to lie on
his
bed. His heart,
whenever he knew the child had been beaten, felt as if it were slightly
too large for the space that was supposed to hold it. But now he was
more determined than ever to see the filling station go up in front
of the house, and if it gave Pitts a stroke, so much the better.
If
it
gave him a stroke and paralyzed him, he would be served right and
he would never be able to beat her again.
Mary Fortune was never angry with him for long, or seriously,
and though he did not see her the rest of that day, when he woke
up the next morning, she was sitting astride his chest ordering him
to make haste so that they would not miss the concrete mixer.
The workmen were laying the foundation for the fishing club
