JERRY BUMPUS
369
"It's like a person," he whispered.
He had me. I asked more questions, but he wouldn't tell me
anything more. I stood between the corner and the playground, and he
emerged from the corner, though by now the gang was at least half a
mile away, beyond the brick maze: clouds of dust rose above them, for
they had apparently won the battle with the rival gang and were now
stomping them.
He stood close to me, looking at me with his severe, narrow face.
He expected me to ask how he had done that with the corner, but I
refused to ask. He turned and started off. I followed, calling, "When?"
He went faster, and I ran to keep up. "When?" I yelled. "When,
goddamn you?"
Now he was running acros the playground as before, not moving
his arms or shoulders but leaning rigidly forward from the waist, his
legs not bending at the knees but stiffly swinging like scissors-but he
was running very fast, and I realized he had earlier run slowly to
deceive the gang, sly fellow. He outran me easily. I stopped and as he
topped a hill he called over hi shoulder, "After school, " and disap–
peared.
I spotted him after school in the crowd pouring from the building.
He was hurrying, trying to lose himself among the other boys and girls.
But I was right behind him. I reached out and grabbed his neck. I
swung him around and smiled in his face. "Remember me?"
His eyes were enormous and yellow, with great wide whites. The
yellow was unlike anything I had ever seen-yellow like a eat's, maybe,
but deep and far like plains.
I turned away, angry, for he was grinning at me; he knew his eyes
had surprised me. His grin took the corners of his mouth up sharply,
making his mouth a quaint V under the V of his nose.
" I want to see that thing," I said.
"Sure, " he said. "Let go." I let go his neck and we walked on.
"Nice day," he said. "My name is Bob. Where do you live? Do you have
a dog?" He smiled slyly as we crossed a street. The crowd of children
was thinning; in another block they had scattered completely; he and I
were alone. "This way," he said, and we turned down a street with few
houses, and those the dark, run-down sort, some with boarded win–
dows, ruined trees leaning into each other. Several blocks on, the street
gave way to a dirt road, overgrown and untraveled.
"Do you live down here?" I said.
He jerked his hand, thumb up, over his shoulder: beyond empty
fields with brush and thickets hulking larger and larger in the shadows
