The Nail and the Oracle (10 page)

Last summer she had stood here speechless, watching the flesh, the tanned flesh, the hard flesh pulsing with life, the unabashedly bare, the sweat-sheened. And there came the moment when her eyes and his had met … when in the locking of their gaze she was no longer invisible and he, no longer unseen.

The telephone was next, and the voice of Poteen. That was the first time she heard his voice, the noncommittal, too-understanding Detective Peter Poteen, who said
yes-mam
like the polite cop on a television series, and perhaps was amused at himself for doing it, and, very likely at her, too, for calling. He was immune to the infection of her outrage; he patiently had interrupted her, over and over again, until he had written down her name and her address and had
made sure he had them all spelled right—all that, before she could even tell her story.

And then it was yes mam, yes mam, yes mam, to all of it, and his silly question. Was the fellow still out there on the roof? Well of
course
not, she had blurted angrily. He was two hours gone. That was when Poteen’s voice got a bit quieter, in that special way he had when he was interested, and also in that special way of his, the amusement showed a bit more. He asked her if she meant she had waited two whole hours to report the man to the police?

She supposed she had, though to this day she could not remember what she had done with the two hours. “I was upset, that’s all!” she had shouted into the phone; and “Sure,” he had said, “Sure,” and he had promised to check on it. Check on it! With the papers full of it, every day, two, three times a day sometimes, the headlines, what happened in parks, alleys, stairways, even in the rooms of women alone. The whole city was aroused, and all the people in it except the police, except Detective Poteen.

Hanging up, she had glared at the bland crooked telephone and
“Oh!”
she had shrieked at it, unable to find a word for what she felt.

A woman alone could be preyed upon, brutalized, murdered. Or worse.
Then
the police would swing into action. Then they would be around with their radios and their fingerprint kits and bloodstain tests and microscopes and things—they were very good at that. Afterwards. After she had been—

Oh!
The word was too horrible to say, even to herself.

Check on it. They’d check on it all right. Maybe pass Poteen’s cold careful notes around at the precinct station and laugh at her.

It had come night then, that hot summer last year, and she had sat tensely in her wicker chair, glancing in fury at the bland cornerless hulk of the telephone, and then at the textured face of the gauze that shut out the night beyond.

And once—she could still remember it—she had found herself wishing, actually, fervently wishing, that her door would burst open, that one of the fiends, the beasts of prey, would stand there drooling and baring his teeth, and would leap on her … leaving only
enough afterwards to enable her to say through broken lips,
I told you it would happen, Detective Poteen. I told you
. And standing over her bleeding body, Poteen would take off his hat and say
Yes Mam!

And it had happened, had happened! even as she sat there thinking that, the soft footsteps in the hall, the knock on her door. She had gone rigid, and suddenly the insides of her mouth and throat were dry blotting-paper, while a great cold knot writhed itself into shape in her stomach and drew tight. It wasn’t until the knock came again that she was able to answer at all.

“Who is it?”

“You don’t know me. The guy on the roof.”

She did not answer. She couldn’t. In her mind’s eye, vividly, she saw through the thin wall. She saw him just as she had seen him by the kiosk in the hot afternoon, standing so shamelessly; she could only imagine him the same way by her door, and again—still—with his gaze locked with hers.

She got up, that hot night a year ago, and, she had never before heard, had never known, the crackles, shrieks, and shouts a wicker chair gives out when a body leaves it. She had crept to the telephone, dialed. Oh! what a noise. What a grinding and clacking a telephone dial makes. Whether or not she could hear him breathing out there, she thought she did, and it was horrible.

He knocked again, louder; it was thunder, it was guns.
Fortieth Precinct; Sergeant Deora
, yelled the phone in her ear.

With her mouth to the telephone’s mouth, close like kissing, wet, she said, “I told you this would happen, I told that Mister Poteen, the man, he’s breaking in, he—”
This is the police, Sergeant Deora
, rasped the telephone scratchily, tinnily, too loud.
I can’t hear you. Who’s calling, please?
“Oh, sh!
Shh!!
” Little Sister whispered explosively. “Not so loud, he’ll hear you. I called this afternoon—”
May I have your name?

Angrily, she told him. The knock came again. Out in the hall, a voice, “I got to see you a minute. Come on, I got to talk to you.” Little Sister hugged the phone, turned her back to the door. Her eyes were wide and turned so far over to the side that they hurt. “I called
this afternoon and told that detective, that Mister Poteen—”
Your address, please
. “Oh!” she cried, but still cried whispering, “Oh! Oh! A man’s trying to break in right now, I
told
you he would!”
Yes mam. Now if you will please give me your address
.

Like cursing, she gave her address. “This afternoon—”
We’ll check on it
. “But, but, this afternoon—” she said into the phone, the dead phone, he had gone and left her alone, now of all times.

A knock again, only one, but hard; not a knock, a blow. “Come on, I ain’t going to hurt you. I got to talk to you a little.”

Holding the phone still, she panted, and panted, and suddenly filled her lungs and screamed
No!

“Cut it out!” said the voice quietly, urgently, close to the crack of the door. “Cut it out, will you? Somebody’ll hear. Just open up, let me in a minute, will ya?”

Then she had screamed, and screamed again, and screamed and screamed. Walled in by her own screams, she saw rather than heard the door being pounded on; it trembled; then the knob turned and it shook; then it opened, oh God, it opened. He was there, with his shoulders hunched, his mouth twisted. He hurled himself … something struck her across the shoulder-blades; her canned-goods shelf—Then she must have risen, turned, backed away.

“Shut up, wait, be quiet, don’t yell like that, don’t—” He seemed almost to be pleading. She ducked under the shelf and slid sidewise and turned to flee to—oh, her bed. The sight of her own bed filled her with a new and terrible fear, and she screamed a new scream, a new kind of scream from a new kind of fear.

He touched her.

After that things were misty, swirling. The room was full of people. Somebody turned on the big overhead light and it hurt her eyes. The man from the roof looked some smaller, and a whole lot younger, with three policemen holding him. Younger, well, of course,
these
days.

Then the parade down the stairs and out on the street, the heads popping out of doors, the crowd around the three radio cars with their scything red lights, and a drumming white ambulance, all helter-skelter in the narrow street, and traffic stopped and car doors open
with the people out and crowding around, crowding around. All the eyes, the eyes, gloating over her, over
him
.

Coming down the brownstone steps, a woman spat right in his face. In the car, sobbing, and a big policeman saying she was all right now, all right now.

Then questions in a bare bright room, with people coming in and out—and more questions. Once it was
him
, with only two policemen holding him this time; she did not, could not, look at his face, but she knew him all right, and said so; he tried to speak but they told him to shut his mouth. Someone brought her a paper cup of lukewarm tea.

Then the courtroom, and flashbulbs and the smell of dust and old sweat—nothing clean but the flag.
Stand up!
somebody shouted and the judge came in and almost everybody sat down again. It was difficult to follow the proceedings and she did not try. She did not have to.

Her turn came and she was led to the right place to stand and touch the Book, and then to the right place to sit; seated, she was still led; she was asked questions which could only be answered
Yes
and
Yes
and
No
and
Yes;
they thanked her.

He
took the stand. She averted her eyes. It was soon over. Home then in a police car, through an avenue of flash-bulbs, on the arm of a policewoman. All a blur, all nothing, really; the real thing was the next thing, the day, the next day.

First there were the papers, the two tabloids with her picture weeping on the front page, and
Story on Page 3
and
More pictures in Centerfold
. The headline on one was NAB ATTACKER IN ASSAULT ACT and the other one said RAPIST NABBED SENT UP 5 1/2 HRS.

The first one had the story she liked best. It had the reporter’s name on it and began “A living nightmare burst upon a lonely lady late last night when …” The other one, though it was about her, wasn’t so much about
her
. It was mostly about the judge. Her judge and another judge had been having a sort of race.

So many of these terrible attack things coming up had made them revive the old Night Court, and it seems that her Judge had heard
and sentenced an attacker in less than twelve hours, so this other judge beat him to it by almost three hours, so this time her judge had packed the convict off to wherever it was he went, just five and a half hours after
he
had knocked on her door. And serve him right, too, said the paper, and all others like him. They had to learn that justice in Our Town was swift and certain.

She wasn’t on the front page of the other papers, but she was in them all somewhere. And all that day at the market, people came to see her, to talk to her. People she had worked with for years spoke to her—really spoke to her—for the first time. And some of the men just couldn’t get enough of her. Well, they
cared
.

That was the day everyone began to call her Little Sister. And when she walked back from the bus stop in the afternoon; they called out to her—“You okay, Little Sister?” Well, if it took such a terrible thing to show that way down deep people
cared
.… Still, it was a terrible thing, terrible. Everyone said so.

And in about three weeks, that same Detective Poteen came to see her. He had called first, made it convenient, had been very polite and understanding. He was a man who listened a great deal more than he talked. He had that skin that always looks tanned, and glossy black hair and a young face with old pouches under the eyes.

He asked her about the whole thing all over again, right from the beginning. She told it to him, just the way it had been written in the papers. Maybe, she had thought, a police detective is too busy to read the papers. She had asked him why the police were still interested, and he said they weren’t, but he was. He was off duty at the time. She thought, at the time, that it was kind of nice.

Then the year went by, and while it was warm, and when it was warm again, she used to sit sometimes in her wicker chair by the window, invisible behind the square of gauze, and gaze out across her unseen barrier—sixty feet, straight down—to the roof. And in her memory’s gaze she would see him again, the whole thing … unseen by him, remote and safe. “You all right, Little Sister?” the people said as she passed. “Watch yourself, now—be careful …”

The year went by, and this afternoon Poteen called again. She’d been a little slow in responding to him … that was funny … it wasn’t
because she didn’t recognize his voice. She did. It was just that for some reason she couldn’t believe it. And then with his soft polite voice he had drawn the curtain of terror over her: “I thought I ought to tell you—Clewie Richardson got out yesterday.”

“Who’s Louie Richardson?”

“Clewie. Clewton W. Richardson. The boy who was sent up on your complaint last year.”

She had, of course, seen the name; it just hadn’t stayed with her. “I forgot his name. I … wanted to forget everything,” she said pathetically. Then the full impact of the news struck her. “Got
out?
You mean he’s
back?
”

“He lives here,” said Poteen’s voice gently. Then, very soothing, he said, “Now don’t you get excited or worried or anything. There’s no danger for you. I just felt I ought to tell you, in case you should see him on the street or something. It’s all over, so just don’t worry.”

“Oh,” she said, worried, terribly worried. “Oh dear.” While she was saying it he said goodbye quietly and hung up.

That was about three this afternoon; now it was nearly ten, and dark; but for a hazy sliver of moon, peeping and hiding, it was dark, too dark. Yet she would not turn on her light. As night was born, so her worry turned to fright; as the night grew around her and all the world, so her fright turned to terror, until at last it was a haze about her like the one in the sky.

And like the fragile stick of moon out there, all she could do was peep and hide in it, peep and hide, and the blur of her fear filtered common sounds into breathings by her door, and ordinary shifts of moonlight into movement on the roof.

Call the police
, she kept telling herself, and
No, what would I say? I thought I saw, I thought I heard …?
Then,
Go!
she would tell herself, and answer,
go where?
… and then, since no passion, even the ecstasies of fear, can continue indefinitely, but must ebb and peak, the haze of terror would fitfully clarify and she could get her breath and bearings. Detective Poteen had told her there was nothing to fear. And
he
—Louie or Clewie?—surely he’d have learned his lesson, he wouldn’t try to …

But then, he would. She knew he would. She knew it so well that
she was waiting for him. This is what she kept coming back to as the night grew tight around her, strong and dark, and each time she came back to it, the terror peaked higher. And off again on the climbing spiral:
Call the police
. (No, what would I—) Then,
Go! Go where?
… Oh! someone’s breathing out there! Something’s moving out there … Oh!