# Peewee/Chapter 5

Peewee sat on the breakwater beside the lake, awaiting her. The day was warm and bright with sun, but he had begun to think that he was to be disappointed. It was, he felt certain, almost four o'clock, and he had seen no sign yet of the limousine either on the drive or on the cross street. Then suddenly he looked up and saw her.
She had not come in the motor; she had come on foot. What was still more unusual, she was not strolling along the esplanade. She was coming from the direction of the drive, and, by her look, directly to him. He had a frightened sense of something new and extraordinary in her.
"Don't run away," she called to him across the grass.
Her smile checked his momentary panic.
​"Why don't we both sit down?" she offered, when she had reached him. She seated herself on the concrete step above the breakwater and waited, while he gazed at her uncertainly. He felt indefinitely that he ought to go away; then, in spite of himself, he sat down beside her. He did not tell himself consciously that there was tension in her which she was trying to hide, but he was apprehensive.
"This is a nice place to come," she said.
"Yes'm," he replied.
"You come here almost every day, don't you?"
"Yes'm."
"Is that because you find it pleasanter here than at home?"
His pulse quickened. "Yes'm."
"Where is your home?" she asked.
He looked at her with calculated innocence; the uneasiness with which she had impressed him increased. "What'm?" he asked.
"Where do you live?"
Anybody, he understood, might ask that question, but the feeling she gave him was that she ​was trying to find out about him. He scuffed his broken, too-large shoes against the concrete in embarrassment. His large, innocent eyes, as blue as hers and fringed with their long black lashes, studied her. They would not, he knew, reveal to her his thought. The duplicity and self-confidence he had gained in his combat with charity workers and agents anxious to incarcerate him in institutions assured him of that. If they had not been able to find out from him things he did not want to tell, neither, he was quite confident, could she.
"On Desplaines Street," he prevaricated.
"Will you tell me the number?"
He gave a number, chosen swiftly and at hazard, but it was astutely suited to a neigh borhood in which he might live.
"That is a long way from here," she said thoughtfully. "How is it that I have seen you here so often? Do you come all that distance every day?"
He decided he must distract her from this line of thought. "When I don't work," he answered craftily.
​"Work?" Her voice showed her surprise. "Does a little boy like you work? What do you do? Sell newspapers?"
Was her question merely natural? There were not many things, he knew, which so small a boy could do except sell newspapers; but it was not plain whether she was aware of that or whether her inquiry showed some knowledge of him.
"I take bundles," he replied after reflecting.
"For whom?"
Again he thought. "For a drug store."
"What drug store?"
"Near us."
"Us. Who is that you live with?"
Now, he felt he could completely throw her off. "I live with my mudder," he answered with no appreciable pause.
He saw her looking keenly at him. "What is your name?"
He gave her one which he had spelled out on a sign on his way there.
"And your first name?" "Tom."
He waited anxiously. When she spoke again, ​he marked the nervous catching of her voice.
"Does your—father live with you?"
She knew, then, was the first feeling that he had; or if she did not know, something had directed her at least in the direction of the truth. She suspected some mystery about his father. He choked, "Yes'm."
"What does your father do?"
"He buys old things." He was sticking desperately to the fiction he had started.
"You mean old furniture?"
"No'm." His gaze, wandering despairingly, rested on his frayed trouser-knee. "Old clo'es."
"Have you any brothers or sisters?"
"Yes'm."
"Tell me about them."
"Sure." He went swiftly into details of an imaginary family; he would create, he thought, enough relatives to convince her if he could.
"Do any of them"—he heard the slight catch in her voice—"look at all like you?"
"What'm?"
"Children in the same family often look alike. You know that, don't you?"
​"Yes'm."
"Do any of the other children look like you?"
He took time for natural reflection—nothing more. "Yes'm."
"Then people would know that you and they were brothers and sister?"
"Sure."
"And they and you—Do you look like your father?"
"Sure."
"You've always called him 'father,' I suppose?"
"Sure I call my fadder 'fadder'."
His throat had dried. Did she know so much that he could not deceive her? She was questioning him obviously for a purposed end. He felt her slender fingers grasp his chin. He did not resist as she turned his face upward to hers, and he met miserably, but with pretended frankness her long tense scrutiny of his features. Her eyes, he saw, were indecisive and uncertain. She drew a deep, troubled breath.
"Did you ever," she asked, when he had ​waited through her long pause, "hear the name Markyn?"
He considered, in his panic, how to answer that. "Yes'm."
"Where?"
"It's on wagons."
"Yes; on trucks. The Markyn Transfer Company—that is what you mean?"
"Yes'm."
"You've never heard it anywhere else?"
"No'm."
She paused again. "Or," she said nervously, "the name Lampert?"
He swallowed. "No'm."
"You might know the man without knowing his name—a very big, rough man. He used to be a barn boss once for that company we just spoke about—the Markyn Company. Do you know any barn boss? Do you know any man like that?"
"No'm."
He watched anxiously to see what the result of his replies had been. He thought relievedly that he saw conviction forming in her now that ​he was not the boy whom she had feared he was. It gave him no sense of triumph if this was so, but only of escape. What he understood most plainly was that, if she knew about him, it would hurt her; then she would shrink away from him. He could not imagine anything more terrible than to have her hate him. He was struggling against feelings that made him want to cry. He wanted to touch her; he wanted her to touch him again.
She had got up; when he looked up at her, he saw her holding out a dollar to him. His thought did not supply the reason why he did not like to receive even that benefit from her.
"You'd better take it," she urged. "You don't have to take it home, you know; you can spend it on moving picture shows."
He understood that she could not know that he had had nothing to eat since the night before. He had not recollected that himself until he saw the dollar; he did not waste thought on anything so ordinary as missed meals. As he got up and took the money, he observed some definite change in the way she looked at him. She was thoughtful; her thoughts, he saw, were not ​happy, but they appeared to stir her to tenderness toward him.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked. "Do you need help in any way?"
"No'm."
"Is your mother kind to you?"
He thought of the dissolute, dead woman, who had said she was his mother; toward her his only feeling had been fear.
"Yes'm," he told her.
"Then she loves you. She might love you and still not be kind; but if she is kind she surely loves you. Love is what makes it terrible to be a mother. It is terrible to lose a child, but it must be almost as terrible to see one grow up. Mothers give children to the world without knowing what their children are going to grow up to be, and no matter what a child becomes they have to go on loving it. Of course, you don't understand me."
"No'm."
"You can understand this at least, that bad boys break their mothers' hearts and good boys make them happy."
​He had never considered anything like this before; it might be so, however, he decided. "Yes'm."
"So a boy when he is going to do anything, ought to think whether it will make his mother glad or sorry. Do you understand that?"
The newness of the idea made it extremely interesting. He could not recall much evidence of what she said in the mothers and sons whom he had impersonally observed, but he wanted to agree with her.
"Yes'm," he said.
"You'll do that, won't you?"
"Yes'm."
"You're a nice boy," she said, "in spite of all your dirt."
She was looking queerly down at him; she turned his face up again to hers and studied it, but not anxiously as she did before. Quite suddenly she bent down toward him. He did not know what she was going to do until her felt her lips. They were cool and sweet against his cheek. Then a sob rose in his throat, which closed to keep it back, and some unexpected ​startling feeling held him frozen. She too seemed stirred and startled; she trembled so that he could see it, and her eyes filled with unexpected tears. She stared an instant at him in this way, then turned and almost ran away from him across the grass.
When she had got a block away, he quickened suddenly into movement, and ran after her. He saw her go into his father's house, and stood a long while looking at the great luxurious dwelling, with its high iron fence to keep out intruders. She had talked, he was recalling now, for quite half an hour with him; she had shown interest in him—no matter what the cause—and the recollection warmed him.
While he watched, a woman in striped kitchen dress came out at a rear door and threw away some refuse, and the sight reminded him of his dollar. As he went slowly back downtown, he was not consciously considering what her conversation with him must mean. To an older person, that she had connected the name Lampert only with the barn boss would have been evidence that she did not know about his mother. It was plain ​that she suspected the existence of a child. She would have seemed, to an older person, to have been trying to deny within herself the possibility of that existence; to have been eager that he should convince her that he was not the child. But why should she connect the child with him? She had grown used to seeing him, perhaps, in thinking of the suspected child, she had perceived his amazing likeness to his father. This is what an older person might have supposed.
What Peewee felt was simply triumph. Someone had told her something—he did not know what or who; plainly it had not been told by his father. But his lies had convinced her that it was not true. She would remain convinced, he still could see her and she still would be happy.
Suddenly he halted, knicking one shoe miserably against the other; it had occurred to him that whoever had told her this much might tell her more. If she was told more, then lies would not convince her. He moved on, slowly and unhappily; it was plain to him that unless he knew that she was not going to be told anything more he could not dare to see her again.