"Anybody can see by the way he drives that machine of Wilson's that he's
been used to a car--likely a foreign one. All the swells have foreign
cars." Still the barytone, who was almost as fond of conversation as of
what he termed "vocal." "And another thing. Do you notice the way he
takes Dr. Ed around? Has him at every consultation. The old boy's tickled
to death."
A little later, K., coming up the Street as he had that first day, heard
the barytone singing:-"Home is the hunter, home from the hill,
And the sailor, home from sea."
Home! Why, this WAS home. The Street seemed to stretch out its arms to
him. The ailanthus tree waved in the sunlight before the little house.
Tree and house were old; September had touched them. Christine sat sewing
on the balcony. A boy with a piece of chalk was writing something on the
new cement under the tree. He stood back, head on one side, when he had
finished, and inspected his work. K. caught him up from behind, and,
swinging him around-"Hey!" he said severely. "Don't you know better than to write all over the
street? What'll I do to you? Give you to a policeman?"
"Aw, lemme down, Mr. K."
"You tell the boys that if I find this street scrawled over any more, the
picnic's off."
"Aw, Mr. K.!"
"I mean it. Go and spend some of that chalk energy of yours in school."
He put the boy down. There was a certain tenderness in his hands, as in
his voice, when he dealt with children. All his severity did not conceal
it. "Get along with you, Bill. Last bell's rung."
As the boy ran off, K.'s eye fell on what he had written on the cement. At
a certain part of his career, the child of such a neighborhood as the
Street "cancels" names. It is a part of his birthright. He does it as he
whittles his school desk or tries to smoke the long dried fruit of the
Indian cigar tree. So K. read in chalk an the smooth street:-Max Wilson Marriage. Sidney Page Love.
[Note: the a, l, s, and n of "Max Wilson" are crossed through, as are the
S, d, n, and a of "Sidney Page"] The childish scrawl stared up at him impudently, a sacred thing profaned by
the day. K. stood and looked at it. The barytone was still singing; but
now it was "I'm twenty-one, and she's eighteen." It was a cheerful air, as
should be the air that had accompanied Johnny Rosenfeld to his long sleep.
The light was gone from K.'s face again. After all, the Street meant for
him not so much home as it meant Sidney. And now, before very long, that
book of his life, like others, would have to be closed.