The Playground Read online

  He was ashamed. You didn’t fight violence with violence, not if you were a gentleman. You talked very calmly. But Carol didn’t give you a chance, damn it! She wanted the boy put in a vise and squashed. She wanted him reamed and punctured and given the laying-on-of-hands. To be beaten from playground to kindergarten, to grammar school, to junior high, to high school. If he was lucky, in high school, the beatings and sadisms would refine themselves, the sea of blood and spittle would drain back down the shore of years and Jim would be left upon the edge of maturity, with God knows what outlook to the future, with a desire, perhaps, to be a wolf among wolves, a dog among dogs, a fiend among fiends. But there was enough of that in the world, already. The very thought of the next ten or fifteen years of torture was enough to make Mr. Underhill cringe; he felt his own flesh impaled with b-b shot, stung, burned, fisted, scrounged, twisted, violated, and bruised. He quivered, like a jelly-fish hurled violently into a concrete-mixer. Jim would never survive it. Jim was too delicate for this horror.

  Underhill walked in the midnight rooms of his house thinking of all this, of himself, of the son, the Playground, the fear; there was no part of it he did not touch and turn over with his mind. How much, he asked himself, how much of this is being alone, how much due to Ann’s dying, how much to my need, and how much is the reality of the Playground itself, and the children? How much rational and how much nonsense? He twitched the delicate weights upon the scale and watched the indicator glide and fix and glide again, back and forth, softly, between midnight and dawn, between black and white, between raw sanity and naked insanity. He should not hold so tight, he should let his hands drop away from the boy. And yet—there was no hour that looking into Jim’s small face he did not see Ann there, in the eyes, in the mouth, in the turn of the nostrils, in the warm breathing, in the glow of blood moving just under the thin shell of flesh. I have a right, he thought, to be afraid. I have every right. When you have two precious bits of porcelain and one is broken and the other, the last one, remains, where can you find the time to be objective, to be immensely calm, to be anything else but concerned?

  No, he thought, walking slowly, in the hall, there seems to be nothing I can do except go on being afraid and being afraid of being afraid.

  "You needn’t prowl the house all night," his sister called from her bed, as she heard him pass her open door. "You needn’t be childish. I’m sorry if I seem dictatorial or cold. But you’ve got to make up your mind. Jim simply cannot have a private tutor. Ann would have wanted him to go to a regular school. And he’s got to go back to that playground tomorrow and keep going back until he’s learned to stand on his own two feet and until he’s familiar to all the children; then they won’t pick on him so much."

  Underhill said nothing. He got dressed quietly, in the dark and, downstairs, opened the front door. It was about five minutes to midnight as he walked swiftly down the street in the shadows of the tall elms and oaks and maples, trying to outdistance his rage and outrage. He knew Carol was right, of course. This was the world, you lived in it, you accepted it. But that was the very trouble! He had been through the mill already, he knew what it was to be a boy among lions, his own childhood had come rushing back to him in the last few hours, a time of terror and violence, and now he could not bear to think of Jim’s going through it all, those long years, especially if you were a delicate child, through no fault of your own, your bones thin, your face pale, what could you expect but to be harried and chased?

  He stopped by the Playground, which was still lit by one great overhead lamp. The gate was locked for the night, but that one light remained on until twelve. He wanted to tear the contemptible place down, rip up the steel fences, obliterate the slides, and say to the children, "Go home! Play in your backyards!"

  How ingenious, the cold, deep playground. You never knew where anyone lived. The boy who knocked your teeth out, who was he? Nobody knew. Where did he live? Nobody knew. How to find him? Nobody knew. Why, you could come here one day, beat the living tar out of some smaller child, and run on the next day to some other playground. They would never find you. From playground to playground, you could take your criminal tricks, with everyone forgetting you, since they never knew you. You could return to this playground a month later, and if the little child whose teeth you knocked out was there and recognized you, you could deny it. "No, I’m not the one. Must be some other kid. This is my first time here! No, not me!" And when his back is turned, knock him over. And run off down nameless streets, a nameless person.

  What can I possibly do? thought Underhill. Carol’s been more than generous with her time; she’s been good for Jim, no doubt of it. A lot of the love she would have put into a marriage has gone to him this year. I can’t fight her forever on this, and I can’t tell her to leave. Perhaps moving to the country might help. No, no, impossible; the money. But I can’t leave Jim here, either.

  "Hello, Charlie," said a quiet voice.

  Underhill snapped about. Inside he Playground fence, seated in the dirt, making diagrams with on finger in the cool dust, was the solemn nine-year-old boy. He didn’t glance up. He said "Hello, Charlie," just sitting there, easily, in that world beyond the hard steel fence.

  Underhill said, "How do you know my name?"

  "I know it." The boy crossed his legs, comfortably, smiling quietly. "You’re having lots of trouble."

  "How’d you get in there so late? Who are you?"

  "My name’s Marshall."

  "Of course! Tom Marshall’s son, Tommy! I thought you looked familiar."

  "More familiar than you think." The boy laughed gently.

  "How’s your father, Tommy?"

  "Have you seen him lately?" the boy asked.

  "On the street, briefly, two months ago."

  "How did he look?"

  "What?"

  "How did Mr. Marshall look?" asked the boy. It seemed strange he refused to say "my father."

  "He looked all right. Why?"

  "I guess he’s happy," said the boy. Mr. Underhill saw the boy’s arms and legs and they were covered with scabs and scratches.

  "Aren’t you going home, Tommy?"

  "I sneaked out to see you. I just knew you’d come. You’re afraid."

  Mr. Underhill didn’t know what to say.

  "Those little monsters," he said at last.

  "Maybe I can help you." The boy made a dust triangle.

  It was ridiculous. "How?"

  "You’d give anything, wouldn’t you, if you could spare Jim all this? You’d trade places with him if you could?"

  Mr. Underhill nodded, frozen.

  "Well, you come down here tomorrow afternoon at four. Then I can help you."

  "How do you mean, help?"

  "I can’t tell you outright," said the boy. "It has to do with the Playground. Any place where there’s lots of evil, that makes power. You can feel it, can’t you?"

  A kind of warm wind stirred off the bare field under the one high light. Underhill shivered. Yes, even now, at midnight, the Playground seemed evil, for it was used for evil things. "Are all playgrounds like this?"

  "Some. Maybe this is the only one like this. Maybe it’s just how you look at it, Charlie. Things are what you want them to be. A lot of people think this is a swell playground. They’re right, too. It’s how you look at it, maybe. What I wanted to say, though, is that Tom Marshall was like you. He worried about Tommy Marshall and the Playground and the kids, too. He wanted to save Tommy the trouble and the hurt, also."

  This business of talking about people as if they were remote, made Mr. Underhill uncomfortable.

  "So we made a bargain," said the boy.

  "Who with?"

  "With the Playground, I guess, or whoever runs it."

  "Who runs it?"

  "I’ve never seen him. There’s an office over there under the grandstand. A light burns in it all night. It’s a bright, blue light, kind of funny. There’s a desk there with no papers in it and an empty chair. The sign says Manager, bu
t nobody ever sees the man."

  "He must be around."

  "That’s right," said the boy. "Or I wouldn’t be where I am, and someone else wouldn’t be where they are."

  "You certainly talk grownup."

  The boy was pleased. "Do you want to know who I really am? I’m not Tommy Marshall at all. I’m Tom Marshall, the father." He sat there in the dust, not moving, late at night, under the high and faraway light, with the late wind blowing his shirt collar gently under his chin, blowing the cool dust. "I’m Tom Marshall, the father. I know it’ll be hard for you to believe. But it is true. I was afraid for Tommy. I was the way you are now about Jim. So I made this deal with the Playground. Oh, there are others who did the same, here. If you look close, you’ll see them among the other children, by the expression in their eyes."

  Underhill blinked. "You’d better run home to bed."

  "You want to believe me. You want it to be true. I saw your eyes just then! If you could trade places with Jim, you would. You’d like to save him all that torture, let him be in your place, grownup, the real work over and done."

  "Any decent parent sympathizes with his children."

  "You, more than most. You feel every bite and kick. Well, you come here tomorrow. You can make a deal, too."

  "Trade places?" It was an incredible, an amusing, but an oddly satisfying thought. "What would I have to do?"

  "Just make up your mind."

  Underhill tried to make his next question sound very casual, a joke, but his mind was in a rage again. "What would I pay?"

  "Nothing. You’d just have to play in the Playground."

  "All day?"

  "And go to school, of course."

  "And grow up again?"

  "Yes, and grow up again. Be here at four tomorrow afternoon."

  "I have to work in the city tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow," said the boy.

  "You’d better get home to bed, Tommy."

  "My name is Tom Marshall." The boy sat there.

  The Playground lights went out.

  Mr. Underhill and his sister did not speak at breakfast. He usually phoned her at noon to chat about this or that, but he did not phone. But at one-thirty, after a bad lunch, he dialed the house number. When Carol answered he hung up. Five minutes later he phoned again.

  "Charlie, was that you called five minutes ago?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "I thought I heard you breathing before you hung up. What’d you call about, dear?" She was being sensible again.

  "Oh, just called."

  "It’s been a bad two days, hasn’t it? You do see what I mean, don’t you, Charlie? Jim must go to the Playground and get a few knocks."

  "A few knocks, yes."

  He saw the blood and the hungry foxes and the torn rabbits.

  "And learn to give and take," she was saying, "and fight if he has to."

  "Fight if he has to," he murmured.

  "I knew you’d come around."

  "Around," he said. "You’re right. No way out. He must be sacrificed."

  "Oh, Charlie, you are odd."

  He cleared his throat. "Well, that’s settled."

  "Yes."

  I wonder what it would be like, he thought.

  "Everything else okay?" he asked the phone.

  He thought of the diagrams in the dust, the boy seated there with the hidden bones in his face.

  "Yes," she said.

  "I’ve been thinking," he said.

  "Speak up."

  "I’ll be home at three," he said, slowly, piecing out the words likea man hit in the stomach, gasping for breath. "We’ll take a walk, you and Jim and I," he said, eyes shut.

  "Wonderful!"

  "To the Playground," he said and hung up.

  It was really autumn now, the real chill, the real snap; overnight the trees burnt red and snapped free of their leaves, which spiraled about Mr. Underhill’s face as he walked up the front steps, and there were Carol and Jim, bundled up against the sharp wind, waiting for him.

  "Hello!" they cried to one another, with much embracing and kissing. "There’s Jim down there!" "There’s Daddy up there!" They laughed and he felt paralyzed and in terror of the late day. It was almost four. He looked at the leaden sky, which might pour down molten silver any moment, a sky of lava and soot and a wet wind blowing out of it. He held his sister’s arm very tightly as they walked. "Aren’t you friendly, though?" She smiled.

  "It’s ridiculous, of course," he said, thinking of something else.

  "What?"

  They were at the Playground gate.

  "Hello, Charlie. Hi!" Far away, atop the monstrous slide stood the Marshall boy, waving, not smiling now.

  "You wait here," said Mr. Underhill to his sister. "I’ll be only a moment. I’ll just take Jim in."

  "All right."

  He grasped the small boy’s hand. "Here we go, Jim. Stick close to Daddy."

  They stepped down the hard concrete steps and stood in the flat dust. Before them, in a magical sequence, stood the diagrams, the gigantic tic-tac-toes, the monstrous hop-scotches, the amazing numerals and triangles and oblongs the children had scrabbled in the incredible dust.

  The sky blew a huge wind upon him and he was shivering. He grasped the little boy’s hand still tighter and turned to his sister. "Good-bye," he said. For he was believing it. He was in the Playground and believing it, and it was for the best. Nothing too good for Jim. Nothing at all in this outrageous world! And now his sister was laughing back at him, "Charlie, you idiot!"

  Then they were running, running across the dirt Playground floor, at the bottom of a stony sea that pressed and blew upon them. Now Jim was crying, "Daddy, Daddy!" and the children racing to meet them, the boy on the slide yelling, the tic-tac-toe and hop-scotches whirling, a sense of bodiless terror gripping him, but he knew what he must do and what must be done and what would happen. Far across the field footballs sailed, baseballs whizzed, bats flew, fists flashed up, and the door of the Manager’s office stood open, the desk empty, the seat empty, a lone light burning over it.

  Underhill stumbled, shut his eyes and fell, crying out, his body clenched by a hot pain, mouthing strange words, everything in turmoil.

  "There you are, Jim," said a voice.

  And he was climbing, climbing, eyes closed, climbing metal-ringing ladder rungs, screaming, wailing, his throat raw.

  Mr. Underhill opened his eyes.

  He was on top of the slide. The gigantic, blue metal slide which seemed ten thousand feet high. Children crushed at his back, children beat him to go on, slide! slide!

  And he looked, and there, going off across the field, was a man in a black overcoat. And there, at the gate, was a woman waving and the man standing there with the woman, both of them looking in at him, waving, and their voices calling, "Have a good time! Have a good time, Jim!"

  He screamed. He looked at his hands, in a panic of realization. The small hands, the thin hands. He looked at the earth far below. He felt his nose bleeding and there was the Marshall boy next to him. "Hi!" cried the other, and bashed him in the mouth. "Only twelve years here!" cried the other in the uproar.

  Twelve years! thought Mr. Underhill, trapped. And time is different to children. A year is like ten years. No, not twelve years of childhood ahead of him, but a century, a century of this.

  "Slide!"

  Behind him the stink of Musterole, Vick’s Vaporub, peanuts, chewed hot tar, spearmint gum and blue fountain-pen ink, the smell of kite-twine and glycerin soap, a pumpkin smell of Hallowe’en and a papier-mâché fragrance of skull masks, and the smell of dry scabs, as he was pinched, pummeled, shoved. Fists rose and fell, he saw the fox faces and beyond, at the fence, the man and woman standing there, waving. He shrieked, he covered his face, he felt himself pushed, bleeding, to the rim of nothingness. Headfirst, he careened down the slide, screeching, with ten thousand monsters behind. One thought jumped through his mind a moment before he hit bottom in a nauseous mound of claws.

&n
bsp; This is hell, he thought, this is hell!

  And no one in the hot, milling heap contradicted him.

  * * *

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