"There was Josey; she didn't know. I didn't. We saw love played with in hilarious open passion. We thought it was the thing to do. Children oughtn't to see it quite that way."
Claire felt guilty, but he stopped and when he began again he was on a different line of old memories.
"Why, when I sold papers down on the main street I could see the girls of the district standing around, one block below, in their business regalia. I thought at first they were angels."
Claire sat in wonder and listened.
"The first time I ever went down there I was eight. Eight years old, and one of them called me from the open door of her house. When I stepped to the door, she was coming down a stairway, her white dress open and spread like wings at either side of her naked body. I was sure she was an angel out of my Sunday-school book. I could scarcely take the dime she gave me. I never forgot her kissing me and patting my head when I stared so at her."
Claire felt a strangely tender pity for the little chap she was seeing now in her imagination.
"And the fighting, dirty, freckled sons of those women—they kept me hard at it, keeping the money I got. After that day, I went down there often. Traded a paper with a golden-haired angel for a box of cigarettes, the first I ever owned. It was great, wonderful, to have her cigarettes. I smoked them with a sense of reverence.
"Wright and I played hooky, and the girls hid us all day in their shacks, played with us, teased us about sex, and taught us things we oughtn't to have known. Poor old Wright! They sent him to the pen for burglary after I had been gone years and was blind. I wonder if I'd have followed him. Most likely would.
"And, oh, the hills! There was old Pisga, pined to its cone point, and a race-track, with a saloon, at its foot. I ran away out there once at a big Fourth of July barbecue. It rained like the devil and I lounged in the bar with jockeys and sporting girls, listening to their ribald talk.
"I don't know—a street urchin in a camp, that was all I was. If I got licked, and I did, I was a coward for years and had to give up my pennies. I used strategy, cunning, because I was afraid to fight till I whipped Red. That made a difference. If the old fellow I liked so hadn't given Red a quarter to lick me, I'd have been a coward yet. It made me so mad I licked Red."