THE CABLE[10]
I says to myself: "What shall I do? What shall I do?"
I crushed the magazine down on my knee, and sat there rocking with it between my hands.
It was just a story about a little fellow with a brick. They met him, a little boy six years old, somewhere in Europe, going along up toward one of the milk stations, at sunrise. They wondered why he carried a brick, and they asked him: "Why do you have the brick?" "You see," he says, "it's so wet. I can get up on this." And he stood on his brick in the mud before the milk station for five hours, waiting for his supplies that was a pint of milk to take home to his mother.
Mebbe it was queer that this struck me all of a heap, when the big war I'd got used to. But you can't get used to the things that hurt a child.
And then I kept thinking about Bennie. Supposing it had been Bennie, with the brick? Bennie was the little boy that his young father had gone back to the old country, and Bennie hadn't any mother. So I had him.
Because I had to do something, I went out on the porch and called him. He came running from his swing—his coat was too big for him and his ears stuck out, but he was an awful sweet little boy. The kind you want to have around.
"Bennie," I says, "I know little boys hate it. But could you leave me hug you?"
He kind of saw I was feeling bad—like a child can—and he came right up to me and he says:
"I got one hug left. Here it is!"