I was no detective, and, politically, individuals were without meaning. What had I to do with his selling the dolls in the first place? īut that didn’t kill the idea that my anger helped speed him on to death.įor what had I to do with the crisis that had broken his integrity? That the lite of a man is worth the sale of a two-bit paper doll. I looked at the doll, thinking, The political equivalent of such entertainment is death. I could only accept responsibility for the living, not for the dead. I sat holding myself as though I might break.įor a moment I weighed the idea, but it was too big for me. My breath became short I felt myself go weak. What had the cop said to make him angry enough to lose his head?Īnd suddenly it occurred to me that he might have been angry before he resisted, before he’d even seen the cop. He’d been arrested before he knew how far to go with a cop. You might have started a fight and both of you would have been arrested with no shooting. I slipped it over my finger and stood stretching it taut.Ĭlifton had been making it dance all the time and the black thread had been invisible. Then I saw a fine black thread and pulled it from the trilled paper. It had still grinned when I played the tool and spat upon it, and it was still grinning when Clifton ignored me. It had grinned back at Clifton as it grinned forward at the crowd, and their entertainment had been his death. One face grinned as broadly as the other. “Go on, entertain me,” I said, giving it a stretch. It gave a tired bounce, shook itself and fell in a heap. I tried again, turning its other face around. Its cardboard hands were doubled into fists, the fingers outlined in orange paint, and I noticed that it had two faces, one on either side of the disk of cardboard, and both grinning.Ĭlifton’s voice came to me as he spieled his directions for making it dance, and I held it by the feet and stretched its neck, seeing it crumple and slide forward. The joined cardboard feet hung down, pulling the paper legs in elastic folds, a construction of tissue, cardboard and glue.Īnd yet I felt a hatred as for something alive. I picked it up with an unclean feeling, looked at the frilled paper. I turned and faced the map, removing the doll from my pocket and tossing it upon the desk. The scene changed - he lay in the sun and this time I saw a trail of smoke left by a sky-writing plane lingering in the sky, a large woman in a kelly-green dress stood near me saying, “Oh, Oh!” I had aided and abetted social backwardness. We lost no opportunity to educate, and I had failed.Īll I’d done was to make them laugh all the louder. I had blown up and acted personally instead of denouncing the significance of the dolls, him, the obscene idea, and seizing the opportunity to educate the crowd. Yes, and been amused by my political stupidity. He must have hated me behind his spiel, yet he’d ignored me. Why had I lost my head and spat upon the doll, I wondered. Then, as I fought against it, the scene came back - not of the death, but of the dolls. The once fresh green of the trees was dark and drying now and somewhere down below a clothesline peddler clanged his bell and called. I went through to the office with only a nod, shutting the door upon their voices and sat staring out through the trees. When I got back to the district a small group of youth members stopped their joking to welcome me, but I couldn’t break the news.
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