VI

IN HIS BED THAT NIGHT, lying very close to his brother’s breathing back, Thomas thought again very seriously about the Judgment Day and the Left Side. Now, there were certain people he would like to have with him on the Left Side, on That Day. He thought about church and how he could never go back because of the place where the deacons had made him tell his first great lie. He wondered whether it was because he did not want to have to go back to church on Sunday mornings that he had not quit. He wondered if it was because of the money or going to church or because of the window that he had not walked out of the store with his brother. That would have been good: the two of them walking out together. But he had not done it and now he could not make himself know why. Suddenly, in the night, he heard the Barefoot Lady, under the blue-and-white Herbert L. Jones sign, screaming.

“Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”

But the sound did not frighten him now. He pushed against his brother’s back.

“Eddie? Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

“Wonder why she does it?”

“I donno.”

“I wonder why,” he said again.

Eddie did not answer. But after the sound of the woman came again his brother turned over in the bed and said to Thomas:

“You gonna quit?”

“No.”

“Why not? We could always carry papers.”

“I donno. I just ain’t gonna quit. Not now.”

“Well, I ain’t goin’ back. I’ll go back in there one day when I’m rich. I’m gonna go in and buy everything but hamburger.”

“Yeah,” said Thomas. But he was not listening to his brother.

“Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”

“And I’m gonna learn all the big words in the world too,” his brother went on. “When I go back in there I’m gonna be talking so big that fat old Miss Sarah won’t even be able to understand me.”

“That’ll be good,” said Thomas. But he was thinking to himself now.

“You’ll see,” said Eddie. “I’ll do it, too.”

But Thomas did not answer him. He was waiting for the sound to come again.

“Mr. Jones! I love you, Mr. Jones!”

And then he knew why the Barefoot Lady came to that place almost every night to cry where there was no one alive in the building to hear or care about her sound. He felt what she must feel. And he knew now why the causes of the sound had always bothered him and would always bother him. There was a word in his mind now, a big word, that made good sense of her sound and the burning feeling thing he felt inside himself. It was all very clear, and now he understood that the Barefoot Lady came in the night not because she really loved Mr. Jones or because he had once buried someone for her for free, or even because she liked the blue-and-white lighted sign. She came always in the night to scream because she, like himself, was in misery, and did not know what else to do.