The Playground

"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?"