all you can show off about

Showing off to people because he is dead. He wants me to get along with them. So I tell them he is dead and they look up to me, they don’t tease me. Showing off because he’s dead, that’s all you can show off about. Any other thing they’d tease me and I wouldn’t fight back. How would your daddy like it? But he likes me to get along with them. That’s why I—went out—showed off. He felt so uneasy, deep inside his stomach, that he could not think about it any more. He wished he hadn’t done it. He wished he could go back and not do anything of the kind. He wished his father could know about it and tell him that yes he was bad but it was all right he didn’t mean to be bad. He was glad his father didn’t know because if his father knew he would think even worse of him than ever. But if his father’s soul was around, always, watching over them, then he knew. And that was worst of anything because there was no way to hide from a soul, and no way to talk to it, either. He just knows, and it couldn’t say anything to him, and he couldn’t say anything to it. It couldn’t whip him either, but it could sit and look at him and be ashamed of him. “I didn’t mean it,” he said aloud. “I didn’t mean to do bad.” I wanted to show you my cap, he added, silently. He looked at his father’s morsechair. Not a mark on his body. He still looked at the chair. With a sense of deep stealth and secrecy he finally went over and stood beside it. After a few moments, and after listening most intently, to be sure that nobody was near, he smelled of the chair, its deeply hollowed seat, the arms, the back. There was only a cold smell of tobacco and, high along the back, a faint smell of hair. He thought of the ash tray on its weighted strap on the arm; it was empty. He ran his finger inside it; there was only a dim smudge of ash. There was nothing like enough to keep in his pocket or wrap up in a paper. He looked at his finger for a moment and licked it; his tongue tasted of darkness.