Free Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison Page B

gently.
    Shelly felt a pang. He neither acknowledged nor identified it. This was big gravy now, no time for sentiment.
    "Well, we —" Shelly began.
    "They're taking him away, and they're here to jew us out of our share!" There was a snap in Ruth Kemp's words. At the word "jew" Shelly's head came up with anger. He stared at the woman, knowing she had not heard his name, for it had not been given. Jew us, huh, lady … is that the word … well, you've never seen jewing till you've seen Morgenstern .
    Now all the compassion he had felt for these unaffected people fled, and Shelly was ready to do battle, his eyes cleared of impairing, foolish sentimentality.
    "Mr. Freeport," Asa Kemp said gently, "you have to forgive my wife. Ruth gets upset sometimes." He turned to the fiercely belligerent little woman and touched her shoulder. "Ruth, please. I'm sure Mr. Freeport is here to do the best for Luther. After all we can't give him —"
    "We gave him love, and we gave him our home to live in, and we found work for him, and singing jobs for him, and you'd just stand there, Asa Kemp, and let them take him away, prob'ly make a fortune with him, while we smile and say, 'It's all the best for little Luther.' Well, you've done it too many times in the past, Asa, and it's not going to happen this time.
    "If they want to have Luther, they got to pay us for our share of his contract, or we don't have to —"
    Luther's voice was as soft as a chloroformed rag: "We don't have no contract, Miz Kemp."
    There was abrupt, smothering silence in the bicycle shop.
    Everyone realized what the boy had done. He had left the bag open purposely, and the alley cat had crawled out to be smelled by everyone. Silence would have meant perhaps a little more dickering, and the remote possibility that Freeport and Morgenstern would cool on taking Luther with them — but it would have meant money to the Kemps. He had denied them their stranglehold, showed they were screaming into the wind, and had insured his position with Colonel Freeport.
    It was the calculated move of a very smart operator.
    It smelled bad, even to Shelly, so anxious to see this woman with her inadvertent prejudice stomped into the linoleum. It smelled very bad.
    Ruth Kemp's face disintegrated. She sobbed once, lightly, and turned away. What she had counted on as an ally had turned out to be the enemy who had destroyed her; she vanished behind the curtains.
    Asa Kemp stared with empty eyes. He was suddenly a very old man.
    "Well, I feel you people are entitled to something for all the time and good will you've spent on Luther," Jack Freeport said. He reached into his inner jacket pocket for his checkbook.
    Luther's hand stopped him. "You don't owe them nothin'," he said flatly. His voice was very even, much lower than his singing voice, almost unreal. "They did what they wanted to, and they wouldn't of, if they hadn't wanted to. So I'm all squared with them. They had from me, an' I had from them. That finishes it." He turned to go.
    Shelly and Freeport stood rooted for a long moment, then turned to follow. As the tinkle of the little brass bell over the door filled the bicycle shop, Asa Kemp's voice stopped Luther in the doorway.
    "Ah hope you'll be happy, Luther." There was no veiled meaning in his voice. He said what he meant.
    The boy turned and walked out onto the street. Shelly was the last to leave; he looked around the shop. Something had happened here. Something important. What it was, he was not quite sure; but something dreadfully important had occurred, and he knew he would think about it.
     
    When the plane climbed above the clouds, Shelly saw that Luther was staring intently out the window, across the wing and down into the massed cotton candy of the banks. He watched the boy for a while, then turned to snub out the cigarette in the armrest ashtray. He heard the vague murmur of words beside him, and turned back to the boy.
    Luther's hand was pressed against the Plexiglas. His face