Eventually, despite Elizabeth's attempts to divert the blame, Gabriel asks where John was while his brother was playing outside. When Gabriel starts asking John questions about what happened, Elizabeth steps in and shoulders the responsibility for letting Roy out of her sight in an obvious attempt to protect John from Gabriel's ire. Only John was nameless and a stranger, living, unalterable testimony to his mother’s days in sin." This suggestion is immediately reinforced by the text Gabriel is exceedingly gentle with Roy and tolerant of his crying and screaming at a wound that is, in all likelihood, very minor. Her child and Gabriel’s, her children and Gabriel’s: Roy, Delilah, Paul. Immediately as Gabriel returns home, the narrator implies Gabriel's favoritism towards Roy through exposition with the fact that John is Elizabeth's only child from another man: "Then she heard the front door open and close-too loud, Delilah raised her voice, with an exasperated sigh Elizabeth picked the child up.
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She says, "You’s the man of the house, you supposed to look after your baby brothers and sisters-you ain’t supposed to let them run off and get half-killed." She predicts a reckoning when Gabriel, their father, returns home. When the women ask John why he didn't tell them Roy went downstairs, he insisted, "He said he'd be back in five minutes," but to McCandless, this is an insufficient response. The questions are directed towards John, the older brother, who is supposedly responsible for his younger brother's actions. Once the wound is taken care of, Elizabeth and Sister McCandless begin asking questions about why Roy was outside in the first place. Roy's wound is cleaned, disinfected, and bandaged. He starts screaming and crying and runs to his mother by Sister McCandless's building.Įlizabeth mildly panics, so Sister McCandless, older and calmer than Elizabeth, takes charge. Then, from somewhere on the rockpile, a tin can flies and hits Roy in the face, leaving a bloody gash under his eye. John sees Roy emerging from the pile with some friends, his shirt ripped but himself looking in fine spirits. After Roy leaves, a gang fight breaks out on the rockpile, and boys start hitting each other and throwing rocks and cans and whatever else they can get their hands on. He knows he couldn't really stop him from going, but at the same time feels responsible. John doesn't tattle on Roy because he feels an allegiance to his brother, but he feels uneasy about letting him go. Roy goes anyway, leaving John alone on the fire escape to continue working on his homework. He warns him that his mother could come home at any time, and even more worryingly, his father is going to be home soon.
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A few of his neighborhood friends pass by under the fire escape, and he tells his older brother John that he's going to go with them. She's always warned them not to go messing around on the rockpile, but now that she's gone, Roy feels inspired to do just that. John and Roy sit on the fire escape where, if she wanted to, she could peek out the window and check on them.
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One afternoon, Elizabeth goes over to their neighbor Sister McCandless's apartment to chat. For him, the possible consequences of playing there outweigh any pleasure he might find. Among these stories, the narrator recounts one told by Roy and John's Aunt Florence, who lives in the Bronx, that the rockpile exists because "without it the subway cars underground would fly apart, killing all the people." Unlike Roy, Roy's brother John has little interest in the rockpile. The mystery of the rockpile fills Roy with curiosity, which is amplified by the supernatural stories the adults tell about it, somewhat in an effort to deter the children from playing on it. On their block, emerging from the ground of a vacant lot between two houses, there is a large rock formation upon which neighborhood boys play and tend to get rowdy. Their family lives in the far northern part of Manhattan, only a short walk from the Washington Bridge, which crosses to the Bronx. The story takes place in and around the apartment of Elizabeth and Gabriel and centers on the actions of their sons, Roy and John.