11 “Well, you wasn’t using the roof,” T. J. said. He paused a moment and
added shrewdly, “So we just thought to pretty it up a little bit.”
12 “And sag it so I’d have to rebuild it,” the man said sharply. He turned away,
saying to a man beside him, “See that all that junk is shoveled off by
tomorrow.”
13 “Yes, sir,” the man said.
14 T. J. started forward. “You can’t do that,” he said. “We toted it up here, and
it’s our earth. We planted it and raised it and toted it up here.”
15 The man stared at him coldly. “But it’s my building,” he said. “It’s to be
shoveled off by tomorrow.”
16 “It’s our earth,” T. J. said desperately. “You ain’t got no right!”
17 The men walked on without listening and descended clumsily through the
trap door. T. J. stood looking after them, his body tense with anger, until they
had disappeared. They wouldn’t even argue with him, wouldn’t let him defend
his earth-rights.
18 He turned to us. “We won’t let ‘em do it,” he said fiercely. “We’ll stay up
here all day tomorrow and the day after that, and we won’t let ‘em do it.”
19 We just looked at him. We knew that there was no stopping it. He saw it in
our faces, and his face wavered for a moment before he gripped it into
determination.
20 “They ain’t got no right,” he said. “It’s our earth. It’s our land. Can’t
nobody touch a man’s own land.”
21 We kept on looking at him, listening to the words but knowing that it was
no use. The adult world had descended on us even in our richest dream, and we
knew there was no calculating the adult world, no fighting it, no winning against
it.
22 We started moving slowly toward the parapet and the fire escape, avoiding
a last look at the green beauty of the earth that T. J. had planted for us . . . had
planted deeply in our minds as well as in our experience. We filed slowly over
the edge and down the steps to the plank, T. J. coming last, and all of us could
feel the weight of his grief behind us.
23 “Wait a minute,” he said suddenly, his voice harsh with the effort of calling.
We stopped and turned, held by the tone of his voice, and looked up at him
standing above us on the fire escape.
24 “We can’t stop them?” he said, looking down at us, his face strange in the
dusky light. “There ain’t no way to stop ‘em?”
25 “No,” Blackie said with finality. “They own the building.”
English I
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