Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956

He screamed as he fell. I didn’t know if I’d broken his arm or not. I didn’t care.

“You fight with knives,” I said, “you should learn to use them better.”

There were a dozen men around my village better than Switch. Even I was better, and I didn’t like knives.

He kept moaning, on the floor. I picked up his knife and snapped the blade shut and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I reached out to the girl.

She backed away from me. She kept on crying, her hands over her breast. She was still crying when I carried Switch outside and dumped him down in the bright lights of the terrace.

The Fletchers were the first to come over to me. They stood staring down at Switch. After a minute, the couples started coming over, leaving the dance floor and crowding out around the pool.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “He tried to hurt the girl.”

She had followed me outside. She held up her torn dress and stared down at Switch. She had stopped crying, finally, and I was glad. I hated to see girls cry.

My cousin Antonio was staring at me across the crowd. He had a very strange look on his face, almost as if he hated me.

“We’d better leave,” I said to him, in Spanish. “I don’t think they’ll want any of us here, now.”

Antonio disappeared in the crowd. I looked around. I didn’t see any purple jackets anywhere, except Switch. I wondered if I should leave by myself and try to find my way back to my cousin’s or whether I should stay with Switch.

While I was still thinking about it, I heard the sirens.

The police were inside the house, coming toward me, before I realized what the sirens meant. I felt, all of a sudden, terribly frightened. They’ve come to take me back, I thought; they’ll send me back to the village. I turned to run, but the wall reached clear around the terrace and there was no way out except past the uniformed men who were coming toward me.

I stared around me, at the beautiful house and the girls in their rich, soft clothes, and I thought, If they send me back I’ll never see this again. Never.

“Don’t be afraid,” Mr. Fletcher said. “I’ll tell them what you did. I’ll tell them you helped us.”

I didn’t understand. I just stood there, with all the anglo kids staring at me and talking in English much too fast for me to understand them. Then the policemen had closed in around me and one of them grabbed hold of my arm.

“Okay, come on, you.”

The boys and girls stood back away from us as they led me out. Behind me, I could hear Switch crying and cursing as they dragged him after me. I felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry we ruined your party.”

They didn’t answer me.

In the police car, going down to the jail, Switch turned his back on me. I was just as glad. I had enough troubles. The handcuffs made me feel I’d done something really bad, for which I’d be punished. Something much worse than just slipping across the border without papers. The police car turned onto the freeway, and the city began sliding past us, and, finally, the lights of the police building were just ahead.

I wanted to jump from the car, run out into the city and keep on running. But I couldn’t. I knew there was nothing I could do now.

Once we reached the jail, two of the policemen took me away from Switch, into a little room. They started asking me questions about what had happened, but they were talking English much too fast and I couldn’t quite understand. I shook my head.

“Get Jose,” one of them said. “He can talk to the kid.”

I didn’t know what I should do. I didn’t know if I should tell them about Switch or not. After all, he was my cousin’s friend. Then I saw the door open and the Fletchers come in, the father and the mother and the son. I looked down, at my hands.

Mr. Fletcher came over to me.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “I wanted to tell you, I’d help you, if I can.”

“Is the girl all right?” I said.

“She’s pretty upset,” he said. “You know what could have happened.”

I nodded. I thought of Rosa, backing away from Switch. I thought of how Rosa always avoided him, of how she’d never stay around if he was in the house, unless Antonio was there.

“He’s bad,” I said.

A policeman who had just come into the room walked over to me. He was Mexican; it made me feel better to see him.

“Yes,” he said in Spanish. “He’s bad, all right.” And then he asked me what had happened.

I found myself telling the Mexican policeman everything. He wasn’t rough, like the others; he didn’t yell at me. He just kept nodding his head and saying, “Yes, I see why you did that. Yes, I understand...”

I felt better when I’d told him. I felt better still when they put me in a cell all by myself, where I didn’t have to listen to Switch cursing at me.

In the morning the family came, Antonio and Rosa and Mama. Mama just cried. Rosa came up to me and her hands touched mine through the wire screen that separated me from the visiting room.

“Oh, Juan. I told you not to go to the party.”

“You were right, Rosa.”