The Feud Page 3

  “I thought I might nose around some,” Reverton said, pushing forward the organ he named, with its nostrils arched and twitching. “There might be somepin still in working order. Them little anvils you had and anything else that’s all metal, wrenches or something. Axheads’ll be all shot, ‘cause they’ll lose their temper.”

  Bud was amazed to hear that Reverton had noticed the merchandise at all. He had never seemed to, on his visits; and living in the furnished room as he did, he had rarely needed any kind of hardware.

  “O.K., then, Rev. I think I’ll go home. I don’t have the heart to poke through this mess right now. I’ll see you later. You can talk to Walt if you want, though he wasn’t here last night.”

  “Where was he?” Reverton’s question was surly.

  “Out of town. He didn’t know about the fire.”

  His cousin scowled in the direction of Huff. “Fire hat’s too big for him, ain’t it?”

  “He’s a nice guy, Rev. It’s just too bad my wife don’t get along too good with her sister, or we’d see more of him. Say, he told me he knows some guy owes you five dollars.”

  Reverton immediately acquired a hunted look. “Somebody’s a liar,” said he. “I don’t loan money and I don’t gamble. Anybody says I do is a dirty dog and better not say it to my face.” He called to Huff, who was knee-deep in blackened, broken wood. There had been no cellar under this structure. Given his firemanly duties, Walt would have been within his rights had he postponed acting on the summons, but he came promptly, wading out of the ruins.

  “What’s this story about me being owed five dollars?” Reverton asked aggressively.

  “Sure,” said Huff, grinning. “Dolf Beeler. I know him from down at the plant.”

  “That’s the big fat slob was in the store yestidday!” cried Reverton. “There’s who started your fire with his stinkweed cigar.”

  Bud said, “I forget his name. But that cigar of his wasn’t lit.” You had to be fair.

  Walt Huff said, “I’ve seen him smoking his stogie many a time.” He said this neutrally, however. “Anyway, you ought to collect the five-spot.”

  “We’re gonna collect a lot more than that from the sumbitch!” Reverton had violence in his voice. “He burnt down our store! I had to call him on some lip he was giving Junior. I pinned his ears back, and he done this dirty deed to get even.”

  At first Bud was less than enthusiastic about this theory. He put his head on the side and said, “Wellll, I donnn…” But then it occurred to him that if Reverton were distracted by the possibility of arson, the lack of fire insurance would not seem so important to him. “ ‘Course,” he said, “I don’t know how you can prove it.”

  Reverton patted his suit coat in the area of his holstered revolver. “You just let me at him. You seen what I did to the sumbitch yestidday.”

  Huff wore a quizzical expression. He pushed the fire helmet up off his forehead, but it soon fell back, and he took it off altogether. Big as it was, it proved unwieldy to hold, and he returned it to his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I seen him outside the store myself yesserday, and I think he was chewing on a dead butt.”

  Reverton peered at him with little angry eyes. “Sure, cuz he flicked off the burning part on the floor.”

  Bud’s doubts returned. “If he did that, we would of seen him, wouldn’t we? And then what happened, it took all day for the fire to start?”

  “That’s the way them things go,” said Reverton. “Why, down in the coal country they got mines that been burning real quiet since the Year One. All of a sudden smoke and fire shoots out of the cracks in the ground, and boils the water in the ponds, and the ladies do their wash there.”

  “Is that right?” said Walt.

  Reverton said, “That’s how it works sometimes.”

  “I still say it would be hard to prove,” said Bud.

  “Why,” said Reverton, “me and you and Junior’ll say we saw him do it.”

  Bud didn’t much like that approach. He wasn’t a saint, but to tell a downright lie about another man in a serious situation like this was not to his taste. Fortunately he was not forced to reject his cousin’s idea: Walt Huff came up with the conclusive reason why it wouldn’t work.

  “If all of you saw him drop the hot ash off his cigar onto the wood floor,” asked Walt, “why didn’t none of you put it out?”

  Reverton turned away for a moment with a face made dark by exasperation. When he turned back he asked Huff, “You gonna fight every idea that we cook up to look out for our family?”

  Walt said, “You can figure my argument’s gonna be a lot easier to handle than what the other side comes up with. If Dolf Beeler gets him a lawyer he’ll make mincemeat of you unless you got some real proof.”

  Reverton stared hatefully at him for an instant and then he dropped his head. “Them dirty rotten shitass lawyers!”

  Bud was relieved to see that Rev was conquered by reason. He himself knew very well that Beeler’s dead cigar had had nothing to do with the fire. Besides, Beeler certainly hadn’t looked like a man who would be rich enough to refund the damages if he had been guilty. That’s all that would have meant anything to Bud. A Beeler imprisoned for arson would not bring back his store.

  But Reverton had merely been diverted into another channel. “That makes it easier if we don’t have to mess with the law. We’ll just get even in our own way.”

  This had a chilling sound to Bud, who was a merchant, not a fighting man. “Maybe we ought to think about it first, Rev. I don’t know what good any revenge would do, even if the fire was caused by some particular person.” He was beginning to feel the physical effects of adversity and wondered whether he could make the half-mile walk home.

  “You think too long about anything, and you won’t do it,” said Reverton. “We got our pride at stake here. They get away with that, and the next thing you know they’ll be riding us down like dogs and violating our women and all.”

  Walt raised his eyebrows. “You put it pretty strong, Reverton. I’ve worked not with but pretty near to Beeler for some years, and I seen his wife come to the plant oncet to bring his lunch that he forgot, and then his boy had a summer job down there, heavy labor. He’s a good football player. Hornbeck whipped us last Thanksgiving if you recall—”

  “You’re running off at the mouth,” said Reverton. “And you oughta get yourself some other hat. That one’s too big for you.”

  Walt was a good-natured soul. He just smirked and said, “I’m just saying you’re exaggerating, is all. And all these helmets is the same size. They got a webbing inside that your head fits in. This one should be tighter, is all.” He asked Bud, “You didn’t ever put a penny in the slot when a fuse blew, didja?”

  Reverton had walked away in annoyance. Bud nodded at his cousin’s back and said to his brother-in-law, “Rev eats with us most every Sunday. I sure wish we could get you and Bess to come up, but she and Frieda are still on the outs, I guess.”

  Walt shook his head inside the helmet, which did not turn. “Women!“ said he.

  Though usually deserving of his father’s characterization of him, “honest as the day is long,” Tony Beeler had not been thoroughly truthful about his encounter with the Bullard girl at the Millville public park the summer before. She was somewhat shorter than average and not heavy, but she had large, firm breasts that rubbed against him when they danced, while his right hand, on her back, could feel the tense brassiere strap that crossed the deep groove of her spine. He immediately got an erection that was so powerful as to embarrass him, and he drew his pelvis in while pushing forward with his upper half, and he found his face so intimate with hers that his glasses were put at a crazy angle and their lenses were fogged by the combined breaths.

  It was something of a relief, as well as a definite loss, when the next record to be heard was too fast for Tony’s modest talent at dancing. He led her off the slab of concrete that served as dance floor, and took off his specs and
cleaned them on the tail of his sports shirt, conveniently worn outside the trousers, squinted ritualistically before returning the glasses to his nose and, when they were once again in place, looked not at her but rather over the heads of the nearby jitterbugs.

  He said, “I guess you’re from Millville.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought you was.” He now looked at the concrete in front of his own shoes, the toes of which he had freshly whitened before leaving the house. “I’m from Hornbeck.”

  “I thought you were,” said the girl, looking earnestly at him. “Or someplace else than here.”

  This could have been insulting. He met her eyes at last. “You mean I look like I ain’t good enough for Millville? I look like a hillbilly or something?”

  She had the bluest eyes in the world, and light brown hair that hung in long strands, and a soft, wide mouth that now widened farther in a slow smile. “It’s just I know most of the Millville boys. This town isn’t all that big.”

  “Neither is Hornbeck,” said Tony, “but I like it. I wish we had these dances over there, though.”

  “Why?” She stood almost as close to him as if they were still dancing. He continued to be aroused though no longer in actual contact.

  “I always feel better in my own town. I play football against your guys.”

  “I couldn’t recognize you with your helmet off,” the girl said, “but I have probably seen you. Two of my cousins are on the team: Gene and Norman Walmsley?”

  “Norman’s right halfback, I think. Gene’s second string, ain’t he?”

  “Well, you do know them, don’t you?”

  “It was me who tackled Norman when his collarbone got busted.”

  “I remember that. You did that?”

  Tony assumed a noble look. “I didn’t do it to hurt him, I swear. I just play to win. I hit hard but clean.”

  She lowered her head. “Gee.”

  Suddenly Tony was completely exhausted of things to say, and he felt foolish, standing there silently next to a girl. He believed that if his friends were to see him now, they would make jeering remarks and elbow one another.

  Therefore he said, “Well, I got to get going.”

  “O.K.”

  “Listen, if you see your cousin, why, you tell him I hope there’s no hard feelings. I been hurt myself more than once, had some ribs busted and hurt my knee real bad: it’s never been the same since. I don’t blame the other guys.”

  “I’ll be glad to tell him, but I don’t know your name.”

  He told her and got hers in return: Eva Bullard.

  “I’ll see you around then, Eva.” He remembered his manners, from the course in social dancing given on three successive Wednesday nights at the high-school gymnasium the year before. “Thank you very much for the pleasure of your company.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure.” She had probably taken a similar course at the Millville school.

  He regretted that his own had not included instructions on how to jitterbug: you had to learn that on your own, but you needed a kind of nimbleness he did not naturally possess.

  “I’ll see you then, Eva,” he said again, and he was about to leave when she punched him smartly but not painfully in the belly, giggled, and dashed away, leaving the lighted concrete plateau (tennis courts in the daytime) for the shadowy descent of the surrounding lawn. Her bouncing hair ribbon looked like a butterfly. She had fine sturdy legs, and her skirt was shorter than if it had been brand-new, because it was last year’s and she was still growing. Tony liked everything he had seen of her, and he was thrilled to recognize that she had invented something to do so that he was not forced to pretend he had business elsewhere.

  The night grew darker as they ran, for there was no moon or stars and the park lights, mounted on high standards, were focused on the dance floor. By the time Tony had reached the level ground and its little grove of bushes and young trees, he could no longer see so much as a flicker of Eva’s dress of washed-out blue. Obviously she was hiding somewhere. His bone-on returned in the suspense of tracking her down.

  But defective sight in daytime does not improve in the dark. His lenses barred some of the little light available, and he was none too reckless about peering into foliage, lest his spectacles be caught in the twigs. So after a while what he did was just to come to a stop and stand between two evergreens and flex his thick shoulders.

  “Hey, Eva,” he called softly in admiration. “You’re nuts. You know that?”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  This came from behind him, but when he turned she was not there. A few more such exchanges took place, genial chidings answered by gentle taunts, and then he went around a bush and found her waiting in an attitude of mock defiance.

  “I guess you think you can beat me up,” she said. “Hoho, we’ll just see about that. Put up your dukes.” Her little balled fists were in the air between them.

  “Hoho,” Tony excitedly echoed. “Now you’re in trouble. You’re going to have some trouble sitting down after I get ahold of you.”

  “Oh-oh,” wailed Eva, dropping her hands and putting them in back of her, probably to cup the halves of her round behind: her breasts were thereby made even more prominent. Her gestures invariably fanned Tony’s ardor. He had never known a girl with that knack. She proceeded to increase his sweet torment. “I should have padded my pants!”

  He managed to stay with the style of mock severity. “Well then, little girl, you mind and you won’t get spanked.”

  “I promise,” she piped in falsetto, and then before he was aware of what she was doing, she was pressed against him. She had a sweet, damp smell, like the bathtub after it had been used by his sister, who had left home by now and worked in the city as cashier in a moviehouse, and therefore he hadn’t smelled that in a while: it was not perfume as such.

  Since it was Eva’s idea to embrace him and not vice versa, it seemed O.K. not to retract his crotch as on the dance floor, but rather to allow it to enjoy the rich friendship of her warm belly.

  But then she pushed away abruptly and went running again, out of the park now, across the street, and along the line of darkened shops. Tony did not understand the purpose of these maneuvers and felt at once exhilarated and ridiculous. He was about to be a senior in high school and had earned an all-county reputation at football, and here he was, chasing a girl along streets that did not even belong to his home town. Unknown as he was here, the police might take him for a sex fiend. Nevertheless he continued to pursue Eva until she willfully plunged into the dead end of a deep shop doorway.

  Over in the park the lighted dance floor and its throng had dwindled to miniature, and the recorded music, which blared so loudly when one faced the loudspeakers, was comfortingly faint. The nearest streetlamp provided a discreet glow. No one else was on this sidewalk: the world was giving them privacy.

  Eva crossed her arms behind her back, and out came her breasts again. They could not be resisted. He put a hand on each, in the most natural way in the world. They were substantial and resilient but amazingly weightless all the same. So palpable in flesh, to his vision she was just a shadow now. His wide body blocked such light as came from the streetlamp.

  She was looking at him. “You’re fresh.” It seemed a simple statement, devoid of moral judgment, and required no answer. Tony’s experience with breasts was limited. He had thus far in life managed only a few gropings, all of which had been fiercely resisted by the owners of the target organs, and when it came to whatever females possessed between the waist and, say, midway between knee and groin, he might not be so ignorant as those who were sisterless, but he had never been there even as a tourist.

  Eva asked, in her softest voice, “Why did you ask me to dance? Because you thought you could get fresh with me?”

  He still held her breasts. He finally said, “Huh-uh.”

  “Then why?“

  She certainly liked to talk. “I guess I liked the way you look.”

  She s
aid, “What I meant was, you’re a senior, aren’t you?”

  Tony found it embarrassing to converse while in such an intimate situation. “Sure.” He wished she would stay quiet so he could figure out what to do next. Try to kiss her? Or continue in the same area where he was being so successful: open her dress and invade her brassiere? But they were in a place of which the privacy could at any moment prove illusory.

  Then for too long an interval she was silent, and not having been able to conceive a plan, he spoke next. “What are you, a junior?”

  She chuckled in a deep note. “I’ll just be a freshman!”

  “This coming fall?“ he asked. “You just got out of the eighth grade? How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” said Eva. “In just a couple of weeks.”

  “You’re thirteen right now, though?”

  “Not for much longer.”

  Now, and only now, did he at last remember to take his hands from her breasts. “I’m sorry.” He stepped back a pace. “How was I to know? You look as old as me. I guess you’re growing up faster than usual.” She seemed to be smiling serenely. He said, “Listen, I got to go.” It would have helped had his hard-on lessened, but it had not, and it weighed him down, slowed his movements.

  She followed him out of the alcove. “Are you coming to the dance next week again?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony said. “Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just stay over in Hornbeck and do something with these guys I know: lift weights or something.” He had never known a Hornbeck girl of thirteen to have had such a big milk fund: it was weird and made him feel lousy. Could she be lying about her age? But that was usually done in the other direction, so as to seem older for the purpose of buying cigarettes or beer. He wasn’t a sex maniac.

  “I really hope I can see you again,” Eva said plaintively. “You’re very nice.” All at once she departed, walking at a rapid, almost military pace and not looking back.

  Tony felt both relieved and bereft. He wondered what she meant by calling him “nice”: because he had felt her jugs? Or because he had stopped there? The sad thing was that he really liked her: face, voice, eyes, hair, and, of course, body, the works. But even if he waited a year and neither of them had anybody else by the end of that time, he would be out of high school while she was just a sophomore, and so it would be as weird as ever and no more decent. Any way you looked at it, this had been a punk experience. From now on he intended to ask a girl’s age before he danced with her. Thirteen? He could only hope that if anybody noticed them together—even just dancing, let alone running out into the dark—that such a person would not be aware of the discrepancy in their ages. He could be ruined by the kind of derision that might come from public knowledge of such a thing.