The fact was that though Tony’s proficiency at football was well known, his position on the team was not one of the glamorous roles. What he did was to make the heroics of the backfield possible, but he was not himself a hero or, except while running out of the locker room with the rest of the players, a celebrity at Hornbeck High. With his thick glasses he was hardly considered a collar ad, nor was he a good dancer, nor given to witty repartee borrowed from radio comedians. He had no confidence when it came to girls, and he had had but few dates. Only two, in fact; both with Mary Catherine Lutz, who lived across the back alley from his house, was his own age and a tomboy, and with whom, when they were younger, he had shot baskets or tossed ball—on days when he couldn’t find another guy. Mary Catherine’s breasts were still almost undis-cernible and she was as tall as he.
It was by accident that he had come upon the dance in the Millville park. He had been taking one of his long, lone walks, and if you went more than a mile in a westerly direction you were out of Hornbeck. At the edge of the concrete floor he had seen this large-breasted, round-faced girl in the short blue wash-dress. He had found the nerve to ask her to dance because, one, she was alone, and, two, he was a stranger in Millville. He should have stayed home.
However, he returned on the same evening a week later. He had no plan beyond a vague intention to spy on Eva without her knowing he was there. He wondered whether she made a practice of letting boys feel her up, and he wanted to settle this question by personal observation. But search as he did, he could not find her on this Friday evening. After several careful tours around the concrete and the ultimate descent to the shrubs, he even went across to and along the doorways of the shops. Until he had completed his rounds it did not occur to him that he had not been prepared for what might have happened if he had seen her with a guy. He did not own her, and he wasn’t a cop. It was foolish to think of making a citizen’s arrest of the guy for molestation of a minor, when the boy would probably be, like Tony, himself underaged and not a notorious Hollywood movie star.
He finally walked back to Hornbeck with the conviction that Eva was just a little smart aleck, still wet behind the ears, and deserved to be taught a lesson but he hoped would not really get one unless it was administered by him. “You know, you really ought to be more ladylike or you might find yourself in a situation too hot to handle. Some hillbilly might get the wrong idea, the way you flirt with guys, and you could find yourself in a lot of trouble. Of course, if I was around nearby someplace, and I heard you scream or cry, I’d come and I would kill him. I would beat him to death. I wouldn’t care if he had a knife or a club, or if he pulled a gun on me. I’d make him eat it, I swear. You can rely on me! But you oughtn’t to get yourself in this kinda spot in the first place, hanging around with bad company.”
This was a new idiom for Tony. He had never before been passionately, madly, hopelessly in love. In fact, anything of that sort had always turned his stomach, and if he possibly could, he avoided movies that had to do with romance, though even comedies might spring that theme on you without warning, somewhere along the line.
But what was so rotten about this state of affairs was that no matter how great his ardor, Eva would, even after her coming birthday, be only fourteen years of age. There was no way to change that. However, when he was twenty-three she would be all of twenty, and at his thirty she would have twenty-seven, and when he was eighty, she’d be seventy-seven, so the solution was to live a long time. In the short run he continued to be a pervert, but it wasn’t as bad as if he had met her when he was thirteen—and she nine. Of course she would not have had breasts at that age, and therefore he would not have noticed her at all. The truth was that Eva was a woman whatever her years, and they were being kept apart only by some phony theory: so, in the privacy of his room, when the lights were out, did he sometimes believe, only to see it differently on awakening in the realistic morning.
On the following Friday evening Tony was back in Millville again, and this time he was not the only Horn-becker at the park dance. Bill Plunkett and Wally Hines, classmates of his, stood at the edge of the concrete slab, staring sullenly at the dancers. He thought he might slip behind them without attracting their attention, but no such luck: Wally was scraping one heel, to free it of gum or dogshit, and he lifted it for inspection, looking down over his shoulder and then raising his eyes just as Tony came into range.
“Hey, there’s Tony Beeler,” he said to Plunkett, but speaking toward Tony, and Plunkett turned and said, “Hi, Tony. You slumming too?”
Tony had no choice but to join them, as dreary a prospect as that was: they weren’t even particular friends of his, just guys in the same class, and Hines had blackheads in his nose and Plunkett looked like he might have bad breath, his teeth being of a dingy hue. Encountering them in Hornbeck, Tony would have been only acting naturally if he gave them a nod and a wide berth. They would have expected no better, not being his close associates. But the code of normality—which he was already secretly defying in his search for Eva Bullard—ordained that loyalty must be extended to compatriots when on alien ground, and even your enemy at home would be first a fellow American if you came across him in China.
Plunkett said, “Lotsa pigs in this town.” He wrinkled his nose and tossed his head. His hair had been combed with a lot of water and had dried hard, with the comb-tracks still showing.
“I don’t know, though, what you’d want with nookie,” Plunkett told Hines, “because you’re a big fruit.”
“Oh, yeah?” Wally rejoined, punching the arm that Bill raised, biceps distended, for just that purpose. “You’re a big fairy.”
“Well,” Tony said, “I didn’t know about this dance here. I got to go and do some things for my dad. I’ll see you guys.” He started away.
“Hey, wait,” Plunkett said. “You going back home? We’ll go with you.”
Tony had never had much reason to be guileful, and the only thing he could come up with now by way of discouragement was: “Naw, I got to go in the other direction.”
Hines said, “Hell, that’s Coontown, Tony. What are you gonna do for your old man over there? You got some relatives who are boogies?” He howled and slapped his thigh.
What bad luck to run into these two lousy guys! Tony couldn’t let Hines’s insult go unchallenged. He squared off in front of him.
“I don’t like the way you talk, Hines,” he said. “You want me to take off my glasses?”
The color left Wally’s face. He said, “I was just kidding. I didn’t mean it.”
Plunkett looked miserable. “Come on, Tony. He was just kidding. He ain’t saying you got jig blood.”
“It’s just dumb, see,” said Tony. “I got to go now.” He realized that Hines’s stupid joke had turned out to be an advantage: he could use it as an excuse for escape. But he was not quick enough.
Plunkett moved closer, cupped a hand at his mouth, and said, “Here comes fresh meat.” His breath lived up to Tony’s worst expectations.
Tony then looked where Plunkett’s elbow indicated, and he saw Eva Bullard coming toward them. She was still some forty yards away. He was aware that if he let her reach him she would speak in a manner that would reveal to Hines and Plunkett that she knew him personally. Therefore he moved rapidly in interception.
When he reached her he spoke in a low, intense voice. “Listen, I want you to leave me alone. If those guys knew I was hanging around with some young kid they would never let me forget it.” He didn’t want to look at her too closely, being under such surveillance, so he turned his head toward the dance floor, where the couples were gliding to the slow music that would have suited him.
Eva was not quick to reply. When she did finally speak, it was terribly stark. “All right.” She walked away. He felt horrible but did not even have the courage to watch where she went.
Instead he came back to the two lousy guys. “My cousin,” he said. “That was what I was supposed to do over here: give her father a message fo
r my dad.”
Plunkett and Hines, who ordinarily would have hooted derisively as he returned to them, had been cautious now, owing to the earlier foot-in-the-mouth (feet, if you counted Plunkett’s coarse announcement of Eva’s approach), and they received his explanation impassively.
Then Hines said, “O.K., if you got your business all settled let’s go home. This town stinks.”
So it had ended in the worst way that could be imagined, and once over the Hornbeck line, though they respected Tony’s person, Hines and Plunkett themselves traded punches and gooses and catcalls, and it was an eternity of misery before Tony could turn off at his house.
The disaster had occurred in the middle of August, which by the calendar was only two months in the past, but in emotional time the summer had become almost remote. Tony had decided to wait until Eva grew up or at least was firmly established in high school. He had now just about determined that the moment would soon be ripe to submit a bid for forgiveness. Young girls must surely have short memories, and despite her extreme youth Eva seemed a generous and understanding person: that kind of character was almost ordained by her large breasts and round face and soft brown hair. Had she been a blonde, for example, or of an angular build, or with a long upper lip, he would have had no hope. But if she had been one of those, he would not have been likely to feel as he did, or to have betrayed her, or to have been in a position to do so.
But everything had been changed by the disastrous episode involving his father in what he had to assume was her father’s hardware store.
A heroic gesture was needed at this point. The situation had so deteriorated that only a desperate courage would do. Therefore, after rising from the dinner table early Sunday afternoon and letting it be known that he was heading for the matinee at the Hornbeck movie house, Tony instead kept going when he reached that theater and crossed over into Millville, en route to Eva’s home, if he could find it.
Most people in Millville lived north of the business district, so after having walked past the establishments there, most of which were closed on the day of rest, with the exception of the only real restaurant in town, Tom’s, which had both a counter and a double line of booths (and in off hours was a hangout for high-school kids with their ten-cent orders of Coke-and-potato-chips, and therefore he looked through the windows to see if Eva might perchance be within), Tony wended northward and went a block or two past one- and two-story family houses, some of which had not yet taken in the porch swings for the winter, until he saw a kid of about twelve round the next corner and come in his direction. The boy wore a knitted cap and a green plaid lumber jacket.
When the kid was about to pass him they exchanged hi’s, after which Tony said, “Hey, you know where the Bullards live?”
“Sure,” the boy answered. “On Macklin Street. That’s it right up there. It’s about the middle of the block. You should find it easy, because there’s a lot of people coming and going on account of the fire.”
“Fire?”
“Their hardware store burnt down.”
Tony was emotionally confused by this news. He felt even more of the kind of guilt which had been evoked by his father’s account of the quarrel—for the fact was that he suspected it had been his father’s fault. He was all too familiar with his old man’s tendency to act in a way that was disagreeable to certain people. But on the other hand the fire could be seen as a useful distraction. By contrast the incident involving his father and Eva’s relatives might already have faded from the Bullards’ consciousness, occupied as it must be with the major disaster. Things might actually be better for him now that things had gone bad for the Bullards.
“I’ll seeya,” Tony told the kid, and went on. He turned the corner and walked about halfway down the block, and not seeing any house at which crowds were coming and going as predicted, he continued on to the next corner and was standing there in a quandary when a man came along.
“Say,” Tony said, “you don’t know where—”
“A lad your age addresses me as ‘sir,’ “ said the man. “And, by God, you say ‘please’ when you ask something of me.”
“Well, can you please tell me—”
“Sir!”
“Sir, I’m looking for the Bullard residence.”
The man squinted at him. He was smaller than Tony and of a skinny build. “It might interest you to know,” he said in a menacing manner, “that I am connected with that family, and I look out for them. You got that straight? Now what’s your name?”
“Anton.”
The man squinted again. “What’s your first name? You some kinda foreigner?”
“That is the first,” said Tony. “I think it’s from some book my mother read one time. We’re Americans.”
The man gestured with twitching fingers, as if in reference to money. “Let’s have the last name.”
Tony had been postponing this information as long as possible, should this Bullard have heard about the quarrel. But now that the moment had come, he saw no reason why he should not be proud, maybe even defiant. His dad might have caused that run-in, and he himself might be somewhat warped in being interested in so young a girl as Eva, but his family was not shameful.
“It’s Beeler.”
The man nodded and at first spoke calmly enough. “Uh-huh. You wouldn’t be from over in Hornbeck, wouldja? … Uh-huh…. I’m taking this nice and careful, see.” He said this as if to himself. “You wouldn’t be related to a heavyset gent what comes over and trades in the hardware, which is now burned to the ground?”
Tony lowered his eyes and nodded. This wasn’t going well, but he didn’t see how bad the situation had become until he looked up. The man had pulled a pistol on him.
CHAPTER 3
Looky here who I caught sneaking around outside,” said the man, having pushed Tony into the Bullard living room ahead of himself. He had holstered his gun as he crossed the porch. He had no need of it in a room filled with his own crowd.
The people there stared dumbly at Tony. They were all strangers to him. Though residents of the neighboring town, they could have been Frenchmen for all he had in common with them at that moment.
“Here’s your firebug,” said the man. “If it wasn’t his dad.”
The nearest person to Tony was a heavyset middle-aged woman, seated at the end of the sofa. She was eating a piece of cake from a plate on her lap. A card table had been erected farther along the couch, but it was too far for her to reach without rising, and her coffee cup sat on the floor near the left heel of her stout shoes. She looked blankly at Tony and then forked up a morsel of cake and deposited it in her mouth.
The man peered around the room with his angry eyes. “Where’s Bud?”
Someone said, “I don’t know. He was here a while ago.” And a man said, “Maybe down cellar.”
“All right, you,” his captor growled at Tony, whose wrist he clasped with bony fingers that felt like handcuffs. “Just you get marching, and remember: your life ain’t worth a plugged nickel if you get smart.”
“Yessir,” Tony said readily. He wondered what Eva would think, if she were there, when she saw him being led as a prisoner through her house, but he was not embarrassed by this prospect, because it certainly was not his own idea or fault.
But she was not in the dining room, nor was anyone else who could be called young. The table held a number of cakes, but the people who stood around it were talking and not eating. One tall, skinny woman with a faint mustache said, “Oh; hi there, Cousin Reverton,” and to Tony, whom she assumed was a legitimate member of the party, “Hi there, sonny. Now which one are you?” But Reverton pulled him onward.
In the kitchen a friendly, motherly-looking woman was tending to the enamel percolator on the stove. She gave Tony a warm smile.
But Reverton forestalled her. “He’s a bad-un, Frieda. He’s a Beeler!”
She acquired the same blank expression as had been displayed by those in the front room. Tony assumed she was Eva’s mo
ther. There was a certain resemblance in the shape of the face and also the plump bosom.
Reverton opened a door next to the kitchen cabinet, and with a push directed Tony to go down the rough wooden stairs. Stacks of newspapers and magazines, neatly tied, sat on the concrete floor near the bottom of the steps, no doubt awaiting collection by the Boy Scouts. There was a toilet in the Bullard basement, with a crude door of wood slats, wide open at the moment: the seat was in the raised position and looked split. Beyond this were the stationary washtubs of soapy-textured galvanized metal, and then one entire corner was filled with a workbench and its attendant tools, the smaller ones hung neatly on wall hooks and the largest, a wood-turning lathe, mounted at one end of the long bench top. Toward the other extremity was a vise of the under-table type. Everything was very clean, but it looked as if it had seen use enough: the blades of the edged tools had that subdued sheen of veteran steel, and the wooden handles were darkened and polished with the natural oils of the hand.
Reverton said, “Yessir, Bud, this pretty well settles it for my money, when it comes to who set the fire.”
Tony looked around to see whom he was talking to. In the shadows beyond the furnace was a man’s figure, standing in the doorway to the coal bin. He mumbled something.