He said, “Oh yeah?”
Reverton said, “If you got a minute, maybe you could take over for me here while I run downtown and get me a samwich. I ain’t et a bite since noontime.”
“Why, sure,” said Junior. “But whyn’t you just go to the house? Mom’s got lotsa eggs ‘n’ stuff, Rev. She’d wanna feedja if she knew you was out here on guard.”
“Mighty white of you, Junior,” said Reverton. “I won’t be but a minute.”
“If I’m taking over,” Junior said, “hadn’t you better loan me that gun of yours?”
Reverton took a long breath. Then he removed his black fedora and offered a rare view of his naked scalp, which was bald to the back of his crown. He looked completely different, sort of birdlike, when hatless. He returned the fedora to its usual place. “If you saw somepin that looks funny you can jist run and git me,“ he said.
“I’d be outa luck, though, if they shot first and asked questions afterwards,” said Junior.
This argument had its effect on Reverton, with his extreme way of looking at things.
Junior added, “And if that happened, you might say my blood would be on your hands.”
Reverton took the pistol from his holster, reversed it, and presented it to Junior butt-first. “I guess it’ll be O.K. so long as you don’t shoot it.”
Junior accepted the weapon. He could hardly contain his impatience.
Reverton was frowning. “You better not hold it like that,” said he. “Put it away. Anybody seesya with it, they coont miss it. A gun can cause a lotta trouble in the wrong hands.”
“This O.K.?” Junior lifted the hem of his sweater and put the barrel behind the waistband of his pants, pulling the sweater down again afterward. The butt made quite a bulge. Junior patted it. The weight felt as though it might pull his pants down.
“You just stay in the shadows,” said Reverton. “No-body’ll notice it, then. I’ll be right back. Maybe your mom will just fry me a quick egg samwich. I’ll squirt a little catchup on it and be right back out.” He started off, but then he turned and came back. “You be careful, won’t you, Junior?”
“Heck, don’t worry about me none, Rev.”
Reverton nodded and walked rapidly in the direction of the Bullard house. Junior could hardly wait till he was out of sight. He felt like a new man. All his peevishness was gone. As soon as Reverton turned the corner Junior took the pistol out from under the sweater, and he hefted it in one hand and then in both. He caressed the cylinder and rubbed the scored surface of the grips with the tip of his forefinger. Then he put it back in the waistband of his corduroys and headed downtown to Curly’s Luncheonette. He had eaten hardly any of that lousy supper and was ravenous for a bowl of chili con came with soda crackers broken up in it, and a wiener covered with sauerkraut, followed by a wedge of Dutch apple pie à la mode, and a malted milk drunk through double straws.
The lunch counter was at the easterly edge of Millville’s business district, almost on the Hornbeck line. Thus to get there Junior had to walk through most of his town, which was not as taxing as it would have been ordinarily, because the gun against his belly caused him to grasp life in a new way. Usually he avoided walking down the side street where the pool parlor, with attached barroom, could be found, because the tough guys regarded that terrain as their own, and unless you were one of them, they could be relied on to give you a bad time till you were out of earshot. But, armed as he was, he now went eagerly along the sidewalk in front of the place, hoping to encounter some troublemakers, and he was not disappointed. Three bad-looking guys were under the lamppost there, and another was in a rusty, dented car at the curb. The last had moved over from behind the wheel to the passenger’s seat, and his bare arm, adorned with an American Rose tattoo on the broad bicep, was hooked over the window ledge.
The guy in the auto was first to take notice of Junior. “Well, looky what we got coming along here,” he said in his whiny voice, “a real piss-ant.”
And the three who were lounging around the streetlamp took up various positions on the sidewalk, so that anybody coming by would have had a problem in getting the right of way. One of these guys wore a felt hat adorned with various badges and pins and scalloped along the brim, and another had a big wide black motorcycle belt, dotted with silver studs and red reflectors, around his waist, but no cycle was in evidence.
Junior came along grinning, and he stopped to address the hillbilly in the window of the car.
“Hi, you shitface,” he said genially. “How’d you like to have a new asshole, right between your eyes?” He pulled his sweater up and seized the butt of the pistol and began ever so slowly to withdraw the barrel from his waistband. Before the muzzle was clear the guy in the car hurled himself over to the wheel, started the engine with an explosion of unmufflered exhaust, and thunderously sped away.
Junior’s back had been to the others, and therefore when he turned they were not prepared for what they saw. The pistol was out by now, and he held it straight down, against his right thigh, but it was as good as if it had been pointing at them. Their rapid exits, each in another direction, gave him a real laugh.
He considered going into the poolroom, for as it was, nobody inside could have known about his new power, because the windows were by town ordinance whitewashed on the interior so that underaged kids couldn’t see the pool playing on their way home from school. But his ravenous hunger had first claim on him, and he went on to the lunchroom.
The lunch counter was essentially a one-man operation, if you didn’t count the colored dishwasher, the owner, manager, and chef being a man named Curly McCoy, who had been gassed in the war and breathed heavily.
Curly was back of the counter when Junior entered, and the dishwasher, a tall, skinny man so lightly colored as to be almost yellow, was just bringing in a wire milk carrier full of clean dishes. There were two customers on the stools. One of them was eating a fried-fish sandwich on a bun, and on the plate beneath was a green-flecked yellow smear of tartar sauce. The other man, an old guy with no teeth, was dunking a doughnut in his coffee cup.
Junior stood back of a stool, and he said, “How they hanging, Curly?”
Curly didn’t like that kind of talk, and answered, “Don’t give me any lip, you runt. You want somepin t’eat, you just gimme your order.”
“Hey, Curly,” Junior said, raising his sweater just so the butt of the pistol could be seen.
Curly lost some of his florid color.
The old man withdrew his doughnut from the coffee, but it had been soaking too long and a third of the ring broke away and plopped soddenly back into the cup. Junior was really disgusted to see that.
He said, “You old dummy.”
The other guy kept eating his fish sandwich, not looking up.
Curly recovered a little. “That thing ain’t real, izzit, Junior? If it is, you better be careful. It could go off any time.”
“You know it could,” Junior said, grasping the butt but not yet pulling the pistol out. The man with the fish sandwich finally swallowed every crumb of it and was now sucking his fingertips clean.
Junior said, “Jesus,” and made a face.
The guy turned his head quickly and brought it back, without really looking at Junior. He said, “You talking to me?”
Junior drew the gun at last, but held it along his thigh again, pointing at the floor. He asked, “What if I am?”
This guy had a tinge of gray in his sideburns and a long nose. He pursed his thin lips and said, “Listen, it’s jake with me.”
The old man fished the soggy piece of doughnut out of the coffee and sucked it from the spoon.
Junior turned to Curly in disgust and said, “How about some eats?”
“Sure thing,” Curly said with animation. “Just have a stool, Junior. Coming right up!” He rubbed his hands on his dirty white apron and walked briskly along back of the counter to the swinging door to the kitchen, opened it, and went in.
Junior quickly unders
tood that Curly wouldn’t be coming back. On an impulse he stepped behind the cash register, hit some buttons at random, and the drawer flew out to the jangle of a bell. He helped himself to the bills therein: only a few were there, and most of them were ones.
When the money was in his pocket he stared defiantly at the man who had eaten the fish sandwich. He asked, “What are you looking at?”
“Just minding my own business, Ace,” said the man.
Junior briefly considered taking this man’s personal money, but he decided against it: he wasn’t really a crook; also, you could never tell about a person who was so calm; he thought it was wise not to push him too far, because he wasn’t sure he knew how to fire the gun if it had some kind of trick safety on it, and this guy looked like he could take it away from you and stick it up your ass. Besides, he was emptying the cash register merely to punish Curly for running out before feeding him.
He said, “So long, sucker,” and left the luncheonette. When he got outside he saw both Curly and the colored dishwasher dart out of the side alleyway and run up the street. They were making an awful lot out of this incident, and Junior was amused.
He yelled, “Run, you yellow sons uh bitches!” He felt drunk though he hadn’t had a drop.
He put his gun back in the waistband, pulling the sweater down, and swaggered along the street until he came to a tavern. The bar was about half full of customers, all men except for one heavyset young woman with strong features and lips heavily painted. Junior couldn’t remember ever having seen any of these people before, though he ordinarily could recognize most of the persons he would pass on the Millville sidewalks on a normal day. He began to suspect he had crossed over to Hornbeck. It was funny how carrying a gun made you feel as if you were dreaming.
The bartender was a burly, low-browed man. Junior ordered a shot of whiskey.
The man scowled down at him. “You old enough?”
“Sure.”
The bartender shook his head. “Hell you say.” The man on the stool at Junior’s right turned and smirked at him: he was an ugly devil with a wart beside his nose.
Junior pulled out the pistol. The bartender shrank a lot, and he looked like he was trying to say something but couldn’t find his voice.
Showing his money with the left hand, Junior said, “I ain’t holding you up. I’m paying, see? Set ‘em up all around.”
The bartender began to line up shot glasses in front of him. The woman left her stool at the end of the bar and came slowly around to stand next to Junior and stare at the side of his face.
He finally got the nerve to look at her. She pressed right against him then, rolling her fat belly on him, her big breasts under his nose.
“Honey,” she said, breathing whiskey fumes at him, “what you need is some uh this.”
He had never felt a grown woman in this way before. She was a big fat slob, but he was mesmerized by her. He was grinning at her when in the corner of his eye he saw the bartender bring to shoulder level something that looked like a miniature baseball bat. Before Junior could dodge it, he was hit violently in the side of the head, and the lights went out.
Tony had not lied when he told Jack he would not leave until morning, but when Jack went to the bathroom, taking his book along, which meant he would stay in there for a long time, Tony changed his mind. When morning came he would probably have lost his nerve. What seemed possible now would appear crazy in the light of day: he could foresee that. He had never been a wild kid who gave in to impulses and sought quick thrills. It would be too easy for him to lose confidence. He would do well to make the most of what he had at the moment.
So he put on his green-and-white athletic jacket, with the modest-sized high-school letter on the left breast (as opposed to the enormous middle-of-the-chest letter worn on sweaters) and the two final numerals of his year of graduation high on the right sleeve, and he added Jack’s money to his own seven dollars, eighty-five cents, taken from an old rubber boot in the rear of the closet. If he waited for morning he could go to the Farmers National Bank of Hornbeck, where he maintained a savings account which currently held $17.37, the fruits of his summer job at the mill, but with his dad laid up, his mother might need that for the family, whereas he was able-bodied and would surely be able to get hired where he was going. Meanwhile, with Jack’s contribution he had almost ten dollars on which to live for a couple of months if need be.
He went softly down the stairs and saw as he reached the living room that, as he had hoped, his mother had fallen asleep over her mending. She usually did that even when his dad was there and listening to the radio. He continued on through the kitchen and, quietly, out the back door, and then walked around front and proceeded via the back streets to Millville. When he had got near the block on which Eva lived, he grew cautious. He did not intend to be captured again by that lunatic of a cousin of the Bullards’, who might still be on patrol. But Tony did not see him, or for that matter, anyone else on the sidewalk, and even inside the houses a lot of people had already turned off the lights and gone to bed. He feared that the same might be true of Eva, young as she was, and if so he would be at a loss as to how to proceed.
But when he reached the Bullard house he was relieved to see that most of the windows on both floors were lighted, as was the globe outside the front door, which signified that someone was out who was expected soon to come home. He hoped that that person might be Eva. He ran boldly between the concrete strips of driveway along the side of the house and, tripping on something in the dark, fell headlong, but luckily without making a sound.
He hurled himself up and continued to the back of the house, where the kitchen windows, being dark, told him nothing, but then a window was abruptly lighted on the second floor. Could that be Eva’s? He went and felt the ground for something heavy enough to throw but too light to break the glass. A dog barked nearby, and soon, two back porches away, a light came on. Tony froze in position. A Scottie came out of that house, but all it did was lift its leg against a bush in the back yard, after which it was admitted again to its home and the light was extinguished.
But by now, when Tony went back to where he could look at Eva’s supposed window, the room was dark! Nor could he find a single object, pebble or twig, to toss up against the glass. He now realized what a fool he had been to concoct the outlandish idea of confronting this young girl in the night and for the first time since rebuffing her two months earlier. He just stood there for a while, looking up at the darkened window and reflecting on how goofy he had been, he who had always been noted for his reasonable-mindedness.
Then the back door opened, in the dark, and Eva spoke down to him from the porch.
“What are you doing there?”
“It’s me,” said Tony.
“I know.”
“Oh. I didn’t want you thinking that I was a burglar or something.”
“I didn’t. I looked out when Skipper barked, and I saw you. There’s enough light.”
“Is that the name of that dog over there?”
“Yeah.”
Tony had run out of things to say. If he had been close enough he might have tried to feel her breasts at this point.
Finally she said, “Well, I guess I ought to go in.”
“Why?” He put this simple question as a kind of reflex, but it proved to be just the thing for breaking the ice.
She giggled and said, “I don’t know. I’m here all by myself. My mother had to go over to Hornbeck, because my brother got in some kinda trouble over there. Was that something to do with your family again?”
“My family?” asked Tony. “Huh. I don’t think so. I don’t know anything about it, anyway.”
Eva came down and sat on the second step from the bottom, and Tony joined her but kept a certain space between them.
She said, “Why’d you come over here tonight, anyway?”
“Because I was trying to write you a letter for a real long time.”
“A letter?“ Her voice had
the rising note of pleasurable wonder.
“Do you like letters?”
“I guess so. I don’t think I have ever got one.”
He nodded. “I should have written you one, then. But I wasn’t able to.” He nodded several times again and looked down between his shoes. “Right now I’m going to get out of town. I’m thinking of heading for Canada. There are a lot of opportunities up that way. I wouldn’t mind joining the Northwest Mounted Police. You know, the Mounties? There was a movie about them not so long ago. I don’t know if they’ve got an eye test or not…”
“How far is that?”
“Canada? I’m not sure.”
“Are you going to come back soon?”
Tony got the nerve to look her in the face. “Listen, you want to come along?”
She gasped. “To Canada?“
He couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or simply amazed.
“Sure. We could get married.”
Eva giggled. “You’re really crazy, you know that?”
He joined her in laughter. “I guess you might say that…. Well, willya?”
Apparently she couldn’t stop giggling, but she managed to say, “Well, I guess so. If you really want me to.”
He said, “I would really like it, I’ll say that.”
“When are we going? Right now?”
“I guess we might as well,” said Tony. “You know, before somebody tries to stop us?”
“Boy,” Eva said, giggling, “will I ever get it, if we’re caught! My family’s supposed to be enemies of your family. I guess they’ll think I lost my mind.” She shook her head wonderingly. “Aren’t we too young to get married?”
“We got to find a place where they won’t ask us for a birth certificate,” said Tony. “Then we can lie about our ages.”
Eva’s face was luminous in the dim light. He thought he could probably kiss her at this moment but decided it would be better taste to wait until they were married, else she might think he was a sex maniac and would not want to go with him.