“Well, there was this girl,” said Tony. When seen through the thickest part of the lenses his eyes always seemed to be staring intensely.
“Girl?”
“They have those park dances on Friday nights over in Millville,” Tony said. “I went over there once or twice.”
Dolf lowered his head. “What was her name?”
“It might of been Bullard.”
“Oh yeah?” Dolf decided he wasn’t interested in the womenfolk of that family.
“I think her name was Eva Bullard.”
“You wouldn’t know if her father owned that hardware store over there, would you?”
“Naw, I don’t know.”
Dolf asked sharply, “You didn’t take her out or anything?”
Tony looked down and kicked the ground with the rubber toe of his gym shoe. “I only danced with her Once.”
Dolf thrust out his chin. “You didn’t try…” He left the rest unsaid.
Tony colored violently. “No, nothing like that.”
Dolf said, “I don’t know if you have ever heard of what they call a social disease,” said Dolf. “I’ll tell you this, you wanna be an athlete or get an appointment to Annapolis, or be respected in life, you have to watch yourself. I’m sorry I got to use this kind of language, but you ought to get to know what a cundrum is and how to use one.” Now Dolf could feel himself color, and in reaction he said angrily, “Goddammit, Tony, you got to realize them Bullards are no good!”
“You know them?”
Dolf imposed a calm upon himself. He did not want to lose his dignity before his son. “I had a run-in with a few of them just now. They’re not much. But they’re sneaky, and they know all the dirty tricks. They’ll spit in your eye and hit below the belt.” He breathed awhile, looking past his son. They’re all skinny little monkeys, and they re yellow and crafty.”
“What did they do to you?”
Dolf was offended by the form of the question, which implied that he had been whipped. “I didn’t let ‘em get away with anything, but”—he shook his finger—”I’m going to teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget.”
Tony hesitated for a moment and then he said, “Dad, I’m sorry about that Bullard girl, but I didn’t know—”
“Tony, there wasn’t nothing wrong with that at the time.” Dolf patted his son’s broad shoulder. “I never heard of these Bullards until today, though as it turned out, they’re related to a guy name of Walt Huff, who works over at the plant in the stockroom.”
“Huff?” asked Tony. “Would he have a boy about my age?”
“This guy wouldn’t be old enough, I don’t think. But maybe he’s got older brothers or sisters.”
“I had a fight with a kid named Al Huff last winter,” Tony said. “After the basketball game with Millville, in that empty lot back of school? He bumped into me when we was all leaving, and he called me a four-eyed slob.”
Dolf asked fiercely, “Did you whip the son of a bitch?”
“I think I hurt him. I don’t see too good with my specs off. I hit him a coupla good ones, I know that. It was his friends stopped the fight.” He looked worried. “I wonder if he’s related to the Bullards?”
“I hope so,” said Dolf. “The goddam dirty trash! … Tony, you’re a good boy. I wanna give you something, a little piece of change. Maybe you can get yourself a date with some nice girl tonight. Not a pig like that Bullard, but some real nice girl like Mary Catherine Lutz.” He pointed diagonally across the back alley to the Lutz residence, in the back yard of which was an empty dog house: their Airedale, a valuable, supposedly pedigreed animal, had broken his chain last year and run away in pursuit of a mongrel bitch in heat and never returned. Dolf found a dollar bill in his pants pocket and surrendered it to his son.
Tony backed away.
Dolf pressed the bill on him. “Come on, you got it coming. You’re a good boy, and I’m proud to call you son.” He had a very fine feeling with regard to this interchange: there weren’t many lads in this day and age with the kind of principles to refuse offered money.
Tony finally took the dollar and mumbled his thanks.
Dolf socked his son affectionately in the meatiest part of the biceps: it felt like hitting a country ham. Too bad about Tony’s bad eyes: he would have made a real prizefighter.
Dolf had climbed the back-door steps and was about to go in the kitchen door when his wife opened it to come out.
She backed up. “I was just going to holler that lunch is ready.”
The idea of food was suddenly repulsive to him, he who usually packed it away. He said, “Say, Bobby, when I finally get around to stripping your old dresser, what do you know? I get in a fight.”
She put her hands on her broad hips. “You didn’t get hurt?”
“Not me! You oughta see the other guy.” Having made the weary joke, he went to the oilcloth-covered table that was in the ell of the big kitchen and took the chair at its head. He lowered his face into his hands and then took it out to look at his wife, who was still watching him carefully. He proceeded to tell her the truth about the incident at Bullard’s hardware.
“Well,” said she in her comfortable and comforting voice, “you can’t call that a fight. There wasn’t nothing much you could do with a gun in your belly.”
“That might be right,” said Dolf. “It might not of been my fault, any of it, but God damn it, I feel real bad. I feel like somebody threw filth on me for no reason. I’ve got to pay them back, Bobby.”
“What I was wondering,” said she, standing in the middle of the kitchen, “was is it legal for somebody who isn’t a real policeman to pull a gun that way on a person who isn’t doing anything wrong?”
Dolf shook his head. “You mean, I should hire a lawyer? I don’t have that kinda money. Why, he’d charge me five bucks just to answer the question. Anyhow, that’s the yellow way out.”
Roberta said, “What I mean is you could go to the police in Millville, the real ones, and prefer charges.”
“I tell you what that would lead to,” said Dolf, with a gesture of hopelessness. “Just their word against mine, and there was tw6 of them, not even counting the kid. Anyway, the local police always favor a merchant in their own town: that figures.” He shook his head. “For that matter, they might have a relative on the force.”
Bobby crossed her big arms, which were bare below the elbow. Except for church services on Sunday she wore loose housedresses she made herself. She had a good deal of gray in her hair, but her plump cheeks, flecked with permanent freckles below the hazel eyes, had a youthful color and sheen.
“But you would be telling the truth.”
Dolf groaned, “Aw, I don’t know, Bobby.” But talking with his wife as usual made him feel better, and when she said, “Let me get some soup in you before you do anything,” his appetite suddenly returned.
Roberta went to call their other boy from upstairs. Meanwhile Tony came in unsummoned from outside. Seeing him vigorously wash his hands at the sink reminded Dolf that he should make his own ablutions, and he did so, accepting from the patiently waiting Tony the coarse, outsized off-white towel, a former flour bag that had been hemmed up.
Bobby returned to the kitchen and served four large bowls of thick vegetable soup that swarmed with yellow dumplings. She waited patiently for hers to cool, but both Dolf and Tony, with much spoon-blowing, had swallowed half their portions by the time the second son arrived. His formal name was Adolf, Jr., but so as to forestall confusion he had since childhood been called Jack. He was a studious sort and spent most of his time reading books, yet, as luck would have it, enjoyed perfect vision. At fifteen he was of average size, a couple of inches shorter than his brother. His assigned chores were, according to his own preference, indoors if possible, cleaning the basement and the like, though he carried out the garbage. He and Tony, being of different temperaments, had always got on well. They were rarely seen together except on such occasions as this.
Dolf himse
lf hardly did more than glance at the newspaper, and he resented Jack’s obsession with reading more than he himself understood, and he was usually, secretly, exasperated with him. For example, in distinction to Tony, Jack was never so eager for a meal that he came to it without being called. When he was summoned, however, he arrived with reasonable promptness and therefore could not be criticized.
Vapors from the hot soup put a fog onto Tony’s glasses. He removed them and cleaned them on some folded squares of toilet paper he carried in his pocket for that purpose. His face had the funny blurred look that habitual wearers of eyeglasses seemed to have when they took them off: as if the spectacles are normally worn instead by the other person. Dolf couldn’t help feeling that the boy would be defenseless at such a time, but if he had whipped the Huff kid he was far from it.
Squinting at his father, Tony said, “I thought of somebody else I know over in Millville: the oculist who makes my glasses.”
Dolf swallowed some soup without chewing the soft solids therein. That was a luxury; his teeth were not all they should be. “That’s right. But I don’t see how he would be involved.”
Tony returned the glasses to his face. “I think he’s in that family.”
“Doctor Adams?” Dolf knew the name well, having to pay the bills.
“He’s married to a Huff,” said Tony.
“I’ll be damn.” This man had made plenty off Tony, who though careful was often involved in the sort of strenuous activity in which glasses were broken.
Bobby gently reproved her husband. “I wish you could find a better word.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dolf, “I wasn’t thinking.” He looked toward Jack. You didn’t have to worry that Tony would pick up foul language, but Jack might be another case.
Jack however was interested in the greater matter. “ ‘Involved’?” he asked. “What does that mean, Dad?”
Dolf dipped his spoon in the soup. “Gosh, it’s a long story, Jack.” Telling it to his younger son would be almost like disclosing embarrassing information to a stranger.
But Jack chided him. “Tony seems to have heard it.”
His mother now remonstrated with Jack. “I wish you would respect your dad,” she said. “He’ll tell what he tells to whoever he wants, because he puts the food in our mouths.”
Dolf was cast in the unusual but gratifying role of defending his second son. “He don’t mean disrespect. I know that. He’s right.” He smiled at Jack. “It’s your right to know. It’s a family thing.” Dolf suddenly felt a strong sense of affinity with them all, including Jack, and he proceeded to give a less personally degrading version of the unhappy incident in the hardware store.
That night Bud’s Hardware burned to the ground, despite the strenuous efforts of not only the local volunteer firemen but also the Hornbeck department, called in for the emergency. There had been simply too much flammable merchandise on the premises, chiefly in the form of liquids like paint and turpentine, etc., but the sporting ammunition contributed as well, its explosions serving to discourage the firemen from getting as close as they might otherwise have come.
CHAPTER 2
When Bud Bullard’s son, Bud Jr., told Dolf Beeler about the fire insurance that required the keeping of highly flammable substances in the back room, he was only passing on what his father had told him. But the truth was that the hardware store had not been insured.
“I couldn’t afford the premiums,” said Bud. “I figured if we was just real careful, we could get by until we got in the black.” He stood there on Sunday morning, looking into the jagged, blackened, still-smoking ruin of his business.
The second shift of Millville volunteer firemen—those who had not been available the night before—had taken over from the fellows who had been called out just before midnight and had pumped water until morning. The fire companies from the neighboring towns—one of them from Beewix, eight miles away—had left by now. Bud had been on the site since someone remembered him at 4:14 A.M. and phoned his home. He wore a lumber jacket over his striped pajama shirt, the bent collar of which protruded.
He was talking to his brother-in-law, Walter Huff, who was a fireman but had not come with the company the night before, because he had been at a bowling tournament up in Medford, the county seat, and after the match the guys had drunk beer late at a Medford roadhouse to celebrate their moral victory against a team who had greatly outclassed them in every way but guts.
Bud’s eyes smarted from the smoke; otherwise he had no identifiable feeling of body or soul. He could not understand why he was seemingly so stoical. The store represented not only all his own savings, but also—he had been turned down by the local bank—considerable loans from his relatives, both blood and in-law. Cousin Reverton, for example, a bachelor, had contributed the sum of money he had been awarded in a lawsuit against an interstate bus company, one of whose vehicles had smashed his car and broken his right leg and left collarbone some years before. Even Aunt Ethel Murdal had contributed a widow’s mite. Bud’s brother Herman, though father of four, had kicked in, as had his sister Ada and his second cousin on his mother’s side, Charley Hoople.
Bud realized that he should probably shoot himself, for he could not possibly make restitution in one lifetime. The store had not been a raving success before the fire, for reasons that were not immediately understandable, but the only one that made sense was that it was a new enterprise, whereas the hardware in Hornbeck had long been established and offered prices that Bud could not match and make any kind of profit.
Walt Huff, however, had put no money in the store, claiming he had none to spare, what with the mortgage on his house and other obligations, yet he was prosperous enough to buy quite a bit of sporting goods, a state of affairs toward which Bud’s feelings were complex—after all, Walt did at least purchase the shotgun, rod, reel, ammunition, etc., from him and not from his competitors, who were able to charge less—and trade was more satisfying, more professional, than any loan.
Walt’s helmet was a little too large for him, coming down so low on his forehead that his eyes were almost cut off.
Bud told him, “I just feel sorry for the people that had money in this. Jesus.” Sooner or later he would have to confess to them about the lack of insurance, of which they had been kept in ignorance. It had seemed useful to experiment by telling Walt, who was not involved.
Walt said, “I sure wouldn’t relish the job of telling them.”
“That piece of money was the only thing Rev had, you know,” said Bud, who was getting a kind of comfort from putting the worst face on it. “He don’t have a real home, you know. He’s got a furnished room up near the railroad yard in Hamburg. He’s been on his own since a kid. His old man drank himself to death, and his mom passed away from T.B. Rev was raised in the orphan asylum.”
“Say,” said Walt, “you mean your cousin Reverton? Guy I know from the plant was asking about him yesterday. Said he wanted to give him five dollars.”
Bud shrugged. Five bucks was hardly the answer at this point.
“Speak of the devil,” said Walt, nodding in indication of something beyond Bud’s shoulder.
Bud turned and saw Reverton, who was dressed as always in a navy-blue serge suit, white shirt, and hat, tie, and shoes in black.
Reverton’s expression was habitually somewhat sour, owing to the bony nose and the lines coming down from it to the sides of the mouth, but he was known to have strong emotions that did not always appear on his countenance.
“I was eating my Sunday flapjacks at the Railway Cafe,” he said, “when an engineer come in who heard about this.”
Bud felt even worse when he saw Reverton. He said, “I don’t know how it started, but it was too far gone before they put any water on it.”
Walt greeted Reverton, whom he didn’t know well, and then he went to join the other firemen, who were raking the debris for still-glowing embers and, when they found some, soaked them down. Of the store only a jagged wall-and-a-half and a
brick chimney remained standing. Luckily there had been little wind the night before, and the building was situated between two vacant lots at the edge of the business district, having originally been constructed, just before the war, for a dairy, which grew out of the space in twenty years.
Reverton scowled at his cousin. “Them insurance are all crooked,” said he. “They won’t wanna pay a penny, mark my words. They’ll want to prove you burned it down yourself.”
Bud did not have the heart to straighten him out at this point. He said, “I figure it must of been some old wiring.”
Reverton was still occupied with anticipatory bitterness. “Them insurance oughta be put outa business, if you ask me. What good are they if they won’t pay off on a honest claim?” He had always believed he should have got more in damages when he had been hit by that bus, and regretted having been persuaded by the insurance company’s lawyer to settle out of court. Bud knew, but would never have rubbed his nose in it, that Reverton had been at a great disadvantage in acting as his own lawyer, owing to his distrust of attorneys. Nor had his broken leg been set as well as it might have been. After receiving emergency treatment at a hospital, he had insisted on going to his own doctor for the rest of it, and the latter was not a real physician but rather an osteopath. It seemed to Bud that Reverton had a gift for blaming the wrong people for his difficulties, but of course he would never mention that theory to his cousin, of whom he was genuinely fond. He could remember him as a boy in the orphan asylum, with his hair cut an inch above the ears. Bud’s parents could not afford to raise Rev along with their six other children, but on holidays they would go by streetcar to fetch him for the occasion and give him a meal and a treat to put in his pocket, an orange or something, before taking him back. He was exactly Bud’s age and had been a dark, wiry kid with skinny legs below his knickers.
Bud lightly kicked the brass junction linking two lengths of dirty canvas firehose that stretched near him. “Those boys did everything they could,” said he. “I know that.” He turned. “Wellsir, no reason to stay around here anymore. Want to go on up home, Reverton? You’re staying for Sunday dinner, I hope.”
The Feud Page 2
