The Winchesters

by James Lincoln Collier

  “I wish I had a chance to fight him,” Ernest said. “I know how to box. I took it at school for a while.”

  “He's got long arms,” I said.

  “You have to get under them. You have to get inside and tie him up, and then work on his body.”

  “Well, I don't know anything about it,” I said. “So I tackled him. I was on top of him when Mr. Scalzo broke it up.”

  “You should have got me to go with you, Chris. I'd have helped you. You stood up for me before. I'd have stood up for you.”

  He would have, too. I knew I could count on Ernest to back me up. “What were you doing in your father's office?” I wasn't trying to change the subject. I was just curious, because usually Ernest didn't go in there unless Uncle Foster asked him to.

  “Dad wanted to show me some stuff. He's teaching me about the negotiations.”

  “Teaching you?”

  “He tells me what's going on. He says that someday we may be faced with another strike, and it's a good idea for me to get some experience of it now.”

  I sat down on a five-gallon can of liquid fertilizer. “Doesn't that scare you? I mean being in charge of stuff like that. Wouldn't you be worried about making a mistake?”

  “That's why Dad's teaching me—so I won't make mistakes.”

  “But all the same, doesn't it worry you?”

  “Sure it does. Sometimes when I'm down at the mills, I look around at all those buildings and all those people working there, and it scares me to think that someday I'm going to be running the whole thing. But then I tell myself not to worry—by that time I'll know a whole lot of stuff that I don't know now. That's why I always look at things. If I don't know how to do it, I can learn it, if I pay attention and work hard enough. You may not get it right the first time, but you can learn it if you keep at it.”

  I could see that was true about him. He took it for granted he could do anything he wanted to. It was the way he was brought up. If he wanted to be good at hockey, or riding, he could, if he stuck at it. And if he had to run a factory and deal with a strike, he could learn how to do it, too. Ernest made every team he went out for. It wasn't because he was always the best or the smartest kid, but because he was supposed to.

  It was the way he was raised. He was supposed to be successful at things—it was sort of the family rule, the way in some families you're supposed to be religious, in some families you're supposed to be interested in books. In Ernest's family it didn't matter what you did, but you were supposed to be good at it. And I guess Ernest just didn't understand that most kids weren't like that.

  But I could never explain anything like that to him, and I wasn't going to try. “Listen, is there going to be a strike?” I asked.

  “The contract runs out on September first. We're negotiating with the union, but we're not getting anywhere. Dad thinks the union doesn't really want a settlement. He thinks they want a strike.”

  “Why would they want that? If they could get a settlement, wouldn't that be better than having everybody lose all that pay?”

  “Dad says he thinks they want to show some muscle. He thinks they believe that if they come to a settlement too easily this time, we'll go right back at them for something more as soon as we can. He thinks they believe they need to strike the mills this time, so that next time we'll know they're not kidding.”

  I remembered what Uncle Foster had said about not letting anyone erode your power. It was going to be the same kind of thing on both sides—nobody willing to back down for fear that the other side would think they were soft. I wondered: If Uncle Foster and Skipper brought me into the business and I became one of the top guys, would I be able to stand up to people, and take advantage of them when I had the chance? I could stand up to people if I had to. I'd stood up to Ernest sometimes, and I'd stood up to Benny Briggs, and other kids, too. But would I really like having to be tough all the time? I mean, it was one thing to stand up to people when you had to, but what would it be like always to be looking for the advantage over people? Suddenly I thought of something: Maybe that was why Dad went into the Peace Corps.

  Just then Durham came into the stable. He looked at me and then turned and looked out at the rain again. “I don't guess we're going to get nothing done today,” he said. “You might as well knock off, Chris. If it clears up this afternoon, we'll try again.”

  Ernest said, “Let's go up to my room and do something.”

  But I wanted to see Teddy Melas. Teddy was usually either cutting people's lawns or playing baseball, but with the rain I figured he would be home. I didn't want to tell Ernest I wanted to see Teddy instead of him. “I've got to do something for Mom,” I said.

  I went down to the gatehouse. Mom was working up at the big house, and the twins were at day care. I changed out of my wet clothes and fixed myself a cheese sandwich. Then I put on my raincoat, got out my bike, and rode through the rain into town, and up the side street to Teddy's house. I chained my bike to the porch rail, and then I went up and knocked on their door. Teddy let me in. “Hi,” he said.

  The house was quiet, except for a soap opera going on the TV. “Nobody home?”

  “Dad's around someplace.” The Melases didn't have much more room than the Scalzos did—a living room, kitchen where they ate, and a back room with the washing machine and dryer. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and the hall. Teddy and his two little brothers slept in one bedroom. There were two double-deckers in their bedroom. The brothers had one of them, and Teddy had the bottom of the other. Whenever I slept over, I took the top.

  Teddy sat down on the old sofa with big flowers printed on it. I took off my jacket. I was wet, though, and didn't want to sit down. “Better give me some newspapers,” I said.

  “There's one on the table.”

  It was a copy of the Everidge Ledger. The headline said

  NO PROGRESS: STRIKE IMMINENT.

  I spread it out on the easy chair and sat down.

  “I heard you had a fight with Benny Briggs.”

  Suddenly I realized that Teddy was looking kind of funny. He was frowning and looking here and there instead of straight at me. I got the feeling he wished I hadn't come. “I went to see Marie, and he came around while I was there.”

  “He's telling everybody he beat you up.”

  “He did like hell,” I said. “I was on top of him when Mr. Scalzo broke it up.”

  “He said you jumped him from behind, so he really gave it to you.”

  “That's a fat lie,” I said. “He was the one who started it. Ask Marie. She was standing right there. Where'd you get all this stuff, Teddy? Did Benny tell you that?”

  “No.” He went on looking funny. “Mr. Briggs told me. He came over this morning. He's outside in the garage with Dad.”

  “Mr. Briggs knows your dad?”

  “He knows him from work. They both work in Supply. Sometimes they have a couple of beers together at the Wildcat after work.”

  That explained some of the things Mr. Melas had said the last time—how we should have let those guys swim, and the Winchesters could afford to pick up soda cans if people left them around. “Listen, Teddy,” I said, “is everybody in town mad at me?”

  “It's not just you, it's the Winchesters.”

  “But I don't run the mills. I don't live in the big house. I live in a little house like everybody else, and I have to work after school just like a lot of kids. Doesn't anybody realize that?”

  “I don't guess so. All they know is that you're a Winchester.”

  I was beginning to feel sore. “But you know. Marie Scalzo knows—all the Scalzos know that I have to cut the grass and tend the gardens and shovel snow in the winter. You know I can't even be in the Babe Ruth League because I have to work for Durham. Why don't you tell them?”

  Teddy looked away out the window. He didn't say anything.

  “You could straighten them out, Teddy.”

  He went on looking out the window. “It wouldn't do any good,” he sa
id. “I'd never be able to convince them. They're so set against you, they'd think you'd bribed me or something. They'd just end up being mad at me.”

  I turned to see what he was looking at. Behind the house there was a little backyard where Mr. Melas had his rosebushes, to one side of the old garage. Mr. Melas and Mr. Briggs were just coming out from behind the garage. Mr. Briggs was carrying a shovel, and Mr. Melas had a pick. When they got to the cracked cement driveway that led to the garage from the street, Mr. Briggs stopped and banged the blade of the shovel on the cement a couple of times to knock dirt off it. Then they went into the garage. It seemed to me sort of strange that they would have been out there digging in the rain.

  “Why won't it do any good?” I said.

  “They all figure that when it comes down to it, you'll be with the Winchesters. They figure that someday you'll be one of the bosses.”

  It wasn't fair and I was getting sorer. “Who says I will? My dad didn't and maybe I wouldn't, either.”

  Teddy shrugged. “They wouldn't believe that anyone would give up all that money.”

  “My dad did.”

  “They've forgotten about that,” he said.

  “You could tell them, Teddy.”

  He looked out the window again, and I knew that he wasn't going to help me. It didn't matter what the truth of it was. He just didn't want anybody thinking he was on the side of the Winchesters. I felt hurt and cold. It was like being left on a desert island and watching while everybody else rowed away in a boat. I stood up. “If that's the way you feel I might as well go.”

  He jumped up, too. “Chris, don't be mad at me. I can't help it. I'll just be in trouble with everybody if I take your side too much. How can I do that?” He looked at me, with his hands out, like he was pleading with me to forgive him.

  I stood there looking at him. I knew I would have to forgive him if we were ever going to be friends again, but I didn't want to. Look at the trouble I was in.

  Then there was a banging and stamping at the back, and Mr. Melas and Mr. Briggs came into the house. They stopped in the kitchen to wash their hands. Teddy and I didn't say anything, but went on standing there. We heard them pop a couple of cans of beer, and then they came into the living room.

  “What are you doing here, Chris?” Mr. Melas said.

  “I came down to see Teddy. What's wrong with that?”

  Mr. Melas looked at me for a minute. Then he said, “I'm sorry, Chris, but you can't come around here anymore.”

  Suddenly Mr. Briggs realized who I was. He was skinny like Benny, but not so tall. He was wearing a fisherman's hat and an old blue workshirt and jeans that had paint splotches and patches of mud at the knees, as if he'd been kneeling in wet dirt. He hadn't shaved. “You're the Winchester kid—the one who jumped my Benny from behind yesterday.”

  “I didn't jump him from behind,” I shouted. “He's a liar.”

  Mr. Briggs took a couple of steps toward me. “Oh, no you don't, sonny boy. You don't call my son a liar.” He reached out for me, to catch hold of my shirt. I jumped back.

  Mr. Melas grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Leave him alone, Harry. It isn't his fault.” Then he looked at me. “I guess you'd better go, Chris.”

  I was shocked. Mr. Melas had taken me to baseball games at Fenway, he'd bought me hot dogs and soda and peanuts. I slept over there in Teddy's top bunk dozens of Saturday nights. I'd sat around in that living room watching TV with the family, I didn't know how many times, and I'd eaten dinner with them over and over. I stood there with my mouth open.

  “Please, Chris,” Mr. Melas said. “Just go before things get worse.”

  Harry Briggs shook his finger at me. “I want to tell you something, sonny boy. You think you're hot stuff because your name is Winchester, but you step out of line once more and you're going to get cut down to size.”

  “Be quiet, Harry,” Mr. Melas said. “Now go, Chris.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I rode home in the rain, feeling terrible. I was pretty near to crying. What hurt me worst was Mr. Melas kicking me out of their house. I could walk around that place blindfolded. I knew where everything was—where they kept the scissors, where Mr. Melas's tool kit was, all that stuff. Now I couldn't go there anymore. I wondered: When school started, would Teddy pretend he didn't know me?

  When I got home Mom was sitting at the round oak table in the kitchen, with her glasses on and her shoe box full of accounts, paying the bills. She looked up. “Uncle Foster called a little while ago. He wants to see you. What were you doing out in this rain?”

  “I went down to see Teddy. Mr. Melas kicked me out.” I stood there looking down at her, waiting to see what she would say.

  She looked up at me, thinking. Then she said, “Did he say why?”

  “Benny Briggs's father was there. He made a grab for me, but Mr. Melas stopped him. Then Mr. Melas kicked me out.”

  She nodded. “Tempers are running high now, Chris. I think he'll get over it in time.”

  “I don't know,” I said. “Teddy won't take my side, either.”

  “That's not Teddy, Chris. That's his dad. Don't blame Teddy. He has to do what his dad tells him. Just stay away from them for a while. It'll blow over.” She took the phone bill out of the shoe box. “Better put on some dry clothes and go up to see Uncle Foster.”

  “What does he want?”

  “It's probably about that fight you had with that boy.”

  “How did he find out about that?”

  “I told him.”

  I was surprised. “You told him? Why did you tell him, Mom?”

  “I had to,” she said. “Uncle Foster is head of the family. He wants to know things like that. He'd have been angry at me if I hadn't and he'd found out.”

  “I still wish you hadn't. He's going to give me a talking-to.”

  She shrugged. “Chris, it's in your own best interest to listen to what Uncle Foster tells you.”

  But I wasn't sure of that. Maybe the best thing would be to get into some kind of social service work right here in Everidge, so people could see that I'd given up being a Winchester and was really on their side, spending my life helping them.

  But I didn't want to say any of that, because I knew Mom would be against it, and she'd give me a talking-to also. “When am I supposed to go up to see Uncle Foster?”

  “He said to come as soon as you got home.”

  I changed into dry clothes, combed my hair, put on my raincoat and baseball cap, and walked up the long driveway, under the arching sugar maples, up to the big house. I started to go around behind the house, so I could go in through the laundry room door, the way I usually did. Suddenly, for no reason I could think of, I decided to go in through the front door. I went up the wide granite steps to the big wood door with the great iron knocker and the diamond-shaped stained-glass window cut into it. I felt nervous, and I didn't know why. I just opened the door and walked into the front hall where the big staircase curved upward to the second floor. There was a painting of a ship by Winslow Homer on the wall. Casey was vacuuming the front hall.

  “I hope you wiped your feet,” she said.

  I hadn't, but I said I had. Then I walked through the living room, with its huge Oriental rug forty feet long, old-fashioned sofas in red and gold fabric, and old oak tables with magazines neatly lined up on them, trying to pretend it was mine, just to see what that felt like. I went through the big dining room, which was mostly taken up with a long table with narrow legs that could seat twenty people, and our ancestors staring down at twenty empty chairs, still pretending. Then I went down the back hall to the office, as if I were going to my own office. I knocked on the door and stopped pretending.

  “Yes?”

  “It's Chris, Uncle Foster. Mom said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Oh, yes, Chris. Come in.” I went in. Uncle Foster was sitting with his feet propped up on the wastebasket, reading a report. I sat down in one of the easy chairs, and looked around at the ship pictur
es and the old barometer hanging on the wall. Then I looked out into the rain falling on the driveway and the stable. It was empty; there was nobody in sight, no car parked there.

  Finally Uncle Foster tossed the report onto his desk, took his feet off the wastebasket, and swung around to face me. “What's this story your mother tells me about a fight you had with a boy from town?”

  “It wasn't much of a fight, Uncle Foster. Mr. Scalzo—” Then I realized he probably didn't have the faintest idea of who Mr. Scalzo was. “Somebody broke it up.”

  He squinted at me. “Your mother said it was the boy who started the trouble at the pond the other day.”

  “I guess he was sore about that.” I didn't want to tell him any more about anything than I had to. All I wanted to do was stay out of the middle.

  “What were you doing down there in that part of town, Chris?”

  “I was visiting somebody I know.”

  “A girl?”

  I blushed. “Yes.”

  He laughed. “Well, that's normal enough at your age. When I was about your age, maybe a little older, I used to sneak into town to see a girl I thought I was in love with.”

  “I wasn't sneaking. Mom knows I go there.”

  He stopped laughing and swiveled around so he was looking out at the rain. “I know this has been hard on you, Chris.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “I suppose it's cost you some of your friends.”

  I thought about Teddy Melas. “My best friend was Teddy Melas. His dad won't let me go there anymore.”

  “I suppose he works at the mills—Mr. Melas.”

  “Yes. Mrs. Melas, too.” Suddenly the realization of what it meant to have power flashed over me. Uncle Foster had the power to change the Melases' lives in a minute. He could suddenly promote Mr. Melas into a big job with double the salary, or he could fire him.

  And I wondered what it felt like to Mr. Melas, knowing that some guy who lived in a big house on an estate, a guy who Mr. Melas couldn't even see, much less talk to, had all this power over him.