The Winchesters

by James Lincoln Collier

  “Run, Chris,” Marie shouted. “Run.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I didn't want to run. I wanted them to understand that I wasn't on anybody's side. I wanted to talk to them and get them to see that. “Listen, you guys,” I said.

  They walked up to me. “Get out of here, Marie,” Frankie said. “Go home.” They were standing on each side of me. There was no way I could run now, even if I decided to. Frankie was three years older than me, and a lot bigger.

  “Frankie,” Marie screamed, “for God's sake, don't do it. Chris didn't have anything to do with it.”

  “Shut up, Marie,” Frankie said. “Go home.”

  I was good and scared. My heart was thumping and my throat was dry. But I was determined to talk to them. “Listen, you guys. Before you start anything, I just want to—”

  Frankie slapped me hard across the face. My face stung and my eyes began to fill with tears. I shook my head so they wouldn't see the tears.

  “Frankie, stop it,” Marie screamed. “Stop it.”

  I shook my head again. “Frankie, listen to me a minute.”

  He turned and grabbed Marie by the arm and shook her. “Get out of here, Marie.”

  She jerked loose and started to swing her arm to hit him, but he grabbed it and pushed her away. She went backward, and sat down. “I'm going to get the police,” she shouted. “If you don't stop I'm going to get the police.”

  Frankie didn't pay any attention to her. He grabbed my arm and jerked me around so he was behind me. Then he put his arms through mine and pinioned me with my arms behind my back. “Okay, Benny,” he said. “He's all yours. Give it to him good.”

  I began to twist and turn, grunting and sweating, but Frankie had me tight. Benny stepped forward and swung. I ducked my head and his fist caught me on the forehead. I kicked out at him and hit him in the legs. “Damn you,” he said. He set himself and swung. This time he hit me directly in the middle of my face. I felt dizzy and shook my head and he hit me again. I tried to move my head from side to side, but the fists kept coming, and after a while I didn't know what was happening anymore.

  I was lying on the ground on my face, and it was quiet. I hurt all over—my face, my head, my chest, my stomach, my arms. For a moment I lay there, trying to figure out what had happened. Then I remembered, and I realized that Frankie must have held me up a long time after I was out so Benny could go on slugging me. I lay there listening, to be sure they were gone. I didn't hear anything but peepers. I got up on my hands and knees. Everything hurt, and I wondered if I was bleeding inside. My nose was clogged and I couldn't breathe through it. I rested on my hands and knees for a minute. Then I knelt up and felt my face. It was wet with blood all over. I touched my nose. It hurt, and I figured it was broken. I dropped down to my hands and knees again, and twisted off a clump of grass. I tried to wipe my face with it, but it hurt too much and I threw it away. I remembered my handkerchief, and I wiped a little with that, but it still hurt.

  I stood up. It made me dizzy to do that and I knelt down again, resting for a minute. I stood again, and this time I made it. I stood there praying that I wasn't hurt too badly, praying that I wasn't bleeding inside. Then I began to walk slowly along the trail to where I had left my bike. I could walk okay, although every step joggled something and hurt me. I touched my ribs on my left side. Something felt loose there. I was afraid that something might fall apart, and I walked as slow as I could to my bike. I unchained it and walked it out to the road.

  Out there I decided against riding it. I didn't know what was broken inside me, and I didn't want to take a chance. I began going slowly along the road. About five minutes later I saw lights flashing down the road, and in half a minute a police car pulled up to me. A cop looked out. “You the Winchester kid?”

  “Yes,” I said. They told me to chain the bike to a tree. I did, and got in, and they drove me into town to Memorial Hospital, where they checked me out. My nose was broken, all right, and they'd torn some cartilage around my ribs. When I went to the bathroom to clean up a little, I was shocked to see myself in the mirror. There were cuts and bruises all over my face, my eyes were swollen like plums, and my nose was squashed.

  They bandaged me up and then the cops drove me home to the gatehouse. “You can come down to the station house tomorrow and make a statement if you want. You can file charges. But my advice is for you to stay out of town. There's a lot of feeling against the Winchesters right now.”

  “What if I'm supposed to go to high school there?”

  The cop who wasn't driving swiveled around to look at me. “The high school?”

  “I might go there.”

  He shook his head. Then he said, “You better get your dad to send you someplace else for a while. The way they worked you over, they could just as well have killed you, son.”

  Of course, Mom almost went crazy when she saw me. She'd been worrying for about an hour and had been thinking of calling the police herself just about the time we drove up. The cop said, “We had the docs look him over. He's not bad hurt.”

  “What do you mean, he's not bad hurt? Look at him. Who did this to him?”

  The cop shrugged. “Don't know. The way we get it, a bunch of kids were out at the state forest drinking beer and a fight broke out.”

  “He hasn't been drinking beer,” Mom shouted. “Can you smell any beer?”

  The cop shrugged. “You can press charges if you want, ma'am, but I'll be frank with you, I don't think you'll find anybody in this town who'll testify for you. They'd risk getting a dose of the same.” He looked at her curiously. “You one of the Winchesters?”

  “More than ever,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I'm surprised you didn't have more sense than to let the kid go out at night alone, the way things are now.”

  “Believe me,” she said, “he won't do it again.”

  Then the cops left. She made me take a hot bath to get some of the soreness out of my muscles. I nearly fell asleep in the tub. She knocked on the door. I got out, dried myself off, and put on my pajamas. Then I came out. “Mom, don't tell Uncle Foster and Skipper.”

  “Of course I'm going to tell them,” she said.

  “It'll just stir things up more.” But that wasn't the real reason. I knew that they'd want me to testify against those guys. How could I testify against Marie's brother?

  “Good lord, Chris. Just look at yourself—what am I going to tell them, you were hit by a truck?”

  “We could think of something.”

  “They have to know,” she said.

  I went to bed and fell asleep pretty quick. But before I did, I wondered, just for a minute, if Marie would testify against Benny and Frankie.

  In the morning, Uncle Foster and Skipper sent Durham down to the gatehouse in the limousine to bring me up to the big house. I was feeling very stiff and sore, and my nose hurt so much I couldn't touch it. But I could have walked up there. Durham said they didn't want me doing anything strenuous until they could get me looked after by specialists in Boston. The Winchesters gave a lot of money to the Everidge Memorial Hospital, but they always went to Boston when they were sick.

  So I went on up to the big house and down to the office, with that antique desk, those pictures of ships, the old barometer. Uncle Foster was sitting behind his desk, and Skipper was in an easy chair with his cane across his lap. They didn't tell me to sit down, but let me stand there so they could look me over. Finally Skipper said, “They did a pretty good job on you, didn't they, Christopher.” He pointed to the other easy chair with his cane. “Please sit down.”

  I sat. Uncle Foster leaned forward. “Who did it, Chris?”

  “It was too dark for me to tell,” I said. “They just jumped me in the dark and began hitting me. I went out pretty quick.”

  “But you must have some idea who it was.”

  “It was too dark to see. They came out of the woods. It was pretty dark in there. I guess they planned it that way.”

&nb
sp; They both looked at me. “You're sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it all about?” Uncle Foster said.

  “Because of Benny Briggs's dad, I guess,” I said. “And the strike. That, too, probably.” I wanted them to know that they were partly responsible.

  “Then it was the Briggs kid,” Uncle Foster said.

  “It might have been,” I said. “I couldn't tell in the dark.”

  “You should have had better sense than to go down there at night alone,” Skipper said.

  “I've always gone there before,” I said.

  “Were you with the girl?” Skipper said. “The one you brought up to the house the other day?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Uncle Foster gave me a long look. “Chris, I warned you before to leave their girls alone. I warned you to stay away from them. You don't need any of that. Once you get to Wakefield you'll meet plenty of nice girls.”

  “She's a nice girl,” I said.

  Skipper nodded and began tapping his cane on the floor. “So that's what it was,” he said. “It was because of the girl.”

  Suddenly I realized that it was part of it. Maybe a lot of it. The Scalzos were worried that Marie was impressed with me for being a Winchester, and might let me have sex with her; and that then I'd leave her. “It might have been,” I said.

  Skipper stopped tapping his cane and put it back over his lap again. “Christopher, you know perfectly well who those people were. It was the Briggs boy and some of his friends, wasn't it?”

  Why was I sticking up for them against my own family, after what they did to me? “Yes, it was.”

  “The girl said she had a brother, didn't she? He was in on it, too, wasn't he?”

  “Yes.” I wondered what they would do to Benny and Frankie once they got them.

  “How many altogether?”

  “Just the two of them.”

  Uncle Foster swiveled around in his chair, put his feet on his wastebasket, and stared out the window onto the driveway. It was going to rain, and the wind was blowing a few dead leaves across the bluestone. “Chris, why are you trying to protect these people? I'm frankly puzzled.” He gave me a look over his shoulder.

  “It's because he's been going to school with those boys all those years,” Skipper said. “We should have known better.”

  “Chris, what's the reason? These guys can't possibly be friends of yours now.”

  I didn't say anything, and they both looked at me. Then I said, “I just don't like to get anybody in trouble. I don't like them anymore, but I don't want them to get in trouble.”

  “But they've turned against you, Chris,” Uncle Foster said. “Do you realize that they came close to killing you?”

  “That's what the cop said.”

  Skipper tapped the end of his cane on the Oriental carpet again. “Are you telling us that you won't testify against those boys if you are called on to do it?”

  I looked at him, and then at Uncle Foster, and then down at the floor. “No, I won't testify against them.” I looked up at them. “I guess you won't send me to private school now.”

  Uncle Foster swiveled around to face me and waved his hand. “No, it isn't a question of that. But I'm still puzzled. I'd have thought you would want to see those guys get what was coming to them. I could understand if you got into a fight with the Briggs kid over the whole thing, or the girl's brother. But to be waylaid by two of them like that is something different altogether. That was vile and cowardly. It was unforgivable. You have every moral right to bring the police down on them.”

  I looked down at the Oriental rug, feeling rotten. Uncle Foster and Skipper would do everything for me, and I wouldn't cooperate with them. “I can't help it, Uncle Foster.”

  He breathed out a mouthful of air and looked at Skipper. “All I can say is that I'm baffled.”

  “It's simple,” Skipper said. “He grew up with these people. He feels a loyalty to them.”

  But it wasn't that simple. Right there, at that moment, I had all the power of the Winchesters behind me. I could do an awful lot of harm to some people. I had the evidence against Benny's father and could get him in a lot of trouble. He'd lose his job, for sure. I didn't know exactly what would happen to Benny and Frankie if I testified against them, but at least a big fine and maybe a jail sentence for Frankie, because he was old enough. The disgrace would break Mr. Scalzo's heart. I had it in my power to wreck the lives of half a dozen people. And that was really why I wouldn't testify—I didn't want to use that power to destroy people.

  Uncle Foster swiveled around to look out the window again. “Chris, let me ask you something. Suppose you were on the team negotiating with the union over the new contract. Where would your loyalties lie then?”

  The phone rang. Uncle Foster picked it up. “Hello,” he said. He listened for a minute, and then he said, “Thanks. Okay, thanks,” and hung up. He looked at Skipper. “They've struck the mills. They're walking out right now.”

  CHAPTER 14

  That afternoon they sent Ernest and Anne off to their boarding schools. The schools hadn't opened yet, but they made an arrangement. Of course I would be going to Wakefield soon. I didn't have any choice now. If I went to the high school, sooner or later I'd get another beating, and this time it might be worse. But they wanted to have me checked out at the hospital in Boston before they sent me away.

  By that night Mom and me and the twins had moved into the big house, and there was a state police car parked by the gatehouse, another one out back of the big house, and another at the front door, checking whoever went in and out.

  The next morning Durham drove Mom and me up to Boston in the limousine. I came back with a big bandage over my nose and an elastic brace around my chest to hold my ribs still while the cartilage healed. I wouldn't be able to play any sports that fall. After that I had nothing to do but hang around the big house, read the books they got me, and look after the twins when Mom was busy.

  It was a strange way to live. We couldn't really go anywhere. The family had always had most anything they needed delivered—like food, liquor, household supplies. They bought their clothes in Boston and New York—or Paris and London—and they had their own gasoline pump for the cars. So there wasn't much reason for leaving the estate. But it was strange for me. It was like living in a fort. I couldn't go to the movies or down to see Teddy Melas or Marie—all the things I used to do. The life that I had lived for eight years was over and done with. I knew that now. I wouldn't see Teddy again for years, and maybe never.

  And probably not Marie, either. I was going to miss her a lot. I was beginning to miss her already. I kept getting pictures of her in my head—the way she had of moving her hands when she talked, the way she liked to swim on her back, the way she had of looking right at you when she talked. One day I went down to the gatehouse, rummaged around in my old dresser drawer, and found a picture she had given me a long time ago. I kept the picture in my wallet and I took it out and looked at it a lot.

  Mom was busy most of the time. Uncle Foster and Skipper had their hands full with the strike, and Mom had to take care of a lot of the family business by herself—check the bills, see that the servants got paid, take care of the banking. When she went into town to the bank, a state trooper drove her in and went into the bank with her.

  It was a funny thing: Since I'd got beaten up and the strike had started, we seemed to belong to the family more. I could tell that Skipper and Uncle Foster were depending on Mom more, and I got the feeling that they were probably going to do something for her—get her a better place to live and more money to go along with it. As for me, it was the first time that I'd ever been in on something that Ernest was out of. Now it was me who listened to Skipper, Uncle Foster, and Aunt Ellen talk over meals, when they happened to be around for them. I knew a whole lot more about what was going on than Ernest did.

  That was how I found out that Frankie Scalzo had been arrested. It was about ten days after I'd got bea
ten up and the strike had started. My nose was a lot better, and I'd be going away soon. The strike hadn't yet become violent, but it was going that way. There were long picket lines around the factory, and whenever management people went in and out, the workers jeered and shouted. A few times they had thrown stuff, too—mostly eggs and tomatoes, but some stones, too. When that happened, the state police had charged the pickets, and a couple of people had got hurt. The workers were angry, and they were getting angrier. The strike was costing them a half million dollars a day in pay, the Everidge Ledger said.

  “They won't last four months,” Uncle Foster said. “Wait until the cold weather hits and they're out there on that picket line in the freezing rain and snow. Wait until December when the oil company runs out of money because nobody's paid them, and they can't get fuel oil anymore. Wait until they have to close the schools because nobody's paid their taxes and the teachers are out of work. They'll cave in. We haven't had a strike up here for two generations. These people don't know what it's like.”

  Anyway, one night at dinner Uncle Foster said, “Chris, I thought you'd want to know that the Scalzo boy has been arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “He and the Briggs boy.”

  “For what they did to me?”

  “No, don't worry about that, Chris. It has nothing to do with that. They were caught inside one of the mills. They were trying to start a fire. They were caught with two five-gallon cans of gasoline, newspaper, matches. They were caught red-handed. That's attempted arson. It's a serious offense. The Briggs boy is underage and he can't be charged—he'll go before a juvenile court. But Scalzo is seventeen. The chances are pretty good he'll end up in the penitentiary.”

  It was going to be awful for the Scalzos if Frankie went to jail. It would break their hearts. Mr. Scalzo had worked day and night to build up his business for Frankie to take over. All that would be ruined. Sure, I didn't feel much sorry for Frankie, not after he'd given me that beating. But I felt sorry for the rest of them, especially Mr. Scalzo. His family meant everything to him.