A Stranger in the Kingdom (19 page)

“I know you aren't scared, Nat,” I told him pleadingly. “I know you could kick Frenchy's ass from here to Canada. But you've got to prove that to Frenchy. Otherwise he'll never let up. He'll lay for you and torment you with that stupid song from now until the cows come home. You've got to stop him.”

“Not tonight, I don't. Tonight I've got to write to my grandmother.”

“Come on, Nat. He's waiting now. All it'll take you is about ten sec—”

Before I knew what was happening, I found myself sprawled on the bed, with Nat standing over me.

He jerked me to my feet. “Go away,” he said wearily, and shoved me toward the door. “Just go away.”

I was nearly crying with frustration. It was past nine o'clock already, the time Frenchy had challenged Nat to fight him.

“Nat, you've got to go. Otherwise they really will think you're scared.”

“They?”

“The other guys. Justin and Al and Bobby and them. The town boys.”

“I don't give a hoot what your town boys think. The trouble with you, Kinneson, is you're far too much swayed by other people. Justin and most of the guys know I'm not afraid of Frenchy. But even if they didn't, I wouldn't fight him. Would you?”

“I would if I were you.”

Nat grinned tiredly. “In fact, you wouldn't if you were me, because then you'd have the same reason not to that I have.”

“But wouldn't you like to?”

“Of course.”

“Then for God's sake, why don't you? You can tell
me
, Nat.”

Nat sighed. He tossed his comic book aside in an abrupt impatient motion, and I jumped back for fear that he was going to muckle onto me again. But he didn't. “Kinneson, if I tell you why I won't fight Frenchy, will you promise me two things?”

“I'll promise anything. I just have to understand this, that's all. So I can tell—”

“No! That's the first thing I want you to promise. I want you to promise not to
tell
anyone anything. Number two, I want your word that you won't pester me about the matter ever again.”

“You've got it. Cross my heart and hope to die if I breathe a word to anyone or ever bring it up again.”

“Let's not be quite so melodramatic, Kinneson. You probably will tell somebody; but I'll take a chance, just to get you off my back.”

Nat went over to the window and looked out into the twilight. “The reason I won't fight Frenchy LaMott, or anyone else for that matter, is I gave someone my word that I wouldn't.”

“Your dad?”

“Hardly. Dad's the one who started me in with boxing lessons about the time I was five. He'd back me up one hundred percent if I went after Frenchy. I think he wishes I would, in fact. You can bet
he
would, in my shoes. But Dad doesn't know about this promise I made.

“You see, Kinneson, I promised my grandmother that I would never under any circumstances short of absolute necessity, say if my life was at stake, get into a fight. Gram's always been like a mother to me, and I've never broken that promise, nor intend to.”

“I'm sorry, Nat. I didn't know. I mean, I didn't understand.”

“You still don't.”

Although I wasn't sure, I thought I saw Nat's shoulders shaking. Thirty seconds or so passed, during which neither of us spoke. Then he turned around and sat back down in the welter of coverless comic books on his unmade bed. “About two years ago I got into a bad scrape up in Montreal. It was down on the lower part of what's called The Main, St. Lawrence Street, in a pretty rough district of town I used to cut through sometimes on my way home from school. Actually it was one of my favorite parts of the city, what with the river and port being nearby, and big freighters coming in from all over the world. A few of my school chums and I used to go swimming there in the summer, though Gram would have had a fit if she'd known. And there were all kinds of curious little hole-in-the-wall shops—Polish butcher shops and Greek candy and cigarette shops and Asian fish markets and I don't know what all. That was where the caleche drivers kept their caleches, too. And in good weather there was an open-air market where people came to buy vegetables and fruit and stuff.”

“What's a caleche, Nat?”

“It's a little one-horse tourist buggy. If you ever go up there, you'll see 'em all over the place, especially down in Old Montreal, pulled around by these terribly broken-down old horses about ready for the glue factory. Once in the wintertime I even came on a bunch of people cooking one of those horses whole right in the street over a big fire, like an ox. Anyway, I liked it down there. It was a lively place, just like St. Catherine Street. Until I had the trouble.”

“So what was the trouble?”

“I'm coming to that. One fall evening when I'd stayed on after school for soccer practice, I was coming back through that market about dusk. The street was full of cornhusks and cabbage leaves and broken pieces of wooden crates, and I was just ambling along when I felt this squishy thing hit the back of my neck and slide down between my shoulders. When I turned around, here was this gang of boys on the corner in front of a candy store, smoking cigarettes and laughing. One boy, who was a good deal bigger and older than the rest, stepped out and yelled something to me. I'd seen him around before, that one. He was their ringleader, a big hulking boy with a clubfoot. Instead of a shoe he wore this horrible black boxlike affair on his bad foot. I don't know what his real name was but I'd heard him called
Ti Chevaux.
In French that means Little Horse, and he was about as big as a horse, too. I think he was slow-witted, to tell you the truth. Anyway, he shouted something and threw another tomato, and this one hit me square on the front of my school uniform jacket, right above the crest. That really made me mad.

“I was scared, too. There were half a dozen or so boys in that gang, and I was alone. But as scared as I was of
Ti Chevaux
, I was more scared of being thought a coward, or thinking myself one. So I did a stupid thing. I went back and challenged him to fight. Right there in front of his gang.”

“Oh, boy, Nat. That
was
stupid, if I do say so. And he cleaned your clock, right? This
Ti
got you down and put that big black box to you and that's why you don't want to fight Frenchy.”

Nat shook his head impatiently. “Stop interrupting, Kinneson. Of course he didn't clean my clock. Didn't I tell you Dad had taught me to box? He was a heavyweight Olympic boxer, in case you didn't know, and he saw to it I could use my hands, too. He said the time would probably come when I'd need to. And I figured this was the time so I mopped up the street with that boy. The problem was, he just wouldn't quit. Every time I knocked him down he got back up and came at me again, kicking and punching and roaring, with that gang of his yelling
‘Ti! Ti! Ti!'
to spur him on, don't you know. Finally a policeman came along and stopped it, but that was after I'd broken the boy's nose and shut one eye and done who knows what other damage to the poor devil.”

“So why don't you just clean Frenchy's clock too, then? I don't understand, Nat.”

“I haven't told you the worst part.”

“What, did the cop take you home to your grandmother?”

“No, he didn't seem to mind seeing
Ti
get his comeuppance. The worst part was that I
enjoyed
beating that boy. I
wanted
him to keep getting up so I could keep hitting him. I wanted to put him in hospital, or worse. It didn't matter to me that he was crippled or slow-witted or what. I was like . . . like an animal. It was as though I was taking out all my frustrations on that poor chap—all the times I'd been called a name and my mother's death and Dad's being away and everything. Afterwards I told Gram and she made me promise I'd never fight again. I was very willing to promise, too, because after I'd had a chance to think about it, the one I was really most scared of was myself. Now do you see why I won't fight Frenchy?”

I nodded. But at the time, all I understood for certain was that Nat Andrews was my friend and his life had been infinitely more complicated and difficult than mine, and I had been too quick, far too quick, to assume that because I would react a certain way in a certain situation, he should react the same way.

“I'm tired, Kinneson. I'd like for you to go home now. No more explanations. No more stories from the dark past. Just go home and keep your mouth shut, if that's remotely possible.”

 

Running hard, I swerved into the lane between the hotel and the commission sales barn, past Bumper Stevens' Cadillac and dark cattle truck, into forbidden precincts, where men traded cattle, as they had done for a hundred years, told obscene jokes, and gambled late at night, where, it was darkly rumored, whole farms had sometimes changed hands over the turn of a card; where, when the place was otherwise empty, town boys sometimes took “wild” girls; where (I would learn later) certain poor women outcasts had actually been auctioned off for the night, like cattle, to the highest bidder after the regular sale ended; and where Frenchy LaMott had grown up brawling with anyone who would fight him in the ring while the after-hours crowd bet on winners, exactly as they did on Resolvèd's cockfights.

To the right and left, penned calves bleated continually. From somewhere in the barn's recesses, a bull roared. Fleeting thoughts of Ordney Gilson and that fateful New Year's Eve murder crossed my mind.

A single lighted bulb hung at the end of the aisle that sloped toward the auction ring. It was slick as ice from cattle urine and manure and I skidded and nearly fell. I kept running, knowing that if I paused for so much as a second I would lose my nerve.

Murmuring voices. Dark bulky forms crowded around a wooden ring. The smells of whiskey and tobacco. Older town boys, some I didn't know by name, sprawled in the rickety bleachers. And lounging shirtless in his filthy jeans and battered engineer boots on a hay bale in the ring, his dark shaggy hair hanging over his eyes, was Frenchy LaMott.

As I vaulted over the wooden sideboards he stood up. “So where you monkey pal, Kin—”

I never stopped. It was absolutely essential that I get in the first one or two punches if I was to punch at all. But instead of hitting Frenchy LaMott I surprised both him and myself by lowering my head like a ram and butting him right in the pit of the stomach. To my astonishment, I knocked him over the hay bale and up against the slats at the rear of the ring. I must have knocked his breath out, too, although he was still half-standing, he was bent over gasping and grabbing his stomach. Here was my golden opportunity.

I hit him just once, squarely on the nose. I swung again, a wild haymaker, but he had already covered his head with his forearms. The second punch glanced off his bony elbows and stung my hand. Then he was swarming all over me, punching, kicking, kneeing, fighting the way he had fought far bigger and stronger boys from the time he was eight or nine years old and Bumper first put him in the ring.

Blood was everywhere; some was Frenchy's, most was mine. I fell backward over the bale and tried to roll away. There was no place to go. Frenchy was driving his steel-toed engineer boots into my arms and legs. I rolled into a corner, and he had me at his mercy. I actually thought he might kill me.

“GET OFF HIM.”

Through the blood on my face I caught a glimpse of a yellow shirt and black baseball pants. The fearful kicking stopped.

“What the hell's going on here?” Charlie roared.

He was holding Frenchy with one hand by the back of the neck, and as big a boy as Frenchy was, he looked like a puppet thrashing in my brother's grip.

Bumper Stevens said, “Just a couple of young bucks duking it out, Charlie. Nothing serious.”

“Bullshit!” Charlie said.

“Go wash up,” he told Frenchy, and half threw him toward the gate in the ring. He pulled me to my feet and turned to face the crowd of older boys and men in the grandstand.

“If this is your idea of a good time, you're all bent. Pitting two kids against each other gives you your thrills? I can't believe it!”

He paused, spat into the straw and manure at our feet, then turned back and roared, “All right, assholes. You want to see a fight? I'll take on any three of you. Come on,” my brother said coaxingly, ominously, beckoning with his finger. “How about you, Stevens? You haven't had your jaw broken yet this month. Pick any two of these rummies to bring in with you. Pick three or four.”

“We don't want no trouble with you, Charlie K,” Bumper said. “Settle down, now. No call to get all het up with your own good friends and gentle neighbors.”

“No,” Charlie said, “let's get along with our own good friends and gentle neighbors and just persecute strangers, especially if they aren't the same color we are, right, Bumper?”

Charlie whirled back to point at the retreating figures in the grandstand, now clearing out like Athena Allen's eighth graders on Friday afternoon.

My brother spat again in disgust and called after them, “If I ever hear of any of you bothering my brother or any of his friends, including the Andrews, in any way at all, or putting young LaMott or anyone else up to bothering them, you won't travel so far that I won't find you. Then you know who I'll be defending over in that courthouse? Myself, that's who, for aggravated assault with two deadly weapons. These two.”

Charlie held up his fists, but by now the grandstand was empty.

He looked at me and grinned. “Come on, Sugar Ray,” he said. “Let's go get you cleaned up.”

 

“Hi, sweetie,” Charlie said into the phone. “Jimmy got in a little fracas with another kid tonight. He needs some motherly medical attention.”

Charlie looked over at me, sitting at his cluttered kitchen table with an ice pack over my left eye, and winked as he listened to Athena's reply. “It won't take three minutes, hon. Just to check and make sure he doesn't have any broken bones or loose teeth.”