Authors: James Jones
“Come on, get up,” ’Bama said. “Help me, Hubie. Dave?”
Between them they got them separated and led both of them, jerking and pulling, around the side of the building into the parking lot between the bar and railroad, under the one single night-light. They were like two fighting cocks, struggling frantically to get away from their handlers, and when the men released them they both charged at a dead run, met chest on and rebounded, neither getting in a punch that landed, and then charged again. But this time, Dewey, instead of charging on in, met Raymond with a very professional left jab that snapped his head back; and from then on the pattern of the fight was set. Raymond would rush and Dewey would jab. Playing it cool, Dewey did not try to meet Raymond and fight him on the ground where Raymond’s strength was such an advantage. He would stand his ground and jab his brother as he rushed, stopping him, then driving him back with more jabs and sometimes a crossing right, and then Raymond would charge again. Raymond really had no choice. His punches were straight, not wild flailings, but Dewey was just too fast for him. Back and forth across the lot through the snow Raymond charged, Dewey jolting him with the jab and driving Raymond back. As the fight progressed, Raymond got madder and madder, while Dewey got happier and happier. It was a strange thing to watch his face as, grinning happily, he would talk to Raymond, almost lovingly, telling him to come on, come on Raymond, look out Raymond, you got me a good one then Raymond, all the time in a high-pitched almost wailing inflection of intense excitation which sounded almost crooning. And all the time dipping and bobbing and jabbing and crossing with whooshing rocketlike punches. That was the pattern. Dewey was the whiplike darting probing rapier; and Raymond was the sledgehammer, swinging in its own arc, tireless, its twenty-pound head whistling through the air with incredible power, which if it ever hit the rapier solidly would smash blade, handle, hilt and all to shatters, but which never did.
Dewey did not have the fight all his way by any means. More than once when the jab was insufficient to stop Raymond’s charge, the bigger man was able to get a bearlike hug on his lighter brother and throw him, himself landing on him heavily, and then would begin punching him resoundingly to the body, and punching his hands down while he tried to catch Dewey’s darting ever-moving head—and Dewey, laughing happily while his brother beat him in the ribs, would punch viciously back up at Raymond until, catlike, he was able to roll the heavier man and get back up. At least twice, Raymond was able to catch him with a wide right hook that knocked him completely off his feet. Then Raymond would fall on him. But gradually, the snapping left jab began to tell on Raymond, landing repeatedly on his face until his cheekbones began to swell, squeezing up against his eyes until they made him look like some kind of fat-faced Oriental. Dewey knocked Raymond down more than once, too; and whenever he did he would cheerfully dive on him in an effort to beat his head up and down on the cinders and hard-packed snow, until Raymond like some enraged bear would shuck him off and get back to his feet.
And so that was how they fought, their clothes gradually wettening from the snow, their knuckles beaten raw and dripping blood into the white snow which made Dave’s stomach squeamish with memories of blood on the snow at the Bulge.
In the falling snow which steadily thickened, the two brothers fought on, Dewey laughing and crooning crazily, Raymond merely growling stubbornly. Already there was an inch and a half of fresh snow compounded on top of the hard layer that the car wheels had packed down on the cinders; the brothers slid and rolled and scrambled through it, wet practically to the skin now, and clusters of white flakes lit on their dark heads and clung there, sparkling as the men moved under the light. And the cold spectators ringed them, shivering with chill but unwilling to go back inside and leave the show. That was the way it went, time itself lost in the quiet sinister falling snow, so that no one even was aware of how long it went on. And then finally, Raymond broke Dewey’s nose.
It was the first totally solid punch that Raymond landed, and even then it did not knock Dewey down as some other, less solid punches had done. Dewey was just throwing one of his whipping left jabs when Raymond, his eyes more slitted above his swollen cheekbones now, threw a hard right at precisely the same moment. It landed flush on the bobbing Dewey’s handsome nose, and you could hear the pop cartilage. The sledgehammer had finally landed. The blow stunned Dewey completely, and he backed off slowly, taking five or six other hard punches to the head in his befuddlement, before he could even think enough to turn away. Blood had begun to flow in a rushing stream from his nose, and he stood for a moment half-blinded and then turned and walked woozily over to the brick wall of the building and leaned his hands against it and leaned over and let the blood run on the ground.
That was when Dave got sick, and that was what it was that made him sick. The simple physical sight of the widening spot of red blood on the white snow. Like at the Bulge. With the gorge rising, and the snowflakes silently tickling his face, he quietly walked over to the wall off by himself, and vomited in a running, choking stream everything he had drunk that night and just about everything he had eaten that day. He had thought he was over all that; but it was like a signal key reaction, triggering an automatic counterreaction. He looked down the wall at Dewey and the widening red stain between his feet and turned back to the wall and retched again.
“What is it?” ’Bama said, coming over and putting his hand on Dave’s shoulder. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Dave said chokingly. “Be all right in a minute. It’s just the blood on the snow, that’s all.”
“Oh,” ’Bama said. “Yeah. Sure.” He continued to keep his hand there.
Hubie had gone over to Dewey and given him a handkerchief, which he pressed up against his nose; and Raymond had walked over up behind him.
“Well, you give up?” he said growlingly.
“Hell no, you big ox,” Dewey said from behind his handkerchief. It was already soaked. Hubie handed him another. In all he used up four of them, before he was done. “That was a beauty of a punch,” he said; “but you was just lucky.”
“Well, I guess I showed you war
is
sad,” Raymond said triumphantly. “I guess I proved it to you.”
“Go screw,” Dewey said muffledly. Then he laughed to himself. “War is
happy.”
“Well, are you gonna fight some more or ain’t you?” Raymond growled.
“Sure,” Dewey said. “In a minute. Are you in a big hurry?” He dropped the second soaked handkerchief, and took a fresh one from Hubie who had collected some from the spectators.
“Well, I ain’t got all night,” Raymond said. “I got things to do.”
“Horseshit,” Dewey said. “You ain’t had nothing to do since you got out of the damned Army. That’s what’s the matter with you.”
“Don’t worry about what’s the matter with me,” Raymond growled. “Worry about yourself.”
Dewey did not answer and accepted the fourth handkerchief from Hubie and pressed it against the base of his nose.
“Christ!” Hubie said. “I didn’t know you had that damned much blood in you even, Dewey.”
“Go screw yourself,” Dewey said. By the time the fourth handkerchief was just about soaked up, the bleeding had subsided to a thin but persistent trickle. “Well, I guess it ain’t going to quit entirely,” Dewey said, standing up. He dropped the fourth handkerchief down with the others. “Well, come on, Raymond. Are you ready, you big oaf?” he said, moving out into the area.
“You damned right,” Raymond said, and charged. “I’ll hit you on your damned nose again, damn you.”
“How much you want to bet?” Dewey laughed. He met the charge with a stinging left jab to Raymond’s right cheekbone and followed it up with a right to Raymond’s left cheekbone. “I bet you don’t hit me on the nose before I shut up both your eyes,” he said, and that was what he proceeded to do. Jabbing and crossing, he battered Raymond’s face in an almost infinite series of identical combinations: left jab and right cross; and Raymond’s puffing cheekbones continued to swell up tightly against his eyes. The persistent trickle continued to run down over Dewey’s lip and he would blow it out with his mouth so it wouldn’t get in his throat, spattering Raymond with red droplets, until Raymond finally complained about it.
“What the hell’re you tryin to do?” he growled. “Blind me with blood?”
Dewey did not fight as ecstatically now as he had before, but more seriously. But he was nevertheless grinning happily. Methodically, he worked on Raymond’s eyes, while Raymond—getting desperate now—rushed and rerushed trying to land another hard punch on Dewey’s nose.
“My God,” Dave said to Hubie; “do they always fight like this?” He had come back to the ring of spectators, carefully keeping his back to the big stain of blood and handkerchiefs against the wall. He was beginning to get his old Walpurgis Night feeling again, although this time he was sober.
“Hell!” Hubie said. “Sure they always fight like this. That’s why they only do it two or three times a year.”
Dewey was steadily closing Raymond’s eyes now, and could hit him almost at will. He would dart in and punch his brother, while Raymond whose eyes were no more than mere slits now, would strike out wildly.
“I could whip you, goddam you,” he growled, “if I could only see where you was.”
“Pretty soon you won’t be able to see at all,” Dewey laughed. “You better give up.”
“No, by God. Just don’t let me get hold of you,” Raymond said. “War
is
sad,” he added thickly, as if this were the only thought left in his mind now.
“You better give up,” Dewey said again, and skipped in and threw a whooshing right hook which landed wallopingly on the side of Raymond’s head and staggered him.
“You can’t knock me out,” Raymond said through his thick lips. “You never could knock me out.”
“You better give up?” Dewey laughed, and staggered him again and skipped back away. They went through several more sequences like this, Dewey slipping in and rocking him. And nobody seemed to have any thought of stopping it—as if everybody knew beforehand that neither Raymond nor Dewey would want or allow them to. Finally, after his younger brother staggered him again, Raymond came to a stop, glaring around wildly through what to him must have appeared as a wet rain forest of eyelashes.
“All right, I give up,” he said heavily, and with a great reluctance. “There ain’t no point in tryin to go on fightin you when I can’t see you, you son of a bitch.”
“Fair enough,” Dewey said, and went over to him, not angry, not triumphant, not anything. He slapped his brother on the back and put his arm around him. Raymond put his own arm around Dewey—and then suddenly raised his right arm, its barked fist clamped tight shut into a hammerhead, to smash him again on the broken nose. But ’Bama, who knew the ways of Raymond well, was already there and grabbed his arm from behind.
“Come on now, Raymond,” he said. “The fight’s over.”
“Okay,” Raymond said, and laughed out of his battered-up face. “Just a joke.” He put his other arm around his brother. “No hard feelins, hunh, Dewey?”
“Hell no, Raymond,” Dewey said. “No hard feelings. You know that.”
And suddenly, everything seemed to have stopped, and the two brothers stood in the center of the churned-up snowfield, crystals of it gleaming from their hair, each with an arm around the other and grinning, like two professional prizefighters posing for an after-the-fight picture. The ring of spectators began to break up and go back inside, looking sheepish and ashamed for having enjoyed the mayhem.
“We’re both of us a mess,” Dewey said cheerfully. “Let’s go down to Dave’s and ’Bama’s and get ourselves cleaned up.”
“Okay; fine,” Raymond said. “Hubie, where’s my jacket? You show me the way to the car,” he said to Dewey.
But before they could even get started, the single Parkman City police car rolled into the parking lot alongside the railroad.
“Oh-oh,” ’Bama said.
The door with the big gold-and-black star painted on it, opened up and out of it climbed a slow chunky man in a uniform. And such a uniform. On his head, the man wore a dark blue Russian-winter-type cap with a light blue fur earpiece and bill turned up all around. His dark blue mackinaw he wore with its collar turned down very properly although it was cold. His leather gloves were black. And below the mackinaw, light blue breeches with a dark blue stripe down their sides tapered into black leather puttees and black paratrooper boots. A wide black leather Sam Browne belt went around the man’s waist over the mackinaw, and on it were: a gleaming black holster containing a big Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum; a gleaming black cartridge holder; a gleaming black handcuff holster; another gleaming black handcuff holster; and a gleaming black holster for a sap. On the mackinaw’s breast, of course, was the bright gold star of the chief of Parkman Police. He walked over to them slowly.
That Smitty would have called him out was unthinkable. And none of the spectators would have gone and called him, certainly not from inside Smitty’s bar. There were no houses nearby, so the fight could not have waked anybody. All the other businesses in the little business section had long been closed. The only answer was obviously that he had been out cruising. There was nobody else with him. The five men stood and waited for him.
“Hello, Sherm,” ’Bama said.
“Hello, ’Bama,” Sherm Ruedy said levelly, but it was obvious he did not relish being called by his first name. “Looks like you boys might have been having a fight,” he said, looking around at the evidence.
“Just a friendly little altercation,” ’Bama said pleasantly.
“What about?”
“As a matter of fact, it was an argument about whether war is sad or happy, Sherm,” ’Bama said.
Slowly, the police chief turned his head to look at ’Bama as though he might be being made fun of. “Sounds like an awful little argument for such a lot of fight,” he said looking over at the handkerchiefs and blood stain against the wall. He was only about a year or two older than ’Bama or Dave.