by John Jakes
“If you like it, help yourself,” said the boy addressed as Oral; he was the Negro. “He won’t fuss. He’s sleepin’.”
Charles’s eyes flew open. One of the townies yelped. Charles used the distraction to draw his right leg up in an inverted V so that his boot was within reach. The boot in which he hid the bowie knife.
“Afraid you’re wrong on both counts,” he said with a broad smile. Billy gazed down at the top of Charles’s head, at long hair ruffled by the wind. He didn’t miss the casual way Charles laid his right hand on his knee, a few inches above his boot top.
“Damn if he don’t sound like a Southron,” a towheaded townie said. He nudged the black. “Bet he’s one of them boys that whups your kinfolk down in Georgia.”
“Yeah, I bet he is,” Oral said. His eyes were ugly. “We’re takin’ them fishing things.”
Still smiling, Charles clasped his right hand lightly around the upper part of his calf. “It would be a serious mistake to do that, boys.”
“Oh, yes?” Oral sneered. “It’s four on one.” He bent at the waist, reaching for Charles’s big wicker creel. Suddenly the towhead spotted the other rod leaning against the trunk.
“Lookit, Oral. They’s two poles. Why would he have two?”
Oral was so eager to claim Charles’s things he ignored the anxious note in his friend’s voice. The other two townies began to look around the orchard in a puzzled way. Slowly and silently, Billy straightened his left leg, never taking his eyes from Charles’s right hand. When Charles grabbed for the top of his boot and rolled, Billy jumped.
“Jesus Almighty,” Towhead screamed, a second before Billy’s heavy walking boots struck his shoulders.
Bone cracked. Towhead went tumbling backward into the hedge. Crouching, Charles moved his right hand slowly. Oral watched the point of Charles’s knife trace a circle in the air. The black youth began to perspire.
“Now, sir,” Charles said to Oral. “Is it all Southerners you dislike? Or just Southerners who can’t abide thieves?”
By then Billy had gained his feet. For a few moments he had lost track of the other two townies. He found them suddenly, as shadows that leaped across the grass. The townies came racing at Charles from the rear, each swinging a piece of tree limb snatched from the ground.
“Behind you!” Billy yelled.
Charles started to pivot. The nearest townie bashed the side of his head. The limb was rotten and flew into half a dozen pieces. But the blow dazed Charles, knocking him against Oral, who plucked the bowie knife out of his hand with no effort. Oral’s eyes slitted down. He smirked, sidestepped, grabbed the back of Charles’s collar, and with his other hand stabbed the bowie toward Charles’s face.
Terrified, Billy launched himself through the air. He hit Oral’s legs. The knife missed Charles’s cheek by half an inch.
Billy grappled Oral to the ground. Charles seized the nearest weapon, his fishing pole, and flicked the line at the other two townies who were charging again. Towhead brandished a sharp rock.
The flying fishhook struck a roll of flesh at the nape of Towhead’s neck. Charles pulled back on the pole with a snap of his wrist while braking the line with his thumb. The hook buried itself. Towhead shrieked.
Billy, meantime, was rolling back and forth while Oral knelt on his chest. Oral was tough, strong, and determined to cut him. Billy slammed his head to the right an instant before the knife speared the ground close to his left ear.
“You white fucker,” Oral breathed. He pushed his knee into Billy’s groin.
Billy’s lower body exploded with pain. The pain slowed his responses. He knew he’d never be able to dodge the next slash. Oral raised the knife slowly, almost like some pagan priest with a sacrificial offering.
Sunlight flared on the big blade. Then suddenly the knife disappeared from Oral’s hand. His mouth flew open. He fell sideways into the grass, writhing. Charles gracefully plucked out the knife which he had driven into the back of Oral’s right thigh.
Even breathing hard, Charles seemed calm, perfectly in control, as he gave the townies a big, cold grin. “Boys, you better run before we kill you. And if you should see my friend or me on the streets of Newport, turn and go the other way or this’ll be just a sampler.”
He put his right boot up on a stump and rested his elbows on his knee. The uninjured townie dragged Oral toward the hedge, leaving red swaths in the grass.
Billy used his own knife to cut the fishing line. The other two townies slunk away. The one with the hook still in him, Towhead, looked back once with awe from the break in the hedge.
Charles waved the bowie so that it flashed in the sun. “Get!”
Towhead vanished.
Only then did Billy exhale. Shoulders sagging, he sprawled in the grass. “Why in the hell did they pick a fight?”
“’Cause I had a pole and creel they wanted. ’Cause they didn’t like my speech or place of origin—” He shrugged. “There’s just no accounting for human cussedness, I’ve found. Anyway, we got through it. I’d say we make a pretty good pair of fighters. Many thanks for your timely assistance, Mr. Hazard.”
Billy’s smile was less assured than that of his companion. “Think nothing of it, Mr. Main. I just wish I had your style. I was scared to death.”
“Think I wasn’t? My guts felt like a pan of water.”
“You surely didn’t show it.”
“Good. If you don’t show the other party how you feel, it gets ’em fidgety, so they make mistakes. Orry taught me that.”
“Maybe I should take a few lessons,” Billy said as they gathered their things.
“But you’d have to explain why you wanted them.” Charles’s grin was fading. “Personally, I’d like to keep quiet about this little mess. Orry and Aunt Clarissa and Uncle Tillet think I’ve gotten over this kind of scrapping. I’d just as soon preserve the illusion.” He stuck out his hand. “Bargain?”
“Sure.”
Billy clasped the offered hand to seal the bond of secrecy. For the first time, he felt Charles Main was his friend.
As it turned out, however, the fight didn’t remain a secret.
A couple of days later, Ashton and her sister went to the beach to wade in the surf. Charles and Billy were offshore in the skiff. Presently the wind died. They beached the boat. Charles lay down to nap.
Ashton was some distance away, resting in a wicker chair under a large striped parasol. She wore a summer frock of light lilac material which the sea breeze pressed against her maturing breasts. The effect was so provocative that Billy had to look the other way.
He thought of Ashton almost constantly. In his fantasies she was always nude. The summer seemed to encourage such visions. Here they were, two young men and two young girls, unchaperoned, sharing the same bit of beach.
Billy didn’t consider that circumstance accidental. Pesty Brett followed him everywhere. She had probably teased and wheedled her sister into accompanying her to the beach. Alas, Ashton had no interest in Billy. Most of the time she behaved as if he didn’t exist.
He knelt and began building a castle. He dripped watery sand from his clenched fist to form spires. He had been at it ten minutes when a shadow fell across the intricate towers and ramparts. There stood Brett, twisting one of her pigtails back and forth.
“Hello, Billy.”
“Oh, hello.”
She was pretty enough, he supposed, though it was impossible to overlook her freckles which the summer sun had a way of darkening. Because she was so young, she was flat as a board in front. But those weren’t the only things about her that bothered him.
“I heard you were fighting,” she said.
His hand jerked and toppled a spire. “Who told you that?”
“Yesterday I went to the store for some licorice. I heard a boy telling about two bullies who attacked him the other day.”
“Did you know the boy?”
Brett shook her head.
“What did he look like?”
&
nbsp; “He had yellow hair. Pale, almost white. There was a dirty bandage on the back of his neck.” She touched the approximate position at which Charles had sunk the hook into Towhead.
“Go on.”
“I stood looking at the candy jars till he finished his story. He said the bullies were summer people. When he described them, I decided he was talking about you and Charles.”
Billy glanced past her. Ashton was still resting, paying no attention. Damn.
“You must be mistaken, Brett.”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t bite my head off! It was you, all right.” She stared at him in an earnest way. It annoyed him and made him uneasy. “You’ll get hurt if you hang around Cousin Charles,” she went on. “I know he’s handsome and fun, but he’s too fond of fighting. He’s a bad influence.”
Billy scowled. “Are you always so damn free with your opinions?”
“You shouldn’t swear, either.”
He jumped up and kicked the castle apart. “If I want your advice, I’ll ask. Meantime, don’t say anything bad about Charles. He’s my friend.”
Bewildered, she watched him storm away, kicking more sand. “I was only trying to help you. I just wanted to tell you honestly—”
The sentence died unfinished. She twisted her pigtail so hard it hurt. Billy misunderstood her every word and action. He didn’t realize her pursuit of him was adoration, her warnings expressions of concern. Just like all other boys, he was unable to deal with a girl who spoke her true mind.
Oh, she knew she was often too tart with him, but that was the result of being nervous. Of feeling a longing and lacking the experience to express it. Why couldn’t he look beyond the words and into her eyes, her soul? Discover what it was that she thought about every moment of the day and wept over every night? Why couldn’t he see?
She watched him slow down as he approached the big striped parasol. She knew the answer to all her desperate questions. Billy couldn’t see her because of Ashton.
Ashton was expert at handling any boy. She dimpled and lowered her lashes in that coy way of hers, and the boy melted. She always agreed with the boy’s opinion, and if she truly wanted something from him, she got it so sweetly and skillfully he never suspected he had been manipulated.
She had one other, immense advantage. She was older, already a woman.
Angry at Billy, but more angry at herself, Brett spun and marched up the beach in the other direction. She raised a palm and pressed it against her hatefully flat bosom. She pressed hard, until there was pain.
Oh, Billy, Billy, she thought. You’ll never see what I really am. Or how much I love you.
Ashton had awakened while Billy was still talking to her sister. She knew Brett worshiped Billy, but she had never seen the younger girl speak to him so directly or with such obvious emotion. Even from a distance, the imploring look on Brett’s face was evident.
Hopeless little ninny, Ashton thought. Brett had no idea of the meaning of the word love. Ashton did, three times over. But on none of those occasions had her lover been that slug Huntoon.
The first time had been terrifying, the second less so. Neither time had she derived any physical satisfaction from her partner, a young man from the Smith family who was about her own age and plainly inexperienced. Not that experience mattered; her fright coupled with her curiosity kept her tense and unresponsive.
She felt sure her failure to feel anything was the boy’s fault. She had heard whispered remarks from girls in her set who were just a bit older, and every such remark hinted at the intense delight of lovemaking. The third time proved the other girls were right; the experience was a revelation.
It had happened one dark, wet day in Charleston. Just as twilight was settling and a thundershower ending, Ashton had slipped off by herself. The streets were virtually deserted.
The man she chanced to encounter was a sailor, rough-spoken and a good fifteen years older. They walked awhile. Then, with great anticipation, yet great trepidation too, she agreed to accompany him to a dingy riverfront inn. She was mindful that she could still be recognized—undone—at any moment. Yet she was so overcome with wicked excitement that turning back was out of the question.
A block from the inn, the rain began again, soaking her bonnet. She stopped to remove it and examine her reflection in the window of a seamy shop.
The merchandise displayed in the window was junk, even including the plated locket and chain on which her eye fell. The sailor was impatient, and in an instant she decided to test the level of that impatience. She indicated the locket and chain, and with sweet, circuitous language made clear that the trinkets were the price of her favors. The sailor shot into the shop with scarcely a hesitation. Thus Ashton discovered the power of the sexual appetite to motivate a man.
Having learned such a valuable lesson, it was then an added pleasure to disrobe for the sailor in his sordid rented room and to find herself hardly frightened at all but rather damp and trembling with expectancy as he undid his trousers and showed his machine. It was immense; a spasm shook her at the sight of it. Before long, alternately groaning and blaspheming, she was stunned by a succession of spasms, each more violent than the one before.
No one had adequately prepared her for such pleasure. Not only was this act of great practical use, it was something to be enjoyed—voraciously. The two lessons together were almost more than she could bear. She soon threw the locket and chain away, but she was happy for days.
Because of this background of experience, Ashton pitied her skinny, naive little sister. Yet now she suddenly found herself jealous of Brett, too. Ashton didn’t care a fig for Billy Hazard. But she expected every young man who met her to worship her and no one else. Even though she didn’t consider Brett a serious rival, rivalry of any kind had already become unacceptable to her; rivalry from her sister was unthinkable. So when Billy came tramping back up the shore, kicking sand every which way, Ashton was alert and smiling her sweetest smile.
She called his name and waved. In seconds he was on his knees beside her. “I thought you were resting,” he said.
“Resting for very long is boring. We’ve had so little chance to become acquainted. Won’t you sit and chat?”
“Yes. Surely. Of course!”
His pliability amused her. But he was rather good-looking, in a burly, bullish way. Perhaps she would do more than just keep him away from Brett.
A week later, on the skiff, Charles said to Billy, “Noticed you strolling with cousin Ashton again last night. Saw you heading down Beach Road. Can’t imagine what you find so fascinating there—unless it’s an absence of human habitation.”
Billy laughed. “Habitation. That’s a real five-dollar word.”
Charles leaned over the transom and drifted a hand in the water. “Last year I’d never even heard of it. But you can’t be an ignoramus and attend the Academy.” He grinned. “You surely did a smooth job of changing the subject. Tell you one thing about Ashton. I never thought she’d take a fancy to a Yankee.”
They came about as lightning forked in the belly of some thunderclouds far out at sea. The chance remark about Yankees led them into a conversation about the issues their elders discussed frequently. The start of the exchange was friendly enough, but both boys were soon speaking with the intensity typical of their age.
“The thing is,” Charles said, “the rights of a state are supreme.”
“Over those of the Union?”
“Absolutely. The Union was created by the consent of the separate states. Any state can withdraw that consent whenever it wishes.”
“No, Charles, it’s a legal contract. And unless there’s a specific part of the contract—”
“Clause.”
“All right, clause. Unless there’s a clause that describes a method for voiding the contract—”
“Now who’s using fancy words?”
“Let me finish,” Billy said, with a scowl. “A contract can’t be broken legally unless the contract provides for it. In
the case of the Union, it doesn’t.”
“You sound like a regular Philadelphia lawyer. We’re not talking about an agreement between a couple of peddlers. It’s a compact between government and the governed. It’s altogether different. I maintain that any state has the right to withdraw at any time.”
The sail began to flap. As Billy corrected their course, he growled, “That would lead to chaos.”
“No, sir—just to an end of a Union grown tyrannical. There’s another dandy word for your collection.”
He fairly spat the remark into the wind; Billy couldn’t recall seeing his friend so tense or humorless. He tried to lighten things by smiling and saying:
“George told me that you Southerners love argument. He’s surely right.”
“It’s liberty Southerners love,” Charles retorted. “And they love it too much to see it whittled away to nothing.”
Offshore, thunder resounded like cannon fire. Billy’s lips compressed and lost color. Charles’s taunt had abruptly made him angry.
“You’re speaking of the liberty of white men, of course.”
Billy knew he had overstepped. Yet he was damned if he’d back off. Charles glared and started to reply. Then he noticed white combers beginning to break about a mile off their bow. While they argued, the dark clouds had blown in on a rising nor’east wind.
“Storm coming,” Charles muttered. “We’d better head for shore.”
“I agree.”
They were curt with each other the rest of the day. Neither apologized, but neither continued the unresolved argument. They simply let it fade as it would. Gradually, good feelings returned. But in those moments when Billy’s mind was free of visions of Ashton, he recalled the scene and was amazed at how close he and Charles had come to shouting at one another. A couple of years ago he had laughed whenever members of his family got into windy disputes about national issues. Now he found himself pondering the same issues and taking sides.