River Girl by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

I’ll show the chippy!” he yelled, swinging the table at me again. I was down on my knees with my left arm numb, and I lunged at his legs, hitting him low and taking him off balance. He came down, and the two of us and the table rolled in a pile on the floor. I could hear the table give up the ghost as one of us rolled over it and the legs started caving in. He landed a big fist on the side of my head and made it ring. I slid clear of the tangle and got to my feet before he did, and as he tried to scramble up he was wide open for a second. I got my feet set and swung, catching him under the jaw, and his feet slid out from under him. He bounced up, too insane with fury to realize he was leaving himself open in exactly the same way he had the first time, and I hit him again. We went through the whole, identical procedure two more times before he finally quit and lay there on the door.
    “I’ll kill her! I’ll get her!” he was saying over and over and beginning to cry.
    I was winded and my left arm felt as if a car had run over it. I had to lean against the wall to steady myself while I fought for breath. He sat up, still crying, and I kicked the wrecked table out of his reach. “Sit right where you are,” I said. He had his chin down on his chest and the big shoulders shook with the silent retching of his sobs. I felt sorry for him even if he had tried to brain me with the table, and wondered what the girl had done to him.
    “Where are this guy’s clothes?” I called out, and looked behind me. Abbie was coming back up the stairs again. Apparently she’d run down when he floored me with the table.
    “Get his clothes,” I said.
    She was still waving the gin bottle as if she had forgotten she had it. “Jesus, I don’t know where his lousy clothes are,” she began, when suddenly one of the doors opened.
    It looked like a sequence out of a movie comedy. The door flew open apparently of its own volition and a pair of blue serge trousers sailed out to land in the middle of the hall. A shirt followed it, then two shoes at once, and a tie. Just for an instant, the white, staring face of a girl appeared around the frame and then ducked back inside and the door slammed. She hadn’t said a word. That’s odd, I was conscious of thinking; he’s trying to beat up this girl, but his clothes are in another girl’s room. He must not have been with this one at all.
    I picked up the clothes and tossed them to the boy. Now that I had time to get a good look at him, I saw he was a big blond kid who needed a haircut and that there wasn’t anything vicious about his face.
    “Put these on,” I said. “You going to behave yourself?”
    “All right,” he mumbled. “Ain’t no use fightin’ laws.”
    “You took a hell of a long time finding it out,” I grumbled, but glad he was getting some sense at last I could still hear the girl inside the room cursing obscenely and shrilly with the monotonous repetition of a phonograph record with the needle stuck. Afraid she would get him started again, I stepped over and stuck my head in through the smashed panel.
    “Pipe down,” I said. Then I saw her, and began to feel scared for the first time. She was sitting on the bed in a sleazy-looking kimono with her blonde hair rumpled as if she’d just got up, and if she was a day over sixteen, I was sixty.

Six
    She saw me. “Who the hell are you?”
    “Never mind,” I said. “Just stop that noise.”
    “Why, you jerk!”
    I heard the boy behind me and turned around. He was putting on his clothes, stuffing the shirttail inside his trousers. He had quit crying, but his face was white and trembling and I could still see that wild look in his eyes.
    “Move down the hall,” I said, trying to get him out of earshot of the girl. “Then put your shoes on. We’re going for a ride.”
    He looked for an instant as if he wanted to jump me again, then he thought better of it and walked down toward the stairway.
    “What are you going to