The Feud by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online

young kid they would never let me forget it.” He didn’t want to look at her too closely, being under such surveillance, so he turned his head toward the dance floor, where the couples were gliding to the slow music that would have suited him.
    Eva was not quick to reply. When she did finally speak, it was terribly stark. “All right.” She walked away. He felt horrible but did not even have the courage to watch where she went.
    Instead he came back to the two lousy guys. “My cousin,” he said. “That was what I was supposed to do over here: give her father a message for my dad.”
    Plunkett and Hines, who ordinarily would have hooted derisively as he returned to them, had been cautious now, owing to the earlier foot-in-the-mouth ( feet , if you counted Plunkett’s coarse announcement of Eva’s approach), and they received his explanation impassively.
    Then Hines said, “O.K., if you got your business all settled let’s go home. This town stinks.”
    So it had ended in the worst way that could be imagined, and once over the Hornbeck line, though they respected Tony’s person, Hines and Plunkett themselves traded punches and gooses and catcalls, and it was an eternity of misery before Tony could turn off at his house.
    The disaster had occurred in the middle of August, which by the calendar was only two months in the past, but in emotional time the summer had become almost remote. Tony had decided to wait until Eva grew up or at least was firmly established in high school. He had now just about determined that the moment would soon be ripe to submit a bid for forgiveness. Young girls must surely have short memories, and despite her extreme youth Eva seemed a generous and understanding person: that kind of character was almost ordained by her large breasts and round face and soft brown hair. Had she been a blonde, for example, or of an angular build, or with a long upper lip, he would have had no hope. But if she had been one of those, he would not have been likely to feel as he did, or to have betrayed her, or to have been in a position to do so.
    But everything had been changed by the disastrous episode involving his father in what he had to assume was her father’s hardware store.
    A heroic gesture was needed at this point. The situation had so deteriorated that only a desperate courage would do. Therefore, after rising from the dinner table early Sunday afternoon and letting it be known that he was heading for the matinee at the Hornbeck movie house, Tony instead kept going when he reached that theater and crossed over into Millville, en route to Eva’s home, if he could find it.
    Most people in Millville lived north of the business district, so after having walked past the establishments there, most of which were closed on the day of rest, with the exception of the only real restaurant in town, Tom’s, which had both a counter and a double line of booths (and in off hours was a hangout for high-school kids with their ten-cent orders of Coke-and-potato-chips, and therefore he looked through the windows to see if Eva might perchance be within), Tony wended northward and went a block or two past one- and two-story family houses, some of which had not yet taken in the porch swings for the winter, until he saw a kid of about twelve round the next corner and come in his direction. The boy wore a knitted cap and a green plaid lumber jacket.
    When the kid was about to pass him they exchanged hi’s, after which Tony said, “Hey, you know where the Bullards live?”
    “Sure,” the boy answered. “On Macklin Street. That’s it right up there. It’s about the middle of the block. You should find it easy, because there’s a lot of people coming and going on account of the fire.”
    “Fire?”
    “Their hardware store burnt down.”
    Tony was emotionally confused by this news. He felt even more of the kind of guilt which had been evoked by his father’s account of the quarrel—for the fact was that he