The Feud by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online Page A

suspected it had been his father’s fault. He was all too familiar with his old man’s tendency to act in a way that was disagreeable to certain people. But on the other hand the fire could be seen as a useful distraction. By contrast the incident involving his father and Eva’s relatives might already have faded from the Bullards’ consciousness, occupied as it must be with the major disaster. Things might actually be better for him now that things had gone bad for the Bullards.
    “I’ll seeya,” Tony told the kid, and went on. He turned the corner and walked about halfway down the block, and not seeing any house at which crowds were coming and going as predicted, he continued on to the next corner and was standing there in a quandary when a man came along.
    “Say,” Tony said, “you don’t know where—”
    “A lad your age addresses me as ‘sir,’ “ said the man. “And, by God, you say ‘please’ when you ask something of me.”
    “Well, can you please tell me—”
    “ Sir !”
    “ Sir , I’m looking for the Bullard residence.”
    The man squinted at him. He was smaller than Tony and of a skinny build. “It might interest you to know,” he said in a menacing manner, “that I am connected with that family, and I look out for them. You got that straight? Now what’s your name?”
    “Anton.”
    The man squinted again. “What’s your first name? You some kinda foreigner?”
    “That is the first,” said Tony. “I think it’s from some book my mother read one time. We’re Americans.”
    The man gestured with twitching fingers, as if in reference to money. “Let’s have the last name.”
    Tony had been postponing this information as long as possible, should this Bullard have heard about the quarrel. But now that the moment had come, he saw no reason why he should not be proud, maybe even defiant. His dad might have caused that run-in, and he himself might be somewhat warped in being interested in so young a girl as Eva, but his family was not shameful.
    “It’s Beeler.”
    The man nodded and at first spoke calmly enough. “Uh-huh. You wouldn’t be from over in Hornbeck, wouldja? … Uh-huh…. I’m taking this nice and careful, see.” He said this as if to himself. “You wouldn’t be related to a heavyset gent what comes over and trades in the hardware, which is now burned to the ground?”
    Tony lowered his eyes and nodded. This wasn’t going well, but he didn’t see how bad the situation had become until he looked up. The man had pulled a pistol on him.

CHAPTER 3
    Looky here who I caught sneaking around outside,” said the man, having pushed Tony into the Bullard living room ahead of himself. He had holstered his gun as he crossed the porch. He had no need of it in a room filled with his own crowd.
    The people there stared dumbly at Tony. They were all strangers to him. Though residents of the neighboring town, they could have been Frenchmen for all he had in common with them at that moment.
    “Here’s your firebug,” said the man. “If it wasn’t his dad.”
    The nearest person to Tony was a heavyset middle-aged woman, seated at the end of the sofa. She was eating a piece of cake from a plate on her lap. A card table had been erected farther along the couch, but it was too far for her to reach without rising, and her coffee cup sat on the floor near the left heel of her stout shoes. She looked blankly at Tony and then forked up a morsel of cake and deposited it in her mouth.
    The man peered around the room with his angry eyes. “Where’s Bud?”
    Someone said, “I don’t know. He was here a while ago.” And a man said, “Maybe down cellar.”
    “All right, you,” his captor growled at Tony, whose wrist he clasped with bony fingers that felt like handcuffs. “Just you get marching, and remember: your life ain’t worth a plugged nickel if you get smart.”
    “Yessir,” Tony said readily. He wondered what Eva would think, if she were there, when she saw him being