The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell Read Free Book Online

stopped directly in front of Spud. One foot was on a pedal, the other resting on the sidewalk. “I don’t like your attitude,” he said.
    Spud cleared his throat and spat carefully, so that it just missed the front wheel of the blond boy’s bicycle. The wheel was withdrawn a few inches.
    “You looking for trouble?”
    “If I saw some,” Spud said, “I don’t know as I’d get up and walk away from it.”
    They were in position now, their moves as fixed and formal as the sexual dancing of savages.
    “Because if you’re really looking for trouble,” the blond boy said, “I’d be only too happy to beat the shit out of you.”
    “You and how many other Swedes?”
    That did it apparently, for the blond boy let go of his bicycle, which fell with a clatter, and Spud rose from the bench to meet him. They stood sizing each other up. The blond boy was taller than Spud, thicker through the waist, and larger boned. They each waited for the sudden twitch, the false movement which would release their arms and set them slugging at one another. They could not fight until the willingness to fight, rising inside them like mercury in a glass, reached a certain point; and that, rather than what they said or did or any ability to discriminate between a disparaging remark which could with dignity be allowed to pass and an insult which must be challenged if one is to maintain honor, cast the decision.
    “There’s a better place over there,” the blond boy said, pointing to a dark clump of shrubbery.
    “Okay,” Spud said.
    They walked into an open space among the bushes, took off their coats, their ties, unbuttoned their shirt collars, and rolled up their sleeves as if they were about to inspect each other’s vaccination marks. There was a moment when they stood helplessly. Then the mercury began to rise again. The blond boy tossed the hair out of his eyes and shifted his balance, and Spud knew as definitely as if it had been announced over the radio what was coming. He ducked just in time.
    No longer was it necessary to imagine two bohunks waiting under the elevated. He had an enemy now, a flesh and blood Swede with a cruel mouth and murder in his pale blue eyes. The Swede got through Spud’s guard and landed one on the end of his chin. It only made Spud feel stronger, more sure of himself. All the rancor against his father for uprooting him, all his homesickness, his fear of Miss Frank’s sarcasm, his contempt for the dressy boys who sat around him in the classrooms at school, his dislike for girls who painted their faces and for the other kind who knew their lessons and were superior, his resentment at being almost but not quite poor, at having to go through his sister’s bedroom to get to his own—everything flowed out through his fists. At each impact he was delivered of some part of his accumulated misery and he began to feel larger than life size.

10
    J anet Martin with her hair in curlers and her face scrubbed clean of rouge and powder and lipstick was not so different from her sister Elsa, after all. In the dark they talked across thenarrow space that separated their two beds, and yawned, and broke the sudden silences with more talk. Their voices grew drowsy and the things they had to say to each other more intimate.
    Carson and Lynch, in spite of what they had seen in the movie house on Western Avenue, fell into a dreamless sleep the moment their heads touched the pillow.
    At quarter after eleven Lymie Peters was still awake.
    On the way home from the Alcazar Restaurant Mr. Peters had stopped in at a cigar store and made a telephone call, the results of which were obviously satisfactory. As soon as they got back to the apartment he went out to the tiny kitchen and from one of the cupboards he produced two green demijohns, one containing alcohol, the other a little less than half full of distilled water. Then he made a trip to the linen closet, where he kept the glycerin and also a very small bottle containing oil