The Feud (3 page)

But Jack chided him. “Tony seems to have heard it.”

His mother now remonstrated with Jack. “I wish you would respect your dad,” she said. “He’ll tell what he tells to whoever he wants, because he puts the food in our mouths.”

Dolf was cast in the unusual but gratifying role of defending his second son. “He don’t mean disrespect. I know that. He’s right.” He smiled at Jack. “It’s your right to know. It’s a family thing.” Dolf suddenly felt a strong sense of affinity with them all, including Jack, and he proceeded to give a less personally degrading version of the unhappy incident in the hardware store.

That night Bud’s Hardware burned to the ground, despite the strenuous efforts of not only the local volunteer firemen but also the Hornbeck department, called in for the emergency. There had been simply too much flammable merchandise on the premises, chiefly in the form of liquids like paint and turpentine, etc., but the sporting ammunition contributed as well, its explosions serving to discourage the firemen from getting as close as they might otherwise have come.

When Bud Bullard’s son, Bud Jr., told Dolf Beeler about the fire insurance that required the keeping of highly flammable substances in the back room, he was only passing on what his father had told
him
. But the truth was that the hardware store had not been insured.

“I couldn’t afford the premiums,” said Bud. “I figured if we was just real careful, we could get by until we got in the black.” He stood there on Sunday morning, looking into the jagged, blackened, still-smoking ruin of his business.

The second shift of Millville volunteer firemen—those who had not been available the night before—had taken over from the fellows who had been called out just before midnight and had pumped water until morning. The fire companies from the neighboring towns—one of them from Beewix, eight miles away—had left by now. Bud had been on the site since someone remembered him at 4:14 A.
M
. and phoned his home. He wore a lumber jacket over his striped pajama shirt, the bent collar of which protruded.

He was talking to his brother-in-law, Walter Huff, who was a fireman but had not come with the company the night before, because he had been at a bowling tournament up in Medford, the county seat, and after the match the guys had drunk beer late at a Medford roadhouse to celebrate their moral victory against a team who had greatly outclassed them in every way but guts.

Bud’s eyes smarted from the smoke; otherwise he had no identifiable feeling of body or soul. He could not understand why he was seemingly so stoical. The store represented not only all his own savings, but also—he had been turned down by the local bank—considerable loans from his relatives, both blood and in-law. Cousin Reverton, for example, a bachelor, had contributed the sum of money he had been awarded in a lawsuit against an interstate bus company, one of whose vehicles had smashed his car and broken his right leg and left collarbone some years before. Even Aunt Ethel Murdal had contributed a widow’s mite. Bud’s brother Herman, though father of four, had kicked in, as had his sister Ada and his second cousin on his mother’s side, Charley Hoople.

Bud realized that he should probably shoot himself, for he could not possibly make restitution in one lifetime. The store had not been a raving success before the fire, for reasons that were not immediately understandable, but the only one that made sense was that it was a new enterprise, whereas the hardware in Hornbeck had long been established and offered prices that Bud could not match and make any kind of profit.

Walt Huff, however, had put no money in the store, claiming he had none to spare, what with the mortgage on his house and other obligations, yet he was prosperous enough to buy quite a bit of sporting goods, a state of affairs toward which Bud’s feelings were complex—after all, Walt did at least purchase the shotgun, rod, reel, ammunition, etc., from him and not from his competitors, who were able to charge less—and trade was more satisfying, more professional, than any loan.

Walt’s helmet was a little too large for him, coming down so low on his forehead that his eyes were almost cut off.

Bud told him, “I just feel sorry for the people that had money in this. Jesus.” Sooner or later he would have to confess to them about the lack of insurance, of which they had been kept in ignorance. It had seemed useful to experiment by telling Walt, who was not involved.

Walt said, “I sure wouldn’t relish the job of telling them.”

“That piece of money was the only thing Rev had, you know,” said Bud, who was getting a kind of comfort from putting the worst face on it. “He don’t have a real home, you know. He’s got a furnished room up near the railroad yard in Hamburg. He’s been on his own since a kid. His old man drank himself to death, and his mom passed away from T.B. Rev was raised in the orphan asylum.”

“Say,” said Walt, “you mean your cousin Reverton? Guy I know from the plant was asking about him yesterday. Said he wanted to give him five dollars.”

Bud shrugged. Five bucks was hardly the answer at this point.

“Speak of the devil,” said Walt, nodding in indication of something beyond Bud’s shoulder.

Bud turned and saw Reverton, who was dressed as always in a navy-blue serge suit, white shirt, and hat, tie, and shoes in black.

Reverton’s expression was habitually somewhat sour, owing to the bony nose and the lines coming down from it to the sides of the mouth, but he was known to have strong emotions that did not always appear on his countenance.

“I was eating my Sunday flapjacks at the Railway Cafe,” he said, “when an engineer come in who heard about this.”

Bud felt even worse when he saw Reverton. He said, “I don’t know how it started, but it was too far gone before they put any water on it.”

Walt greeted Reverton, whom he didn’t know well, and then he went to join the other firemen, who were raking the debris for still-glowing embers and, when they found some, soaked them down. Of the store only a jagged wall-and-a-half and a brick chimney remained standing. Luckily there had been little wind the night before, and the building was situated between two vacant lots at the edge of the business district, having originally been constructed, just before the war, for a dairy, which grew out of the space in twenty years.

Reverton scowled at his cousin. “Them insurance are all crooked,” said he. “They won’t wanna pay a penny, mark my words. They’ll want to prove you burned it down yourself.”

Bud did not have the heart to straighten him out at this point. He said, “I figure it must of been some old wiring.”

Reverton was still occupied with anticipatory bitterness. “Them insurance oughta be put outa business, if you ask me. What good are they if they won’t pay off on a honest claim?” He had always believed he should have got more in damages when he had been hit by that bus, and regretted having been persuaded by the insurance company’s lawyer to settle out of court. Bud knew, but would never have rubbed his nose in it, that Reverton had been at a great disadvantage in acting as his own lawyer, owing to his distrust of attorneys. Nor had his broken leg been set as well as it might have been. After receiving emergency treatment at a hospital, he had insisted on going to his own doctor for the rest of it, and the latter was not a real physician but rather an osteopath. It seemed to Bud that Reverton had a gift for blaming the wrong people for his difficulties, but of course he would never mention that theory to his cousin, of whom he was genuinely fond. He could remember him as a boy in the orphan asylum, with his hair cut an inch above the ears. Bud’s parents could not afford to raise Rev along with their six other children, but on holidays they would go by streetcar to fetch him for the occasion and give him a meal and a treat to put in his pocket, an orange or something, before taking him back. He was exactly Bud’s age and had been a dark, wiry kid with skinny legs below his knickers.

Bud lightly kicked the brass junction linking two lengths of dirty canvas firehose that stretched near him. “Those boys did everything they could,” said he. “I know that.” He turned. “Wellsir, no reason to stay around here anymore. Want to go on up home, Reverton? You’re staying for Sunday dinner, I hope.”

“I thought I might nose around some,” Reverton said, pushing forward the organ he named, with its nostrils arched and twitching. “There might be somepin still in working order. Them little anvils you had and anything else that’s all metal, wrenches or something. Axheads’ll be all shot, ‘cause they’ll lose their temper.”

Bud was amazed to hear that Reverton had noticed the merchandise at all. He had never seemed to, on his visits; and living in the furnished room as he did, he had rarely needed any kind of hardware.

“O.K., then, Rev. I think I’ll go home. I don’t have the heart to poke through this mess right now. I’ll see you later. You can talk to Walt if you want, though he wasn’t here last night.”

“Where was he?” Reverton’s question was surly.

“Out of town. He didn’t know about the fire.”

His cousin scowled in the direction of Huff. “Fire hat’s too big for him, ain’t it?”

“He’s a nice guy, Rev. It’s just too bad my wife don’t get along too good with her sister, or we’d see more of him. Say, he told me he knows some guy owes you five dollars.”

Reverton immediately acquired a hunted look. “Somebody’s a liar,” said he. “I don’t loan money and I don’t gamble. Anybody says I do is a dirty dog and better not say it to my face.” He called to Huff, who was knee-deep in blackened, broken wood. There had been no cellar under this structure. Given his firemanly duties, Walt would have been within his rights had he postponed acting on the summons, but he came promptly, wading out of the ruins.

“What’s this story about me being owed five dollars?” Reverton asked aggressively.

“Sure,” said Huff, grinning. “Dolf Beeler. I know him from down at the plant.”

“That’s the big fat slob was in the store yestidday!” cried Reverton. “There’s who started your fire with his stinkweed cigar.”

Bud said, “I forget his name. But that cigar of his wasn’t lit.” You had to be fair.

Walt Huff said, “I’ve seen him smoking his stogie many a time.” He said this neutrally, however. “Anyway, you ought to collect the five-spot.”

“We’re gonna collect a lot more than that from the sumbitch!” Reverton had violence in his voice. “He burnt down our store! I had to call him on some lip he was giving Junior. I pinned his ears back, and he done this dirty deed to get even.”

At first Bud was less than enthusiastic about this theory. He put his head on the side and said, “Wellll, I donnn…” But then it occurred to him that if Reverton were distracted by the possibility of arson, the lack of fire insurance would not seem so important to him. “ ‘Course,” he said, “I don’t know how you can prove it.”

Reverton patted his suit coat in the area of his holstered revolver. “You just let me at him. You seen what I did to the sumbitch yestidday.”

Huff wore a quizzical expression. He pushed the fire helmet up off his forehead, but it soon fell back, and he took it off altogether. Big as it was, it proved unwieldy to hold, and he returned it to his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I seen him outside the store myself yesserday, and I think he was chewing on a dead butt.”

Reverton peered at him with little angry eyes. “Sure, cuz he flicked off the burning part on the floor.”

Bud’s doubts returned. “If he did that, we would of seen him, wouldn’t we? And then what happened, it took all day for the fire to start?”

“That’s the way them things go,” said Reverton. “Why, down in the coal country they got mines that been burning real quiet since the Year One. All of a sudden smoke and fire shoots out of the cracks in the ground, and boils the water in the ponds, and the ladies do their wash there.”

“Is that right?” said Walt.

Reverton said, “That’s how it works sometimes.”

“I still say it would be hard to prove,” said Bud.

“Why,” said Reverton, “me and you and Junior’ll say we saw him do it.”

Bud didn’t much like that approach. He wasn’t a saint, but to tell a downright lie about another man in a serious situation like this was not to his taste. Fortunately he was not forced to reject his cousin’s idea: Walt Huff came up with the conclusive reason why it wouldn’t work.

“If all of you saw him drop the hot ash off his cigar onto the wood floor,” asked Walt, “why didn’t none of you put it out?”

Reverton turned away for a moment with a face made dark by exasperation. When he turned back he asked Huff, “You gonna fight every idea that we cook up to look out for our family?”

Walt said, “You can figure my argument’s gonna be a lot easier to handle than what the other side comes up with. If Dolf Beeler gets him a lawyer he’ll make mincemeat of you unless you got some real proof.”

Reverton stared hatefully at him for an instant and then he dropped his head. “Them dirty rotten shitass lawyers!”

Bud was relieved to see that Rev was conquered by reason. He himself knew very well that Beeler’s dead cigar had had nothing to do with the fire. Besides, Beeler certainly hadn’t looked like a man who would be rich enough to refund the damages if he
had
been guilty. That’s all that would have meant anything to Bud. A Beeler imprisoned for arson would not bring back his store.

But Reverton had merely been diverted into another channel. “That makes it easier if we don’t have to mess with the law. We’ll just get even in our own way.”

This had a chilling sound to Bud, who was a merchant, not a fighting man. “Maybe we ought to think about it first, Rev. I don’t know what good any revenge would do, even if the fire was caused by some particular person.” He was beginning to feel the physical effects of adversity and wondered whether he could make the half-mile walk home.

“You think too long about anything, and you won’t do it,” said Reverton. “We got our pride at stake here. They get away with that, and the next thing you know they’ll be riding us down like dogs and violating our women and all.”

Walt raised his eyebrows. “You put it pretty strong, Reverton. I’ve worked not with but pretty near to Beeler for some years, and I seen his wife come to the plant oncet to bring his lunch that he forgot, and then his boy had a summer job down there, heavy labor. He’s a good football player. Hornbeck whipped us last Thanksgiving if you recall—”