got big enough, which never taken long because Bee was already a big girl even before she got to be ten or eleven or twelve or whenever it was and got started—'
'Started at what?' I said. You see? I had to. I had gone too far to stop now, like in Jefferson yesterday—or was it yesterday? last year: another time: another life: another Lucius Priest. 'What is pugnuckling?'
He told me, with some of contempt but mostly a sort of incredulous, almost awed, almost respectful amazement. 'That's where I had the peephole—a knothole in the back wall with a tin slide over it that never nobody but me knowed how to work, while Aunt Fittie was out in front collecting the money and watching out. Folks your size would have to stand on a box and I would charge a nickel until Aunt Fittie found out I was letting grown men watch for a dime that otherwise might have went inside for fifty cents, and started hollering like a wildcat—'
Standing now, I was hitting him, so much to his surprise (mine too) that I had had to stoop and take hold of him and jerk him up within reach. I knew nothing about boxing and not too much about fighting. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do: not just hurt him but destroy him; I remember a second perhaps during which I regretted (from what ancient playing-fields-of-Eton avatar) that he was not nearer my size. But not longer than a second; I was hitting, clawing, kicking not at one wizened ten-year-old boy, but at Otis and the procuress both: the demon child who debased her privacy and the witch who debauched her innocence—one flesh to bruise and burst, one set of nerves to wrench and anguish; more: not just those two, but all who had participated in her debasement: not only the two panders, but the insensitive blackguard children and the brutal and shameless men who paid their pennies to watch her defenseless and undefended and unavenged degradation. He had plunged sprawling across the mattress, on his hands and knees now, scrabbling at his discarded trousers; I didn't know why (nor care), not even when his hand came out and up. Only then did I see the blade of the pocketknife in his fist, nor did I care about that either; that made us in a way the same size; that was my
Then Boon was holding me clear of the floor, struggling and crying now. He was barefoot, wearing only his pants. Miss Corrie was there too, in a kimono, with her hair down; it reached further than her waist. Otis was scrunched back against the wall, not crying but cursing like he had cursed at Ned. 'What the damned hell,' Boon said.
'His hand,' Miss Corrie said. She paused long enough to look back at Otis. 'Go to my room,' she said. 'Go on.' He went out. Boon put me down. 'Let me see it,' she said. That was the first I knew where the blood came from —a neat cut across the cushions of all four fingers; I must have grasped the blade just as Otis tried to snatch it away.
It was still bleeding. That is, it bled again when Miss Cor-rie opened my hand.
'What the hell were you fighting about?' Boon said.
'Nothing,' I said. I drew my hand back.
'Keep it closed till I get back,' Miss Corrie said. She went out and came back with a basia of water and a towel and a bottle of something and what looked like a scrap of a man's shirt. She washed the blood off and uncorked the bottle. 'It's going to sting,' she said. It did. She tore a strip from the shirt and bound my hand.
'He still wont tell what they were fighting about,' Boon said. 'At least I hope he started it: not half your size even if he is a year older. No wonder he pulled a knife—'
'He aint even as old,' I said. 'He's ten.'
'He told me he was twelve,' Boon said. Then I found out what was wrong about Otis.
'Twelve?' Miss Corrie said. 'He'll be fifteen years old next Monday.' She was looking at me. 'Do you want —'
'Just keep him out of here,' I said. 'I'm tired. I want to go to sleep.'
'Don't worry about Otis,' she said. 'He's going back home this morning. There's a train that leaves at nine oclock. I'm going to send Minnie to the depot with him and tell her to watch him get on it and stand where she can see his face through the window until the train moves.'
'Sure,' Boon said. 'And he can have my grip to carry the refinement and culture back in. Bringing him over here to spend a week in a Memphis—'
'You hush,' Miss Corrie said.
'—house hunting refinement and culture. Maybe he found it; he might a hunted for years through Arkansas cat-cribs and still not found nobody near enough his size to draw that pocketknife on—'
'Stop it! Stop it!' Miss Corrie said. 'Sure sure,' Boon said. 'But after all, Lucius has got to know the name of where he's at in order to brag about where he's been.' Then they turned the light out and were gone. Or so I thought. It was Boon this time, turning the light on again. 'Maybe you better tell me what it was,' he said.
'Nothing,' I said. He looked down at me, huge, naked to the waist, his hand on the light to turn it out again.
'Eleven years old,' he said, 'and already knife-cut in a whorehouse brawl.' He looked at me. 'I wish I had knowed you thirty years ago. With you to learn me when I was eleven years old, maybe by this time I'd a had some sense too. Good night.'
'Good night,' I said. He turned off the light. Then I had been asleep, it was Miss Corrie this time, kneeling beside the mattress; I could see the shape of her face and the moon through her hair. She was the one crying this time—a big girl, too big to know how to cry daintily: only quietly.
'I made him tell me,' she said. 'You fought because of me. I've had people—drunks—fighting over me, but you're the first one ever fought for me. I aint used to it, you see. That's why I dont know what to do about it. Except one thing. I can do that. I want to make you a promise. Back there in Arkansas it was my fault. But it wont be my fault any more.' You see? You have to learn too fast; you have to leap in the dark and hope that Something —It —They—will place your foot right. So maybe there are after all other things besides just Poverty and Non-virtue who look after their own.
'It wasn't your fault then,' I said.
'Yes it was. You can choose. You can decide. You can say No. You can find a job and work. But it wont be my fault any more. That's the promise I want to make you. For me to keep like you kept that one you told Mr Bin-ford about before supper tonight. You'll have to take it. Will you take it?'
