“Mind the furnishings!” Jane now, screaming. “Every stick you break you pay for, remember!”
Had to keep away from him, I knew, for he was twice as strong as me. I took the middle of the floor now, tried to sidestep him but hit the counter, and he wheeled and gripped me but I slung him off and stopped him dead with a left, and crossed him again as he roared back in. I thought of Mari as I fought, trying to anger myself into greater strength. Up against the counter again now with the thudding impact of his fifteen stone against me, my back arched over the rail as he fought for my throat. Slipping away I tried to cross him, missed and fell into his arms again. Again the counter; sliding along it now, hitting short. I got him away somehow but he rushed again, keeping close quarters while I wanted him away. And every time he rushed I caught him square. Like hitting trees, for his onward rush bore me backwards. Sickening the smack of that rail in my back. Panic came then, for my strength was ebbing. I saw his face flushed and brutal, eyes gleaming, mouth gaping, gasping at breath, and I swung for the first time and slammed the mouth shut, but still he came on, and I saw the fist rushing up as the counter stopped me. Big as a tub that fist as I tried to ride it, but it took me square in the body, doubling me up. The lamp reeled over the ceiling as he hit me left and right full strength, and I slid along the rail seeking escape, but still he thudded them home. Weary, in agony, I sought a hold, but he flung me off and hit out again. Through slits of eyes I saw Justin now. His face was bleeding, his hair on end, but he was calm as he held me with one hand and measured for the blow. I tried to duck it but it caught me flush, spinning me sideways. The lamplight exploded, and I sank down, gripping his legs. Just peace then, lying at his feet, with the lace of his hobnails in the corner of my eye. I tried to climb up him they said later, but he hit me down, thumping, thumping.
I remember nothing more till I woke in the arms of Jane.
“Eh, there’s a damned mess,” she whispered, and held me.
I blinked about me at the barn next to the tavern, at the oil lamp hanging on the gnarled beam above us, and the face of Jane smiled down. She was sitting in the hay with her back against a tub, and me across the legs of her, my head in her lap, and the flannel she was dabbing with was red. Pretty good, me. Cuts over each eye, lips swollen as a Negro’s, and split. Very handsome, said Jane, with my new humped cheekbones, one going black.
“Teeth?” said she, and her hair swept my face.
I tried them with my tongue. “All there,” I said.
“I will have him, mind,” she said then. “Bricks and bottles, but I will bloody have him,” and I felt her body tense with its sudden fire. Thin, her dress.
“Leave him,” I said. “At least he fought fair.”
“With me hanging on to his hobnails and three men dragging him off?”
I didn’t remember that.
“And opening the door and dumping you out like a sack?”
Too sick just then to realize the indignity.
“Fair?” she exclaimed, indignant. “The men back in there told him you’d have killed him in the open. Half his weight and no room to move in! Eh, I will have him for this. Justin Slaughterer, is it? I will do him in dripping lumps and still carving.”
Pretty good lying there with her flushed face above me for I had never been so close to wickedness before. And youth is good – awake now I could feel the strength sweeping back, but I was far too interested in Jane just then to have thoughts of Justin. Her fingers were soft on my face and I saw the high curve of her cheek shadowed and beautiful in the lamplight. Harlot one moment, mother the next. Many and varied are the characters of women I have found since, but all are mothers. I rose, unsteady, my hands to my face, waiting for strength to grip me then. When I uncovered my eyes Jane was kneeling at my feet, smiling up.
“Jethro,” she said.
I looked down.
“Jethro, do not go,” she said, and opened her arms.
But something in the night called and turned me.
“Not yet,” I said.
It was cold in the wind outside the bar. The water butt was near and I plunged my head into it and let the trickles of freeze run down to my waist to shock me into sense and feeling, and I stood there looking at the stars, drawing great breaths. For many minutes I stood in growing anger: something from my father this, a blind obstinacy that forbade any movement save back into the tavern.
“I will take you home,” said Jane behind me, but I scarcely heard her. Instead I heard the hoarse laughter of men, the guffaws of Justin, the high-pitched shrieks of Gipsy May who had taken the counter in place of Jane.
Couldn’t go home, to be thumped by Justin every time he saw me.
I looked at the tavern door, at the bar of light beneath it. Mugs were thumping the counter, money chinking.
“No,” whispered Jane,
