“I could make it my business.”
“Who said?”
“Your father said, that’s who.”
“Oh,” said Amity. “He did.” Suddenly it was as though a curtain had dropped between them. She drew away, and the line of her mouth got hard.
“Amity,” he said. “Listen, Amity, I—”
“You leave me alone. You hear, Len?”
“What’s so different now? You were anxious enough a minute ago.”
“Anxious! That’s all you know. And if you think because you’ve been sneaking around to my father behind my back—”
“I didn’t sneak. Amity, listen.” He caught her again and pulled her toward him, and she hissed at him between her teeth. “Let me go, I don’t belong to you, I don’t belong to anybody! Let me go—”
He held her, struggling. It excited him, and he laughed and bent his head to kiss her again.
“Aw, come on, Amity, I love you—”
She squalled like a cat and clawed his cheek. He let her go, and she was not pretty any more, her face twisted and ugly and her eyes mean. She ran away down the path. The air was warm and the smell of roses was heavy around him. For a while he stood looking after her, and then he walked slowly to the house and up to the room he shared with Esau.
Esau was lying on the bed, half asleep. He only grunted and rolled over when Len came in. Len opened the door of the shallow cupboard. He took out a small sack made of tough canvas and began to pack his belongings into it, methodically, ramming each article down into place with unnecessary force. His face was flushed and his brows pulled down into a heavy scowl.
Esau rolled back again. He blinked at Len and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Packing.”
“Packing!” Esau sat up. “What for?”
“What do people usually do it for? I’m leaving.” Esau’s feet bit the floor. “Are you crazy? What do you mean, you’re leaving, just like that. Don’t I have anything to say about it?”
“Not about me leaving, you don’t. You can do what you want to. Look out, I want those boots.”
“All right! But you can’t—Wait a minute. What’s that on your cheek?”
“What?” Len swiped at his cheek with the back of his hand. It came away with a little red smear on it. Amity had dug deep. Esau began to laugh. Len straightened up. “What’s funny?”
“She finally told you off, did she? Oh, don’t give me any story about how the cat scratched you. I know claw marks when I see them. Good. I told you to keep away from her, but you wouldn’t listen. I—”
“Do you figure,” asked Len quietly, “that she belongs to you?”
Esau smiled. “I could have told you that, too.” Len hit him. It was the first time in his life that he had hit anybody in genuine anger. He watched Esau fall backward onto the bed, his eyes bulging with surprise and a thin red trickle springing out of the corner of his mouth, and it all seemed to happen very slowly, giving him plenty of time to feel guilty and regretful and confused. It was almost as though he had struck his own brother. But he was still angry. He grabbed up his bag and started out the door, and Esau sprang off the bed and caught him by the shoulder of his jacket, spinning him around. “Hit me, will you?” he panted. “Hit me, you dirty—” He called Len a name he had picked up along the river docks and swung his fist hard.
Len ducked. Esau’s knuckles slid along the side of his jaw and on into the solid jamb of the door. Esau howled and danced away, holding his hand under his other arm and cursing. Len started to say something like “I’m sorry,” but changed his mind and turned again to go. And Judge Taylor was in the hall.
“Stop that,” he said to Esau, and Esau stopped, standing still in the middle of the room. Taylor looked from one to the other and to the bag in Len’s hand. “I’ve just spoken to Amity,” he said, and Len could see that underneath his judicial manner Taylor was in a seething rage. “I’m sorry, Len. I seem to have made an error of judgment.”
“Yes, sir,” said Len. “I was just going.”
Taylor nodded. “All the same,” he said, “what I told you is true. Remember it.” He looked keenly at Esau.
“Let him go,” Esau said. “I’m staying right here.”
“I think not,” said Taylor.
Esau said, “But he—”
“I hit him first,” said Len.
“That is neither here nor there,” said the judge. “Get your things together, Esau.”
“But why? I make enough to pay the rent. I haven’t done any—”
“I’m not sure yet exactly what you have done, but much or little, that’s an end to it. The room is no longer for rent. And if I catch you around my daughter again I’ll have you run out of town. Is that clear?”
Esau glowered at him, but he did not say anything. He started to throw his things into a pile on the bed. Len went out past the judge, along the hall and down the stairs. He went out the back way, and as he passed the kitchen he caught a glimpse through the half-open door of Amity bent over the kitchen table, sobbing like a wildcat, and Mrs. Taylor watching her with an expression of blank dismay, one hand raised as though for a comforting pat on the shoulder but stopped in midair and forgotten.
Len let himself out by the back gate, avoiding the rose arbor.
Sabbath lay quiet and heavy on the town. Len stuck to the alleys, walking steadily along in the dust. He did not have any idea where he was going, but habit and the general configuration of Refuge took him down to the river and onto the docks where Dulinsky’s four big warehouses stood in line. He stopped there, uncertain and sullen, only just beginning to realize that things had changed very radically for him in the last few minutes.
The river ran green as bottle glass, and among the trees of its farther bank the roofs of Shadwell glimmered in the hot sun. There was a string of river craft tied up along the dock. The men who belonged to them were either in the town or asleep below deck. Nothing moved but the river, and the clouds, and a half-grown cat playing a game with itself on the foredeck of one of the barges. Off to his right, further down, was the big bare rectangle of the new warehouse site. The foundation stones were already laid. Timbers and planks were set by in neat piles, and there was a sawmill with a heap of pale yellow dust below it. Two men, widely separated, lounged inconspicuously in the shade. Len frowned. They looked to him almost as though they were on guard.
Perhaps they were. It was a stupid world, full of stupid people. Fearful people, thinking that if the least little thing was changed the whole sky would fall on them. Stupid world. He hated it. Amity lived in it, and somewhere in it Bartorstown was hidden so it could never be found, and life was dark and full of frustrations.
He was still brooding when Esau came onto the dock after him.
Esau was carrying his own belongings in a hasty bundle, and his face looked red and ugly. His lip was swollen on one side. He threw the bundle down and stood in front of Len and said, “I’ve got a couple of things to settle with you.”
Len breathed hard through his nose. He was not afraid of Esau, and he felt low and mean enough now that a fight would be a pleasant thing. He was not quite as tall as Esau but his shoulders were wider and thicker. He hunched them up and waited.
“What did you want to go and get us thrown out of there for?” Esau said.
“
“Fine cousin you are. What did you say to old man Taylor to make him do that?”
“Nothing. Didn’t have to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He doesn’t like you, that’s what I mean. Don’t come picking a fight with me unless you mean it, Esau.”
“Sore, aren’t you? Well go ahead and be sore, and I’ll tell you something. And you can tell the judge. Nobody can keep me away from Amity. I’ll see her anytime I want to, and do anything I want to with her, because
“Big mouth,” said Len. “That’s all you got, a great big windy mouth.”
“I wouldn’t talk,” said Esau bitterly. “If it hadn’t been for you I’d never left home. I’d be there now, probably with the whole farm by now, and a wife and kids if I wanted them, instead of roaming to hell and gone around the country looking for—”
