They were the bruisers, brawlers, cutters, slashers, stabbers, shooters of a small town’s life; they were the poolroom thugs, the runners of blind tigers, the brothel guardians, the kept and pampered bullies of the whores. They were the tough town drivers with the thick red necks and leather leggings, and on Sunday, after a week of brawls, dives, stews, the stale, foul air of nighttime evil in the furtive places, they could be seen racing along the river road, out for a bawdy picnic with their whore. On Sunday afternoon they would drive along as brazen as you please beside the sensual, warm, and entrail-stirring smell, the fresh, half-rotten taint and slowness of the little river, that got in your bowels, heavy, numb, and secret, with a rending lust each time you smelled it. They they would stop at length beside the road, get out, and take their woman up the hill into the bushes for an afternoon of dalliance underneath the laurel leaves, embedded in the thick green secrecies of a Southern growth that was itself as spermy, humid, hairy with desire, as the white flesh and heavy carnal nakedness of the whore.
These were the boys from Doubleday—the boys named Reese and Dock and Ira—the worst boys in the school. They were always older than the other boys, stayed in the same class several years, never passed their work, grinned with a loutish, jeering grin whenever the teachers upbraided them for indolence, stayed out for days at a time and were finally brought in by the truant officer, got into fist fights with the principal when he tried to whip them, and sometimes hit him in the eye, and at length were given up in despair, kicked out in disgrace when they were big brutes of sixteen or seventeen years, having never got beyond the fourth grade.
These were the boys who taught the foul words to the little boys, told about going to the whore houses, jeered at those who had not gone and said you could not call yourself a man until you had gone and “got yourself a little.” Further, Reese McMurdie, who was sixteen, as big and strong as a man, and the worst boy in the school, said you couldn’t call yourself a man until you’d caught a dose. He said he’d had his first one when he was fourteen years old, boasted that he’d had it several times since then, and said it was no worse than a bad cold. Reese McMurdie had a scar that turned your flesh sick when you looked at it; it ran the whole way from the right-hand corner of his mouth to the corner of his ear. He had got it in a knife-fight with another boy.
Ira Dingley was almost as bad as Reese. He was fifteen, not so big and heavy as the other boy, but built as solid as a bullock. He had a red, small, brutal kind of face, packed with energy and evil, and one little red eye that went glowering malignantly and truculently around at the whole world. He was blind in his other eye and wore a black shade over it.
One time, when there had been the great, jubilant shout of “Fight! Fight!” from the playing field at recess, and the boys had come running from all directions, Monk Webber had seen Ira Dingley and Reese McMurdie facing each other in the circle, edging closer truculently with fists clenched, until someone behind Reese had given him a hard shove that sent him hurtling into Ira. Ira was sent flying back into the crowd, but when he came out again, he came out slowly, crouched, his little red eye fixed and mad with hate, and this time he had the knife-blade open, naked, ready in his hand.
Reese, who had been smiling after he was pushed, with a foul, loose smile of jeering innocence, now smiled no more. He edged cautiously away and back as Ira came on, his hard eyes fixed upon his enemy, his thick hand fumbling in his trousers for the knife. And while he fumbled for his knife, he edged back slowly, talking with a sudden, quiet, murderous intensity that froze the heart:
“All right, you son-of-a-bitch!” he said, “Wait till I git my knife out!” Suddenly, the knife was out and open; it was an evil six-inch blade that opened on a spring. “If that’s what you want, I’ll cut your God-damned head off!”
And now all of the boys in the crowd were stunned, frightened, hypnotized by the murderous fascination of those two shining blades from which they could not take their eyes, and by the sight of the two boys, their faces white, contorted, mad with fear, despair, and hate, as they circled continuously around. The strong terror of their heavy breathing filled the air with menace, and communicated to the hearts of all the boys such a sense of horror, fascination, and frozen disbelief that they were unwilling to continue, afraid to intervene, and yet unable to move or wrench themselves away from the sudden, fatal, and murderous reality of the fight.
Then as the two boys came close together, Nebraska Crane suddenly stepped in, thrust them apart with a powerful movement, and at the same time said with a good-natured laugh, and in a rough, friendly, utterly natural tone of voice that instantly conquered everyone, restored all the boys to their senses and brought breath and strength back to the light of day again:
“You boys cut it out,” he said. “If you want to fight, fight fair with your fists.”
“What’s it to you?” said Reese menacingly, edging in again with his knife held ready in his hand. “What right you got to come buttin’ in? Who told you it was any business of yours?” All the time he kept edging closer with his knife held ready.
“No one told me,” said Nebraska, in a voice that had lost all of its good nature and that was now as hard and unyielding in its quality as his tar-black eyes, which he held fixed, steady as a rifle, as his foe came on. “Do you want to make anything out of it?” he said.
Reese looked back at him for a moment, then his eyes shifted, and he sidled off and half withdrew, still waiting, unwilling to depart, muttering threats. In a moment the boys broke up in groups, dispersed, and enemies sidled uneasily away, each with his partisans, and the threatened fight was over. Nebraska Crane was the bravest boy in school. He was afraid of nothing.