“No shit,” Ignatz said. He straightened to catch his breath.
The boys waited to see if they’d get it bad or if they’d be let off. Karel hoped Ignatz would leave them alone. Jake had told him to stand up for himself when he saw the bully, but Karel didn’t want to fight. He hoped there would be words, that they could forget what happened before and be nothing to each other from now on. But it didn’t work that way. A bully needed no reason.
Ignatz shoved Alfred into the bricks of a building. He grabbed Alfred’s collar and was going to slug him. Ignatz felt slighted and was going to take it out on someone. Alfred was going to get it, with nowhere to run. No clerk or steno was going to stop boys from being boys. If Ignatz slapped Alfred around, that was fine to a grown-up.
It wasn’t fine to Karel. He couldn’t stand to see his friend punched, to stand by and wait to see if he’d get punched too. Karel wanted to do something to stop the bully, and he had the dagger.
He pulled the dagger from his belt and posed the tapered end at Ignatz. “Leave Alfred alone,” he shouted. “He didn’t do nothing.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Ignatz said. He released Alfred to grab for the dagger, but he couldn’t get it. “What is that?” he asked. “You take it from the junk shop?”
“It’s an officer’s blade. It will do you good enough.”
Ignatz was too quick, too much older and bigger. The dagger only bought Karel a few seconds before Ignatz slapped it from his hands. The blade rattled to the pavement between their feet. Ignatz grabbed Karel then heaved him off the walkway and pinned him against the bricks.
Karel kicked at Ignatz’s stomach, slapped at his ears as much as he could with his arms held. It didn’t make a difference. Karel looked into Ignatz’s face, the meat of his lips as they smiled wet with the juices that ran out. The grip tight under his arms. Karel hurt everywhere. Felt the grasp closing and winced to blackness. This was it. His turn.
Karel was on the ground as he opened his eyes to light, crumpled on his knees, liquid streaming from his mouth as he gasped. Jake was there, a few others, in clean white clothes. They had Ignatz cornered, took the lids off trash cans and banged them together. They shouted and mocked punches so Ignatz had to cover himself. There were about a dozen men around. Working men, playful and mean. They had a boy who thought he was something tough and they had to prove he wasn’t.
Ignatz’s shoes were shucked off—Jake’s idea—and the men took turns throwing them at the roof of a building. Ignatz chased after but couldn’t outrace the men, the group of them, and had to watch again as his shoes spun up three stories and came tumbling back.
Karel wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. A couple of them helped him up, one who introduced himself as Charlie. Karel said nothing. He watched as Jake chased Ignatz down the street, kicking at the bully’s socked feet until Jake let him go.
“What sort of plan was this?” Jake asked Karel. “Let him pin you to the wall? Get strangled?”
“I got a couple shots in,” Karel said.
“Yeah. You got a shiner too. Bet you didn’t know that, huh?”
Karel felt a knot swell under his eye where Jake poked. The men said that was okay. Ignatz was bigger. What did Karel expect?
“Come on. You boys fought. You come along.”
The men pushed to make room at Mecklenburg’s bar, pulling the boys along with them. Alfred and Jimmy had been in a saloon before, but this was a first for Karel. The men lifted under the boys’ arms, dropped them on stools, then laughed along as Joe Meinhof argued with the bartenders. “What do you mean, how old are they? What’s that matter?”
The saloon wouldn’t serve kids, not with the statewide prohibition of all alcohol sales.
“Near beer?” the men objected, once the bartender suggested it. “What’s that?”
“This one’s got a shiner,” Jake shouted, bucking his arm around Karel, “and you don’t think that deserves a real beer?”
“What rot! You want these boys to eat some near-meat and near-bread too? How about some near-air to breathe, dummy? How’d that suit you?”
Mugs were presented to the boys and they were urged to drink. Joe Meinhof apologized for not being able to get them the real thing. “You get in a real fight, might as well get some real beer for your trouble.”
Near beer was horrible, bitter and effervescent. “You don’t have to drink it,” Jake said, but Karel did anyway. So did Alfred and Jimmy Mac. How couldn’t they? A group of real men were toasting them. The boys clanked mugs together and swigged as they looked up at the rowdies cheering on. They met all the men. Jake Strauss, Karel’s savior, blond and grinning. Joe Meinhof, who crouched when he spoke to the boys so they saw his half-crazed eyes. Charlie Pfister, who was an old man to them, with his big mustache turning gray. There were others too. Ingo and Heinz and Konrad. Dairymen. They smelled like sour milk and sweat, and brought plates of roasted meat to the bar for the boys to feast from. These were superb men. They gloried in life. They yelled, doltish and unabashed, and called each other names. They wrestled to prove their points. They cussed in German and English and Bohemian, worldly men that they were. Karel cursed them in Yiddish and earned a slap on the back for his talent. They were gods.
Karel watched Jake, Joe, and Charlie most of all. He knew they were up to something secret. They dressed like dairymen but didn’t smell like sour milk. When they’d left work, it was the Flatiron they came from, a luxury hotel nowhere near a creamery. It was a mystery.
Somehow it was brought up that the boys had seen the Irish girl’s burning bush that afternoon. Their stools were spun so they faced the men. “A girl your age, with that?!” “She’s got to be older. She is? I knew it.” “Is she still there, you think? Tell me how to find her.” The boys couldn’t stop laughing, seeing the men worked up. It was a big joke. “Fuck off,” Alfred said. His voice hadn’t dropped, so his cursing was hilarious. “Verpisst euch!”