Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

“That’s one good thing about Courne Haven, though,” Fred Burden said. “No Ellis family.”

Everyone laughed. That was a good point.

Angus Addams told about the old days on Fort Niles, when the granite industry was still thriving. They’d had a policeman back then, and he was the perfect cop for an island. He was an Addams, first of all, so he knew everybody, and he knew how things operated. He left the islanders alone and mostly made sure the Italians didn’t cause too much trouble. Roy Addams was his name; he’d been hired by the Ellis family to keep order. The Ellises didn’t care what old Roy did as long as nobody was getting murdered or robbed. He had a squad car-a big Packard sedan, with wooden panels-but he never drove it. Roy had his own theory of policing. He’d sit in his house, listening to the radio, and if anything happened on the island, everyone would know where to find him. Once he heard about a crime, he’d go have a talk with the perpetrator. That was a good island policeman, Angus said. Fred and his brother-in-law agreed.

“There wasn’t even a jail,” Angus said. “You got in trouble, you had to sit in old Roy’s living room for a while.”

“That sounds about right,” Fred said. “That’s how it should be with police on an island.”

“If there’s going to be any police at all, that is,” said Angus.

“That’s right. If.”

Angus then told the joke about the polar bear kid who wants to know if there’s any koala blood in his family, and Fred Burden said that reminded him of the one about the three Eskimos in the bakery. And Don Pommeroy told the one about the Japanese guy and the iceberg, but he screwed it up, so Angus Addams had to tell it right. Carl Cobb said he’d heard it a different way, and he gave his whole version, and it was practically the same. That was a waste of time. Don contributed the joke about the Catholic lady and the talking frog, but he wrecked it pretty bad, too.

Angus Addams went off to the bathroom, and when he came back, Don Pommeroy and Fred Burden were arguing. They were really going at it. Someone had said something. Someone had started something. It sure hadn’t taken long. Angus Addams went over to figure out what the fight was about.

“There’s no way,” Fred Burden was saying, his face red and his lips spitting when he talked. “No way you could! He’d kill you!”

“I’m just saying I could,” Don Pommeroy said, slowly and with dignity. “I’m not saying it would be easy. I’m just saying I could do it.”

“What’s he talking about?” Angus asked Carl.

“Don bet Fred Burden a hundred bucks he could beat up a five-foot monkey in a fight,” Carl said.

“What?”

“You’d get creamed!” Fred was shouting now. “You’d get creamed by a five-foot monkey!”

“I’m a good fighter,” Don said.

Angus rolled his eyes and sat down. He felt sorry for Fred Burden. Fred Burden was from Courne Haven, but he didn’t deserve to get into a stupid conversation like this with a known fool like Don Pommeroy.

“Have you ever seen a goddamn monkey?” Fred demanded. “The way a monkey is built? A five-foot monkey would have a six-foot arm span. You know how strong a monkey is? You couldn’t beat up a two -foot monkey. You’d get demolished! ”

“But he wouldn’t know how to fight,” Don said. “That’s where my advantage is. I know how to fight.”

“Now that’s stupid. We’re assuming he’d know how to fight.”

“No we ain’t.”

“Then what are we talking about? How can we talk about fighting a five-foot monkey if the monkey can’t even fight?”

“I’m just saying I could beat one if he could fight.” Don was speaking very calmly. He was the prince of logic. “If a five-foot monkey could fight, I could beat him.”

“What about the teeth?” Carl Cobb asked, genuinely interested now.

“Shut up, Carl,” said his brother-in-law Fred.

“That’s a good question,” Don said, and nodded sagely. “The monkey wouldn’t be allowed to use his teeth.”

“Then he wouldn’t be fighting! ” Fred shouted. “That’s how a monkey would fight! By biting!”

“No biting allowed,” Don said, and his verdict was final.

“He would be boxing? Is that it?” Fred Burden demanded. “You’re saying you could beat a five-foot monkey in a boxing match?”

“Exactly,” said Don.

“But a monkey wouldn’t know how to box,” Carl Cobb observed, frowning.

Don nodded with composed satisfaction. “Exactly,” he said, “why I would win.”

This left Fred Burden with no choice but to punch Don out, so he did. Angus Addams said later he’d have done it himself if Don had said another goddamn word about boxing a five-foot monkey, but Fred was the first who couldn’t take it any more, so he laid one across Don’s ear. Carl Cobb looked so surprised that it really annoyed Angus, so Angus punched Carl. Then Fred punched Angus. Carl punched Angus, too, but not hard. Don came up off the floor and threw himself, bent over and howling, right into Fred’s gut, sending Fred tumbling backward into some empty barstools, which clattered and wavered and fell.

The two men-Fred and Don-set to rolling on the floor of the bar. They had somehow got laid up against each other head to foot and foot to head, which was not an effective posture for fighting. They looked like a large clumsy starfish-all arms and legs. Fred Burden was on top, and he dug his boot tip into the floor and spun himself and Don in a circle, trying to get a grip.

Carl and Angus had stopped fighting. They hadn’t had that strong an interest in it, anyway. Each had got in a punch, and that took care of that. Now they stood beside each other, backs to the bar, watching their friends on the floor.

“Get ’em, Fred!” Carl hooted, and shot a sheepish look at Angus.

Angus shrugged. He didn’t particularly care if Don Pommeroy got beat up. He deserved it, the idiot. A five-foot monkey. For Christ’s sake.

Fred Burden set his teeth into Don’s shin and clamped. Don howled at the injustice, “No biting! No biting!” He was outraged, it seemed, because he’d made that rule perfectly clear with regard to the monkey fight. Angus Addams, standing at the bar, watched the awkward scramble on the floor for a while and then sighed, turned around, and asked the bartender if he could settle the tab. The bartender, a small, slight man with an anxious expression, was holding a baseball bat that was half his height.

“You don’t need that,” Angus said, nodding at the bat.

The bartender looked relieved and slid the bat back under the bar. “Should I call the police?”

“You don’t need to worry. It’s no big deal, buddy. Just let ’em fight it out.”

“What are they fighting about?” the bartender asked.

“Ah, they’re old friends,” Angus said, and the bartender smiled with relief, as if that explained everything. Angus settled his bill and walked past the men (who were wrestling and grunting on the floor) to go upstairs and get some sleep.

“Where you going?” Don Pommeroy, on the floor, shrieked after Angus as he was leaving. “Where the hell you going? ”

Angus had walked out on the fight because he thought it was nothing, but it turned out to be something after all.

Fred Burden was a tenacious bastard, and Don was as stubborn as he was stupid, and neither man let up on the other. The fight went on for a good ten minutes after Angus went to bed. The way Carl Cobb described it, Fred and Don were “two dogs in a field,” biting, kicking, punching. Don tried to break a few bottles over Fred’s head, and Fred broke a few of Don’s fingers so fiercely, you could hear them snap. The bartender, a not very bright man who had been told by Angus not to worry about the fight, didn’t.