Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“One in the eye,” Eddie whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “Give ’im one in the eye, Larry!”

But Lawrence stood with eyes lowered, regarding his hands.

“Well?” the farmer asked.

Lawrence still looked at his hands, opening and closing them slowly.

“He don’t wanna fight,” Nathan taunted Eddie. “He just wants t’ row in our boat, he don’t wanna fight.”

“He wants to fight, all right,” Eddie said staunchly, and under his breath, “Come on, Larry, in the kisser, a fast one in the puss …”

But Larry stood still, calmly, seeming to be thinking of Brahms and Beethoven, of distant concert halls.

“He’s yella, that’s what’s the matter with him!” Nathan roared. “He’s a coward, all city kids’re cowards!”

“He’s no coward,” Eddie insisted, knowing in his deepest heart that his brother was a coward. With his knees he nudged Lawrence. “Bring up yuh left! Please, Larry, bring up yuh left!”

Deaf to all pleas, Lawrence kept his hands at his sides.

“Yella! Yella! Yella!” Nathan screamed loudly.

“Well,” the farmer wanted to know, “is he goin’ to fight or not?”

“Larry!” Fifteen years of desperation was in Eddie’s voice, but it made no mark on Lawrence. Eddie turned slowly toward home. “He’s not goin’ to fight,” he said flatly. And then, as one throws a bone to a neighbor’s noisy dog, “Come on, you …”

Slowly Lawrence bent over, picked up his shoes and socks, took a step after his brother.

“Wait a minute, you!” the farmer called. He went after Eddie, turned him around. “I want to talk to ye.”

“Yeah?” Eddie said sadly, with little defiance. “What do yuh wanna say?”

“See that house over there?” the farmer asked, pointing.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “What about it?”

“That’s my house,” the farmer said. “You stay away from it. See?”

“O.K. O.K.,” Eddie said wearily, all pride gone.

“See that boat there?” the farmer asked, pointing at the source of all the trouble.

“I see it,” Eddie said.

“That’s my boat. Stay away from it or I’ll beat hell outa ye. See?”

“Yeah, yeah, I see,” Eddie said. “I won’t touch yer lousy boat.” And once more, to Lawrence, “Come on, you.… ”

“Yella! Yella! Yella!” Nathan kept roaring, jumping up and down, until they passed out of earshot, across the pleasant fields, ripe with the soft sweet smell of clover in the late summer afternoon. Eddie walked before Lawrence, his face grimly contracted, his mouth curled in shame and bitterness. He stepped on the clover blossoms fiercely, as though he hated them, wanted to destroy them, the roots under them, the very ground they grew in.

Holding his shoes in his hands, his head bent on his chest, his hair still mahogany smooth and mahogany dark, Lawrence followed ten feet back in the footsteps, plainly marked in the clover, of his brother.

“Yella,” Eddie was muttering, loud enough for the villain behind him to hear clearly. “Yella! Yella as a flower. My own brother,” he marveled. “If it was me I’d’a been glad to get killed before I let anybody call me that. I would let ’em cut my heart out first. My own brother. Yella as a flower. Just one in the eye! Just one! Just to show ’im … But he stands there, takin’ guff from a kid with holes in his pants. A pianist. Lawrrrrence! They knew what they were doin’ when they called yuh Lawrrrrence! Don’t talk to me! I don’t want yuh ever to talk to me again as long as yuh live! Lawrrrrence!”

In sorrow too deep for tears, the two brothers reached home, ten feet, ten million miles apart.

Without looking around, Eddie went to the grape arbor, stretched out on the bench. Lawrence looked after him, his face pale and still, then went into the house.

Face downward on the bench, close to the rich black earth of the arbor, Eddie bit his fingers to keep the tears back. But he could not bite hard enough, and the tears came, a bitter tide, running down his face, dropping on the black soft earth in which the grapes were rooted.

“Eddie!”

Eddie scrambled around, pushing the tears away with iron hands. Lawrence was standing there, carefully pulling on doeskin gloves over his small hands. “Eddie,” Lawrence was saying, stonily disregarding the tears. “I want you to come with me.”

Silently, but with singing in his heart so deep it called new tears to his wet eyes, Eddie got up, blew his nose, and followed after his brother, caught up with him, walked side by side with him across the field of clover, so lightly that the red and purple blossoms barely bent in their path.

Eddie knocked sternly at the door of the farmhouse, three knocks, solid, vigorous, the song of trumpets caught in them.

Nathan opened the door. “What do ye want?” he asked suspiciously.

“A little while ago,” Eddie said formally, “yuh offered to fight my brother. He’s ready now.”

Nathan looked at Lawrence, standing there, straight, his head up, his baby lips compressed into a thin tight line, his gloved hands creased in solid fists. He started to close the door. “He had his chance,” Nathan said.

Eddie kept the door open firmly. “Yuh offered, remember that,” he reminded Nathan politely.

“He shoulda fought then,” Nathan said stubbornly. “He had his chance.”

“Come on,” Eddie almost begged. “Yuh wanted to fight before.”

“That was before. Lemme close the door.”

“Yuh can’t do this!” Eddie was shouting desperately. “Yuh offered!”

Nathan’s father, the farmer, appeared in the doorway. He looked bleakly out. “What’s goin’ on here?” he asked.

“A little while ago,” Eddie spoke very fast, “this man here offered to fight this man here.” His eloquent hand indicated first Nathan, then Lawrence. “Now we’ve come to take the offer.”

The farmer looked at his son. “Well?”

“He had his chance,” Nathan grumbled sullenly.

“Nathan don’t want t’ fight,” the farmer said to Eddie. “Get outa here.”

Lawrence stepped up, over to Nathan. He looked Nathan squarely in the eye. “Yella,” he said to Nathan.

The farmer pushed his son outside the door. “Go fight him,” he ordered.

“We can settle it in the woods,” Lawrence said.

“Wipe him up, Larry!” Eddie called as Lawrence and Nathan set out for the woods, abreast, but a polite five yards apart. Eddie watched them disappear behind trees, in silence.

The farmer sat down heavily on the porch, took out a package of cigarettes, offered them to Eddie. “Want one?”

Eddie looked at the cigarettes, suddenly took one. “Thanks,” he said.

The farmer struck a match for the cigarettes, leaned back against a pillar, stretched comfortably, in silence. Eddie licked the tobacco of his first cigarette nervously off his lips.

“Sit down,” the farmer said, “ye kin never tell how long kids’ll fight.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said, sitting, pulling daringly at the cigarette, exhaling slowly, with natural talent.

In silence they both looked across the field to the woods that shielded the battlefield. The tops of the trees waved a little in the wind and the afternoon was collecting in deep blue shadows among the thick brown tree-trunks where they gripped the ground. A chicken hawk floated lazily over the field, banking and slipping with the wind. The farmer regarded the chicken hawk without malice.

“Some day,” the farmer said, “I’m going to get that son of a gun.”

“What is it?” Eddie asked, carefully holding the cigarette out so he could talk.

“Chicken hawk. You’re from the city, ain’t ye?”

“Yeah.”

“Like it in the city?”