AN EXPENSE OF SPIRIT
"Shut the door," Noel growled, not looking up.
The kids did not move or answer.
"Shut the door!" Noel roared.
"Things are tough all over," one of them said in a scared nasty
voice.
"I'll shut it," I offered, fearing a senseless row when we had
seemed so near peace.
"The hell you wiIl-"
"Shut it, Chick," one of the kids was saying. "What do we want,
trouble?"
"Quiet, jerk!" Chick sneered, more assured now, and he began
to hum, "He's too fat for me.... "
"You little bastard," Noel said lurching toward him, "Shut it!"
"Make me," the kid said.
I suppose there is a way of dealing with such situations, but
my life has not prepared me for it; before I quite knew what was
happening, the two of them were outside, and before I, or indeed
even the other kid or the counterman, could intervene, it was allover.
Noel had cocked a meaty fist but before he could get set on his shaky
legs, the kid had kicked
him
in the groin-hard-and run. I could
hear the other boy pounding after him, his voice clear in that abso–
lute hush just before the first morning streetcar runs, "What the
hell's with you-an old man!"
Noel was sitting on the ground, screaming and cursing, tears
running scandalously across his great face; he yielded himself to
them
almost voluptuously, as if they were a satisfaction he had never
dreamed. It was something of a task for me and the counterman to
heave
him
to his feet, half carry, half drag him to the waiting car.
It would have been, I suppose, no more than an adequate revenge
to abandon him then and there, but as the pain eased off, it left him
all
at once atrociously drunk, and I could not, in all conscience, do
it.
I fished the car keys out of his pocket and drove him to my room,
though I do not drive well under any circumstances, and he would
pummel me from time to time, screaming, "Man-man-maybe he's
not-There!"
My efforts to revive him with coffee were quite vain, and when
he slipped at last to the floor from the chair in which I had propped
him, I left
him
there and went to bed.
23
