494
PARTISAN REVIEW
said, "Hurry up and get ready against that tree," and began to take
off his belt.
What he had in mind to do appeared to come to her very slowly
as if it had to penetrate a fog in her head. She did not move but
gradually her confused expression began to clear. Where a few
seconds before her face had been red and distorted and unorganized,
it drained now of every vague line until nothing was left on it but
positiveness, a look that went slowly past determination and reached
certainty. "Nobody has ever beat me," she said, "and if anybody
tries it, I'll kill him."
"I don't want no sass," he said and started toward her. His
knees felt very unsteady, as if they might tum either backward or
forward.
She moved exactly one step back and, keeping her eye on him
steadily, removed her glasses and dropped them behind a small rock
near the tree he had told her to get ready against. "Take off your
glasses," she said.
"Don't give me orders!" he said in a high voice and slapped
awkwardly at her ankles with his belt.
She was on him so quickly that he could not have recalled
which blow he felt first, whether the weight of her whole solid body
or the jabs of her feet or the pummeling of her fist on his chest. He
flailed the belt in the air, not knowing where to hit but trying to
get her off him until he could decide where to get a grip on her.
"Leggo!" he shouted. "Leggo I tell you!" But she seemed to
be everywhere, coming at him from all directions at once. It was as
if he were being attacked not by one child but by a pack of small
demons all with stout brown school shoes and small rocklike fists.
His glasses flew to the side.
"I toljer to take them off," she growled without pausing.
He caught his knee and danced on one foot and a rain of blows
fell on his stomach. He felt five claws in the flesh of his upper arm
where she was hanging from while her feet mechanically battered
his knees and her free fist pounded him again and again in the chest.
Then with horror he saw her face rise up in front of his, teeth ex–
posed, and he roared like a bull as she bit the side of his jaw. He
seemed to see his own face coming to bite him from several sides
at once but he could not attend to it for he was being kicked in-
