Read Online The Amboy Dukes by Irving Shulman - Free Book Online Page A

felt. He moved in slowly, his left out and his right moving in a small circle. He tried a tentative jab, but Lenny blocked it easily. Feivel tried the jab again, and in his mind the signal of hope flashed an alert as he saw that the kid covered up all right but that he dropped his right hand just a little. Again the jab, and again the block, and now he saw that Lenny looked a little nervous. In another minute he would try an offensive of his own. Now the kid was set up—about four feet from the wall and with his back toward the telephone booth. Simultaneously, as Feivel shot the left jab and Lenny lowered his guard, Feivel threw his right and the blow caught Lenny in the pit of the stomach. As he involuntarily bent over from the pain and shock Feivel’s hard left fist smashed into his jaw. Lenny straightened up, and Feivel’s right catapulted into his face and he fell against the telephone booth, glanced off, and was met by two driving fists that hit him in the stomach and jaw. Sick and blind with pain, Lenny tried to cover up, but Feivel’s fists kept driving him into the wall, tying him up, smashing him in the stomach and ribs and face, nipping and tearing into bone and muscle and flesh. Lenny’s eyes were puffed and he was almost blind, and now his head was rocking wildly as the fists kept piling into him. Feivel was transfigured. Now he knew it: he could still battle, still hold his own and beat hell out of the stinkers that came into the poolroom, beat hell out of the amateurs who hung around Beecher’s, still have something real like his fists and the remnants of his skill, his knowledge of what to do and how to do it and how to find out what a guy was a sucker for. He could still battle, and now this was going to be it. The right cross had everything he had in it. It started from his hip as he shifted for the punch, went up through his shoulder and into his biceps and forearm, and exploded against Lenny’s chin. Then he stepped back and watched the kid slump to the floor.
    No one spoke, and as he turned around and looked at Lenny’s friend the kid backed out of the door, with his lips quivering and his face and eyes filled with horror and nausea.
    Then Feivel turned to the Tigers and Frank and Black Benny. “See,” he puffed, “what happens when a bastard like one of you kids gets tough with me? You thought he had me,” he puffed, and wiped his face. “You thought he had me! You thought I was through and that he was going to knock the crap out of me!” He leaned against the first table and breathed heavily with his mouth open. “You thought he had me.” He laughed. “Now look at him! How does he look? Maybe one of you guys wants to look like him? Huh? Maybe? All right, you snotnose little bastards. You little sons of a bitching bastards who think I’m too old to do anything. All right. Maybe one of you wants to do something?”
    “No one wants to do anything,” Benny said softly. “We ought to clean that guy up. He looks bad.”
    “Sure”—Feivel nodded—“clean him up. But not in here!”
    “Be a sport, Feivel,” Benny said, “we’ll take him into the toilet and clean him up.”
    Feivel clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. “No, you won’t. All of you”—he suddenly began to scream hoarsely—“get outa here! Get out before I kill you! Get him out too!” Feivel’s voice broke and he gasped as if to keep from crying. “Get him out before I kill all of you!” Then he turned and stumbled toward the counter.
    Silently Frank held the door open while Benny and the Tigers carried Lenny into the street.
    “You guys better take him down to your club,” Frank suggested.
    “Maybe a drugstore would be better,” Benny said.
    “No. Because maybe the druggist’ll call the cops and they’ll nab Feivel,” Frank reminded them.
    “The son of a bitch deserves it,” one of the Tigers who was helping to carry Lenny said. “He’s crazy.”
    “But we don’t call the cops, do we?”