“I told you you weren’t going nowhere,” Tom said. He backed away a little, his arms crooked, his fingers outspread.

“Nobody gets away with tearing my coat,” the soldier said. “I don’t care who he is.” He swung with his open hand. Tom moved in and let the blow fall on his left shoulder. “Ow!” he screamed, putting his right hand to his shoulder and bending over as though he were in terrible pain.

“Did you see that?” Claude demanded of the spectators. “Did you see that man hit my friend?”

“Listen, soldier,” a gray-haired man in a raincoat said, “you can’t beat up on a little kid like that.”

“I just gave him a little slap,” the soldier turned to the man apologetically. “He’s been dogging me all …”

Suddenly Tom straightened up and hitting upward, with his closed fist, struck the soldier, not too hard, so as not to discourage him, along the side of the jaw.

There was no holding the soldier back now. “Okay, kid, you asked for it.” He began to move in on Tom.

Tom retreated and the crowd pushed back behind him.

“Give them room,” Claude called professionally. “Give the men room.”

“Sidney,” the girl called shrilly, “you’ll kill him.”

“Nah,” the soldier said, “I’ll just slap him around a little. Teach him a lesson.”

Tom snaked in and hit the soldier with a short left hook to the head and went in deep to the belly with his right. The soldier let the air out of his lungs with a large, dry sound, as Tom danced back.

“It’s disgusting,” a woman said. “A big oaf like that. Somebody ought to stop it.”

“It’s all right,” her husband said. “He said he’d only slap him a couple of times.”

The soldier swung a slow, heavy right hand at Tom. Tom ducked under it and dug both his fists into the soldier’s soft middle. The soldier bent almost double in pain and Tom hooked both hands to the face. The soldier began to spurt blood and he waved his hands feebly in front of him and tried to clinch. Contemptuously, Tom let the soldier grapple him, but kept his right hand free and clubbed at the soldier’s kidneys. The soldier slowly went down to one knee. He looked up blearily at Tom through the blood that was flowing from his cut forehead. Angela was crying. The crowd was silent. Tom stepped back. He wasn’t even breathing hard. There was a little glow under the light, blond fuzz on his cheeks.

“My God,” said the lady who had said that somebody ought to stop it, “he looks just like a baby.”

“You getting up?” Tom asked the soldier. The soldier just looked at him and swung his head wearily to get the blood out of his eyes. Angela knelt beside him and started using her handkerchief on the cuts. The whole thing hadn’t taken more than thirty seconds.

“That’s all for tonight, folks,” Claude said. He was wiping sweat off his face.

Tom strode out of the little circle of watching men and women. They were very quiet, as though they had seen something unnatural and dangerous that night, something they would like to be able to forget.

Claude caught up to Tom as they turned the corner. “Boy, oh boy,” Claude said, “you worked fast tonight. The combinations, boy, oh boy, the combinations.”

Tom was chuckling. “Sidney, you’ll kill him,” he said, trying to imitate the girl’s voice. He felt wonderful. He half-closed his eyes and remembered the shock of his fists against skin and bone and against the brass buttons of the uniform. “It was okay,” he said. “Only it didn’t last long enough. I should have carried him a while. He was just a pile of shit. Next time let’s pick somebody can fight.”

“Boy,” Claude said, “I really enjoyed that. I sure would like to see that fella’s face tomorrow. When you going to do it again?”

Tom shrugged. “When I’m in the mood. Good night.” He didn’t want Claude hanging around him anymore. He wanted to be alone and remember every move of the fight. Claude was used to these sudden rejections and treated them respectfully. Talent had its prerogatives. “Good night,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

Tom waved and turned off down the avenue for the long walk toward his house. They had to be careful to go to other parts of town when Tom wanted to fight. He was too well known in his own neighborhood. Everybody avoided him when they sensed one of his moods coming on.

He walked swiftly toward home down the dark street toward the smell of the river, dancing a little around a lamppost here and there. He’d shown them, he’d shown them. And he was going to show them a lot more. Them.

As he turned the last corner, he saw his sister Gretchen approaching the house from the other end of the street. She was hurrying and she had her head down and she didn’t see him. He slipped into a doorway across the street and waited. He didn’t want to have to talk to his sister. She hadn’t said anything that he wanted to hear since he was eight years old. He watched her almost run up to the door next to the bakery window and get her key out of her bag. Maybe once he would follow her and really find out what she did with her nights.

Gretchen opened the door and went in. Tom waited until he was sure that she was safely upstairs and in her room, then crossed the street and stood in front of the weathered gray frame building. Home. He had been born in that house. He had come unexpectedly, early, and there had been no time to get his mother to the hospital. How many times he had heard that story. Big deal, being born at home. The Queen did not leave the Palace. The Prince first saw the light of day in the royal bedchamber. The house looked desolate, ready to be torn down. Tom spat again. He stared at the building, all exhilaration gone. There was the usual light from the basement window, where his father was working. The boy’s face hardened. A whole life in a cellar. What do they know? he thought. Nothing.

He let himself in quietly with the key and climbed to the room he shared with Rudolph on the third floor. He was careful on the creaky stairs. Moving soundlessly was a point of honor with him. His exits and entrances were his own business. Especially on a night like this. There was some blood on the sleeve of his sweater and he didn’t want anybody coming in and howling about it.

He could hear Rudolph breathing steadily, asleep, as he closed the door quietly behind him. Nice, proper Rudolph, the perfect gentleman, smelling of toothpaste, right at the head of his class, everybody’s pet, never coming home with blood on him, getting a good night’s sleep, so he wouldn’t miss a good morning, Ma’am, or a trigonometry problem the next day. Tom undressed in the dark, throwing his clothes carelessly over a chair. He didn’t want to answer any questions from Rudolph, either. Rudolph was no ally. He was on the other side. Let him be on the other side. Who cared?

But when he got into the double bed, Rudolph awoke. “Where you been?” Rudolph asked sleepily.

“Just to the show.”

“How was it?”

“Lousy.”

The two brothers lay still in the darkness. Rudolph moved a bit toward the other side of the bed. He thought it was degrading to have to sleep in the same bed with his brother. It was cold in the room, with the window open and the wind coming off the river. Rudolph always opened the window wide at night. If there was a rule, you could bet Rudolph would obey it. He slept in pajamas. Tom just stripped to his shorts for sleeping. They had arguments about that twice a week.

Rudolph sniffed. “For Christ’s sake,” he said, “you smell like a wild animal. What’ve you been doing?”

“Nothing,” Tom said. “I can’t help the way I smell.” If he wasn’t my brother, he thought, I’d beat the shit out of him.

He wished he’d had the money to go to Alice’s behind the railroad station. He’d lost his virginity there for five dollars and he’d gone back several times after that. That was in the summer. He had had a job on a dredge in the river and he told his father he made ten dollars a week less than he actually did. That big dark woman, that Florence girl, up from Virginia, who had let him come twice for the same five dollars because he was only fourteen and he was cherry, that would have really finished the night off. He hadn’t told Rudolph about Alice’s either. Rudolph was still a virgin, that was for sure. He was above sex or he was waiting for a movie star or he was a fairy or something. One day, he, Tom, was going to tell Rudolph everything and then watch the expression on his face. Wild animal. Well, if that’s what they thought of him, that’s what he was going to be—a wild animal.