The Feud

Free The Feud by Thomas Berger Page A

Book: The Feud by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online
Authors: Thomas Berger
Tags: Fiction, Literary, The Feud
people. Bernice no longer regarded him as being as important as she had at the time he did it to her.
    What happened was that he had caught her smoking a cigarette with Charlie Conley, one summer night, sitting on a bench at the ballpark. Harvey ran Charlie off with a warning, but he brought Bernice to the cruiser and drove her out to the cemetery, where he stopped with the motor running and gave her a good talking to, the point of which was that he had known her father all his life and her since she was born and he wouldn’t stand by and see her go to the dogs by way of cigarettes, which led to drinking and worse. Then Bernice begged him not to tell her father, and the chief said, Well, he would think about it, and Bernice began to cry, and Harvey patted her knee with his big hand with its heavy lodge ring twinkling in the lights of the dashboard, and said, Now, now, I’ll think it over, and then later somehow he was in the passenger’s seat with her straddling his lap, and she could feel, with various parts of her body, the various pieces of hardware he wore at his belt, and he was breathing fast and hot into her face and smelling of fried food, and then he pulled back of a sudden and caught at himself. And when he was done he said, Now you needn’t to worry because you ain’t going to have any kid because of this, and she did not. Pity that at least one of the people who had enjoyed her favors in more recent times had not been as careful as Harvey.
    She was still holding on to Jack. She tugged on his arm now and said, “You breaking the girlies’ hearts yet?”
    Jack said, “Let’s go over and see what Yelton has to say.”
    Bernice asked, “Do you really like my new hair?”
    “Sure.” He got loose from her and went to join the men.
    Bernice sighed in boredom. As long as she could remember, her father was always worked up about something. He took life too seriously and often thought somebody was cheating him or insulting him when probably they never had the least intent to do so. They were probably just forgetful or something. Bernice never had any enemies, because she lived and let. You’d drive yourself crazy otherwise in this old world.
    She looked around. Her mother was talking to old Mrs. Smiley, who lived three doors up the street. Bernice had used to do it with her son Ben in the loft over the Smiley garage, where there was no ventilation and the air in summer was stifling. When, after a time, she discovered that Ben had a weak heart, she discontinued the practice, not relishing the idea of suddenly having a corpse on top of her.
    Tony was handing some things to Harvey. Now that she remembered it, the police chief had had her only that one time. He simply never got hold of her again, but that she was no longer innocent must somehow have shown on her face, for not too long after the incident with Harvey, a number of guys began to approach her with one thing in mind, and she did not disappoint them if they weren’t too crude about it. As the saying went, it was good for the complexion.
    The chief lowered the hand in which he held whatever Tony had given him, and he addressed the crowd in a loud voice.
    “Any uh you people seen anybody in the alley here just before this went off?” He put his free hand at his pistol belt, thumb hooked over it, and waited, looking slowly around. No response came. “Well, you just let me know if you remember later on. You know where to get hold uh me.”
    Bernice was curious as to whether Harvey would still like her looks. She went over to the group around the car.
    Tony was fooling with something down in the engine. He said, without looking up, “It might still run if we got a new distributor cap. Be worth trying. Then we could pound out the hood and repaint ‘er, and be back in business.”
    Bernice sidled up near Harvey. It wouldn’t be long before he smelled her Evening in Paris.
    Her father said desperately, “They mean business, all right. I hope this proves

Similar Books

My Only Love

Katherine Sutcliffe

Shorts - Sinister Shorts

Perri O'Shaughnessy

Beasts and Burdens

Felicia Jedlicka

Rosethorn

Ava Zavora