The man swung at him weakly and Roger grabbed him, pulled him forward, spun him a little, and clubbed him twice on the ear with the base of his right fist.
“You think you’ve learned not to talk to people?” he asked the man.
“Look at his ear,” Rupert said. “Like a bunch of grapes.”
Roger was holding the man again with his thumbs pushing in against the tendons at the base of the biceps. Thomas Hudson was watching the man’s face. It had not been frightened at the start; just mean as a pig’s is; a really mean boar. But it was really completely frightened now. He had probably never heard of fights that no one stopped. Probably he thought in some part of his mind about the stories he had read where men were kicked to death if they went down. He still tried to fight. Each time Roger told him to hit him or pushed him away he tried to throw a punch. He hadn’t quit.
Roger pushed him away. The man stood there and looked at him. When Roger wasn’t holding him in that way that made him feel absolutely helpless the fear drained away a little and the meanness came back. He stood there frightened, badly hurt, his face destroyed, his mouth bleeding, and that ear looking like an overripe fig as the small individual hemorrhages united into one great swelling inside the skin. As he stood there, Roger’s hands off him now, the fear drained and the indestructible meanness welled up.
“Anything to say?” Roger asked him.
“Slob,” the man said. As he said it, he pulled his chin in and put his hands up and turned half away in a gesture an incorrigible child might make.
“Now it comes,” Rupert shouted. “Now it’s going to roll.”
But it was nothing dramatic nor scientific. Roger stepped quickly over to where the man stood and raised his left shoulder and dropped his right fist down and swung it up so it smashed against the side of the man’s head. He went down on his hands and knees, his forehead resting on the dock. He knelt there a little while with his forehead against the planking and then he went gently over on his side. Roger looked at him and then came over to the edge of the dock and swung down into the cockpit.
The crew of the man’s yacht were carrying him on board. They had not intervened in what had happened on the dock and they had picked him up from where he lay on his side on the dock and carried him sagging heavily. Some of the Negroes had helped them lower him down to the stern and take him below. They shut the door after they took him in.
“He ought to have a doctor,” Thomas Hudson said.
“He didn’t hit hard on the dock,” Roger said. “I thought about the dock.”
“I don’t think that last crack alongside the ear did him a lot of good,” Johnny Goodner said.
“You ruined his face,” Frank said. “And the ear. I never saw an ear come up so fast. First it was like a bunch of grapes and then it was as full as an orange.”
“Bare hands are a bad thing,” Roger said. “People don’t have any idea what they’ll do. I wish I’d never seen him.”
“Well, you’ll never see him again without being able to recognize him.”
“I hope he’ll come around,” Roger said.
“It was a beautiful fight, Mr. Roger,” Fred said.
“Fight, hell,” Roger said. “Why the hell did that have to happen?”
“The gentleman certainly brought it on himself,” Fred said.
“Cut out worrying, will you?” Frank said to Roger. “I’ve seen hundreds of guys cooled and that guy is OK.”
Up on the dock the boys were drifting away commenting on the fight. There had been something about the way the white man had looked when he was carried aboard that they did not like and all the bravery about burning the Commissioner’s house was evaporating.
“Well, good night, Captain Frank,” Rupert said.
“Going, Rupert?” Frank asked him.
“Thought we might all go up see what’s going on at Mr. Bobby’s.”
“Good night, Rupert,” said Roger. “See you tomorrow.”
Roger was feeling very low and his left hand was swollen as big as a grapefruit. His right was puffed too but not as badly. There was nothing else to show he had been in a fight except that the neck of his sweatshirt was ripped open and flapped down on his chest. The man had hit him once high up on his head and there was a small bump there. John put some Mercurochrome on the places where his knuckles were skinned and cut. Roger didn’t even look at his hands.
“Let’s go up to Bobby’s place and see if there’s any fun,” Frank said.
“Don’t worry about anything, Roge,” Fred Wilson said and climbed up on the dock. “Only suckers worry.”
They went on along the dock carrying their guitar and banjo toward where the light and the singing were coming out of the open door of the Ponce de León.
“Freddy is a pretty good joe,” John said to Thomas Hudson.
“He always was,” Thomas Hudson said. “But he and Frank are bad together.”
Roger did not say anything and Thomas Hudson was worried about him; about him and about other things.
“Don’t you think we might turn in?” he said to him.
“I’m still spooked about that character,” Roger said.
He was sitting with his back toward the stern, looking glum and holding his left hand in his right.
“Well you don’t have to be anymore,” John spoke very quietly. “He’s walking around now.”
“Really?”
“He’s coming out now and he’s carrying a shotgun.”
“I’ll be a sad son of a bitch,” Roger said. But his voice was happy again. He sat with his back toward the stern and never turned around to look.
The man came out to the stern this time wearing both a pajama top and trousers, but what you saw was the shotgun. Thomas Hudson looked away from it and to his face and his face was very bad. Someone had worked on it and there was gauze and tape over the cheeks and a lot of Mercurochrome had been used. They hadn’t been able to do anything about his ear. Thomas Hudson imagined it must have hurt to have anything touch it, and it just stood out looking very taut and swollen and it had become the dominant feature of his face. No one said anything and the man just stood there with his spoiled face and his shotgun. He probably could not see anyone very clearly the way his eyes were puffed tight. He stood there and he did not say anything and neither did anyone else.
Roger turned his head very slowly, saw him, and spoke over his shoulder.
“Go put the gun away and go to bed.”
The man stood there with the gun. His swollen lips were working but he did not say anything.
“You’re mean enough to shoot a man in the back but you haven’t got the guts,” Roger spoke over his shoulder very quietly, “Go put the gun away and go to bed.”
Roger still sat there with his back toward the man. Then he took what Thomas Hudson thought was an awful chance.
“Doesn’t he remind you just a little bit of Lady Macbeth coming out there in his nightclothes?” he asked the three others in the stern.
Thomas Hudson waited for it then. But nothing happened and after a while the man turned and went down into the cabin taking the shotgun with him.
“I feel very, very much better,” Roger said. “I could feel that sweat run clean down from my armpit and onto my leg. Let’s go home, Tom. Man’s OK.”
“Not too awfully OK,” Johnny said.
“OK enough,” Roger said. “What a human being that is.”
“Come on, Roger,” Thomas Hudson said. “Come on up to my place for a while.”
“All right.”
They said good night to John and walked up the King’s Highway toward the house. There was still plenty of celebrating going on.