(22)

I had no sooner reached my car than the lights in the library went out. I checked my watch and saw it was damn near seven p.m. Was that the usual closing time for the library, or had Estelle kept it open for me?

Course, if she had, that didn’t mean I was anything special. It wasn’t like New Long Lincoln was full of fun activities. She wasn’t missing a night at the opera. But a woman her age who looked like that surely had more on her mind than overdue library books.

I closed my car door and sat for a moment, thinking about something I couldn’t quite define—tugging at that damn string again. Whatever was on the other end of it remained there. I drove away.

I parked near the front of the Chandler house, and when I got out of the car to go inside, I saw two men coming up the sidewalk.

In the lights along the road and from the houses on both sides of the street, I could see they wore dark hats and suits like uniforms and seemed in quite a hurry. One of the men was short and stout; the other was tall and lanky. Even from a distance, their faces were strange. I stepped off the walk and onto the grass.

Due to all the boxing training I’d had over the years, I could tell from their body language the reason they were in such a hurry was on account of me. I was their destination. They had been waiting on my arrival.

When they were up close, I saw their faces were painted. The lanky one’s face was darkened with cork, the way white minstrel performers used to blacken their faces. His lips were red with scarlet lipstick. Under his hat I could see what looked like orange clown hair. The shorter man’s face was chalky white. They both wore black gloves.

I wondered suddenly if the circus was in town.

The short man with the white face said, “You wouldn’t be considering staying, would you?”

“What?” I said, but they weren’t interested in an answer.

The short man stepped in quickly. I dropped the books and pulled my hands up and tucked in my elbows as he hit me with a low left hook just above my hip. The shot caught me on my belt and clipped the bottom of my elbow, striking what is sometimes referred to as the funny bone, but it didn’t feel that funny.

I fell to one knee as if to propose, and the tall one kicked me in the chest, a kind of a stomping kick. I rolled over on the grass and managed to get up when I would rather have stayed down.

They came swiftly toward me. I hit the little guy with a same-hand high-low combination, a left jab to the nose and a left hook to the ribs, finished with a right cross to his chin. It was his turn to go down.

The lanky guy tried to kick me again, this time a football kick, but I was ready for him. I scooped my arm under his ankle and lifted him high enough that when he fell, he cracked his head on the sidewalk. His hat rolled off but the clown hair stayed on.

The short white-faced guy was tough. He was getting up. Oddly, his hat was still on, though the brim was up in front. He raised his hands and advanced, bobbing a little. I had dusted some of the white paint off his nose, and I could see that beneath it, his skin was black.

I put my hands up, but out of the corner of my eye I saw clown-hair was getting up too. It was about to be messy at the circus, and most likely I was going to be the mess.

That’s when the boardinghouse door flew open and Mrs. Chandler, in a blue nightgown, her hair tucked under some kind of blue nightcap, stepped out under the porch light for a moment, then came marching down the stairs and across the yard. She was carrying a single-shot shotgun about the size of a bazooka. Or so it seemed right then.

“You bastards get off my property now.”

The men seemed like frightened chickens for a moment. Lanky guy grabbed his hat and put it on, and he and the little man started running down the sidewalk in the direction they had come from.

I took a deep breath and sat down on the grass and put my head between my knees.

Mrs. Chandler came over and laid the shotgun in the grass and knelt beside me. “You hurt?”

“Mostly my pride. But I’ve felt better. Like, before they hit me.”

“Saw you put them on their butts. You did all right. I went and got my shotgun. If only I had a shell in it.”

I gathered up the library books and we went inside the house, me limping. Mrs. Chandler surprised me and allowed me into her living room to sit on the sofa. I thought she ought to be careful doing that. It’s like when you invite the family dog onto the couch for just one time, and then it becomes its home. She placed the shotgun on the floor next to the couch, and I tried to relax my side while Mrs. Chandler phoned the police.

Ronnie and Chief Dudley both showed up.

When they came in, I said, “Don’t you have homes to go to?”

“I at least got my chicken and dumplings,” Chief Dudley said. “Wasn’t as good as I had hoped for. Heavy on the salt.”

Ronnie came over and put her hand on my shoulder. “You okay, Danny?”

“This boy can really hit,” said Mrs. Chandler. “I know hitting. My long-dead husband used to knock me down.”

“Didn’t he fall down those hall stairs there?” Chief Dudley said.

“Did indeed,” she said. “Drunk. Broke his neck, some other bones that didn’t count as much as that one. I look up those stairs, I remember that time fondly.”

“He needed to watch his step,” Chief Dudley said.

Mrs. Chandler went into the kitchen and started banging some pans or pots around. Chief Dudley and Ronnie sat and asked me questions about what had happened.

There wasn’t much to tell.

“Were they white or black?” Dudley asked.

“They were disguised. One had burnt cork on his face, like in a minstrel show, and a silly orange clown wig. He was white, I’m sure. The other had white paint. He was black. I could see that because my fist wiped some of that paint off his nose.” I held up my fist. It still had a smear of white greasepaint on it. “They wore black suits and black fedoras. They came to party.”

“You been in town a day or so,” Dudley said, “and you’ve already pissed someone off. Any idea whose feelings you might have hurt?”

“It wasn’t like I went anywhere that I could actually make anyone mad, unless there’s a library police, and if so, they’re misguided. I’ve got two weeks on those books.”

“Could have been an attempted robbery?” Chief Dudley said.

“Guess so,” I said.

“You should go to the emergency room and be checked out,” Ronnie said.

“Been hit in boxing enough to know all I got is a bruise,” I said. “I’ll be sore for a day or two, pee a little blood, and then I’m fine.”

“Aren’t you experienced for such a young man.”

“I’ve really had the odometer running these past few years,” I said.

Mrs. Chandler came into the room carrying a tray with cups on it. Steam puffed up from the cups. “Tea with honey,” she said.

She sat the tray on the coffee table, picked up the books I had placed on the couch, put them on the coffee table, and studied the titles for a moment. Then she picked up the shotgun, said, “I’ll put this away.”

“Might want to be careful with that,” Chief Dudley said.

“Wasn’t loaded,” she said. “Have some shells around here somewhere, but not in it.”

“She ran a good bluff,” I said.

When Mrs. Chandler came back, she said, “Let’s drink it while it’s hot.”