The Feud by Thomas Berger

little pup.”
    “I didn’t do it,” Tony said, “and I don’t think it’s funny, and I came over here today just on a walk, I swear. I didn’t know where you lived.” He could see nothing of Eva in her father’s face, but when Bud turned and walked to the workbench he was reminded of her stride, which was somewhat irregular. He had previously believed it mere girlish jauntiness.
    “ I’ll sweat it outa him!” said Reverton.
    Bud turned around and told Tony, “You get out of here. You get out of this town. And don’t you come back, or you’ll be in real trouble, and that goes for your father and all the rest of you Beelers. I’m real good friends with the police over here, and I’m going to tell them to look out for any or all of you. This is our town, and we don’t want you in it.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Tony. “But—”
    Bud pointed a finger in his face. “Don’t you give me any back talk. You just keep your mouth shut and get out of this town.”
    Without warning Reverton gave Tony a tremendous shove in the back. “Get going!”
    Tony climbed the stairs, Reverton behind him. Eva’s mother was gone from the kitchen when they arrived there. The conversation continued in the front part of the house. It sounded lively and good-humored and was accompanied by the clinking of the silverware against china. This family convocation reminded Tony of the one held after his grandfather’s funeral.
    Reverton did not march him through the entire house again. They went out the kitchen door, across the back porch, and down into the yard. There he saw it, a girl’s bicycle with pale blue fenders and a very worn seat: pretty soon the springs would come through and hurt her bottom. He knew it was Eva’s, without knowing whether there were any other girls in the family. She had come home while he was down cellar with the men.
    Reverton said, “Now we’re gonna go to the town line, buster, and don’t forget I’m right behind you all the way, and I can draw faster than you can move.”
    Suppose she would look out the window!
    “I swear I’ll go right back to Hornbeck,” Tony said. “You don’t have to follow me. I give you my word.”
    “What’s a Beeler word worth?” Reverton asked the middle distance. “I’d like to know.” He nodded at Tony and patted his coat at the place where he carried his gun. “Get going. I won’t tell you again.”
    Tony obeyed. His feeling toward Eva made it impossible for him to think badly even of Reverton, who was her relative and, in protecting the Bullard family from what he honestly believed were its enemies, was guarding her . But Tony couldn’t think of any way to commend the man without incurring his wrath, so he just applied himself quietly to the walk toward the town line and was relieved when his captor chose the closer portion of it, reached through the back streets, rather than that which ran through the contiguous business districts of the two towns.
    When he saw the Hornbeck sign ahead—a modest one on this block of industrial garage, empty lots, and back yards of houses so old that one or two still had privies—and looked over his shoulder to check on his captor, he saw nobody close behind him. Furthermore, only two middle-sized kids were in view for an entire two blocks beyond, and farther up the street was only a man burning leaves in the gutter: they had passed him earlier.
    So Tony once again had his freedom, a state of which one is ignorant until it is taken away, but the strange thing was that he felt more loneliness than elation. As a captive of the Bullards he had been a sort of member of the family and in a way closer to Eva than he had ever been before, despite his not seeing her at all.
    A few blocks from home he turned a corner and saw his brother just ahead. Tony was not really all that close to Jack, though they had shared a room before their sister left home, and were only two years apart, and he did not feel like talking with him now on