From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [383]
“Yes,” Prew said. “Lets step around the corner here where we can talk.”
“Okay,” Fatso grinned. “Anything you say.”
He followed around the corner, carrying his arms out a little and just barely bent the way an old fighter moves when he’s expecting anything.
“How’s it feel to be on the Outside again?” he grinned.
“Bout like I figured it would,” Prew said. Behind them around the corner of the alley he heard the Log Cabin door open and close again and some more late drinkers moved talking down the brick toward Beretania.
“Well?” Fatso grinned. “What was it you wanted to see me about? I aint got all night.”
“This,” Prew said. He pulled the knife out of his pocket and snapped it open, the snick of the sprung blade sounding loudly in the alley. “I cant whip you with my fists, Fatso. I wouldnt want to if I could. I hear you carry a knife. Use it.”
“Maybe I aint got one,” Fatso grinned.
“I hear you awys carry one.”
“Okay. But supposin I dont want to use it?”
“You better use it.”
“Supposin I run?” Fatso grinned.
“I’ll catch you.”
“People might see you. Or, supposin I holler po-lice?”
“They might catch me. But they wount get here quick enough to do you any good.”
“You got it figured all out, aint you?” Fatso grinned.
“I tried to.”
“Well, if thats the way you want it,” Fatso grinned. “Okay.” He put his hand in his pocket, drew the knife and snapped it open, and began to move forward, all in one movement, incredibly fast for a fat man. Behind him the Log Cabin door opened again admitting more late drinkers to the alley. Their voices faded off toward Beretania.
“But I hate to take candy away from babies,” Fatso grinned.
His knife, that was almost identical to Prew’s, was waving back and forth slowly like a snake head, as he came on in in the classic stance of the practiced knife fighter, crouched a little, right arm out a little, blade projecting from across the upturned palm between the thumb and indexfinger, left arm up a little palm open as a guard.
Prew moved to meet him silently, saving his breath, wishing momentarily he had been born a different person, wishing something, maybe if Warden had been home, he had meant to talk it over with Warden, wishing he had remembered to buy himself some chewing gum. Then it was gone and he was seeing everything in the finally climaxed focus of the crystal clarity that was like slow motion as if he had been smoking gauge and was nothing like the hectic swiftness of the ring.
It did not last long. It is only in the movies that knife fighters stab and miss and slash and miss and tussle over several city blocks. Figure one offensive thrust and miss, maybe two if you are very lucky. Most knife fighters are counter-punchers.
Behind them as they circled cautiously just beyond arm reach, the Log Cabin disgorged the last of its most insistent customers. Just a few feet around the corner they moved leisurely down the brick toward Beretania.
Fatso slid in a little like a boxer and raised his left hand toward Prew’s face and feinted with his knife outside Prew’s left arm as if he were going to go in over it and in the same movement, as Prew automatically raised his left hand to block, flecked back down and went in under it. The knife burned like dry ice along Prew’s ribs and cut itself into the wide muscle of his back under the armpit. Prew brought his left hand down sharply but it was already too late and the knife streaked off down his side in a comet tail.
If he had not stepped in at the same moment Fatso cut, if he had been gunshy or muscularly reluctant, if he had flinched, the fight would have been all over and it would have been up to Fatso, to go ahead and kill him or not kill him. But the years of boxing carried with them an instinct that no longer required either thought or courage. His knife went into Fatso at the diaphragm, just under the ribs, an automatic counter-punch right-cross to the solar plexus.
They stood that way perhaps a second or two, perhaps five seconds, thigh to thigh, Prew with his lower lip between his teeth pushing and twisting the knifeblade probing in the fat until the haft was buried in it gouging searchingly in the opening, two statues, the only visible movement Fatso’s right arm that was still trailing off down to its full length. When the arm reached full extension and pu