***
A crowd was assembled in the streets. They were walking among the junk stalks of sellers or they were chatting lively under the house windows. There were every kind of people, from prostitutes blinking in front of the inns, to the sea wolves guffawing between them, to the British navy soldiers pushing carelessly every people coming in front of them.
Wiping his forehead beaded with sweat, Johnny turned into a side street getting down to the port. In that way he would avoid the messy crowd of the people going to the market. He had just to get over the ancient Spanish area, then…
Damn it!, he thought. He bit his lips without realizing it.
Alejandro Naranjo Blanco was the last person he wished to meet. He had made up a gang with some other boys, tormenting everyone passing through that area. They didn’t look favourably on anyone. The English people above all. That was because Port Royal had been a Spanish fortress before the British conquest.
Their frictions had started when a sword had been ordered to Avery. He was a very good carpenter, but also a very capable and known blacksmith. He had appointed Johnny to deliver it and the boy had entered into the Spanish area, without even thinking about it. Alejandro’s gang had immediately assaulted him. The boy had tried to defend himself, but Alejandro had jumped on him, taking out a knife and leaving a memory of their meeting on his left cheek.
When he stopped in the middle of the street, Johnny felt again the burning sensation of liquid warmth he had had soon after the cut. He touched his scar, starting from the cheekbone and going down to his lips. He could hear his mother then: This place is dangerous, that’s why I keep worrying about you! And are you fighting against people of your age, now?
“Shut up”, he muttered to himself.
“Who are you talking to, amigo?” Alejandro was waiting for him a few steps behind. He hadn’t entered the area yet and the boy had already found him.
“Let me go, gordo”, Johnny replied. He knew that calling Alejandro a fat boy wasn’t a good idea.
Yet just meeting him made his blood boil into his veins. “This is not your neighbourhood yet. I can come back from where I came from and take another way.”
“Of course.” The Spanish boy didn’t seem to react to the offense. “But you were always getting through this area.”
“Are you looking for a pretext to quarrel?”
“Maybe.”
Johnny moved forward cautiously. “That’s just what I dislike about you. Don’t provoke me.”
Alejandro’s smile widened into a much deeper line, parting his fatty face in two.
“How is your father?”, he asked.
Johnny’s feet refused to go on. He clenched his fists. That bastard knew exactly where to hit.
“Have they searched into any shark’s stomach?”, he went on. “Or he might have run away with a bitch he met anywhere. He had perhaps got bored of your mother. And of you. What do you think about it, pendejo?”
He wished he could jump on him and settle the question all at once. But he forced every nerve of his body to let go.
“I’ll tell you again for the last time”, he cut it short. “I don’t feel like…”
He could hardly finish the sentence. Something flew next to him. It was a stone. He turned his eyes behind his shoulders, even if his brain answered faster. Taking him by surprise had been just an excuse to let the other members of the gang catch him on the wrong foot. Johnny saw three guys running to him.
“I’m ready this time.” His voice revealed a certain amount of confidence, as Alejandro changed his expression. His smile had turned into a grimace of gloomy hesitation. He then took out a flat-top knife, reminding a bit a barber’s razor.
One of the boys tried to hit him with a stick. Johnny heard it hissing near his ears. The boy tried to come close to him, wanting to make a lunge. He couldn’t. His rival was punching faster and faster. Suddenly Alejandro pushed him from behind, making him hit the boy who had attacked him first.
“ Hijo de puta!”, the boy shouted and hit him with his elbow on the face.
Johnny wasn’t surprised. He instinctively plunged the sword into the thigh. The boy fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Alejandro on his side started attacking him again: he took out the knife and tried to hurt him. He was aware of that and could move away just in time. The stroke hit the boy who had thrown the stone, hurting his shoulder. The two guys started to insult each other at once, giving up the fight. The last member of the gang kept looking at them apart, as if stupefied.
And then Johnny suddenly understood.
The time of revenge had come.
“I’ll return the favour, gordo”, he sentenced and hurt the Spanish boy in his eyebrow. He saw a stream of blood dripping from his eye, dimming his sight. He decided to take advantage of it and beat a retreat.
He turned on his heels and rushed to the direction he had come from, leaving behind him the very rancorous shouts of his aggressors.
***
“I’m late”, he apologized, opening the shop door suddenly. He was panting, his chest was dancing under his clothes. The elbow stroke he had got gave him a strange nose accent.
“I know”, Avery agreed. He was sitting on a stool, in a shadowy corner. Puffs of light blue smoke where coming out of the pipe sloping three quarters from his lips. They whirled sleepily to the ceiling planks, where they lay stagnant in a dim cloud. The wrinkled face didn’t show any kind of feeling. He got up slowly and passed by the stone arch dividing the shop into two separate areas. He got to the forge. He started observing the anvil absent-mindedly.
It looked as if he hadn’t seen it before.
“Let me explain…”, Johnny tried to say.
Avery moved with an incredible dart for a man of his age. He stretched his wrinkled hand and caught the boy’s forearm, grasping him tight. “I don’t know what to do with you!” Splashes of saliva were spurting from his toothless mouth. “You are always late and you go home when you like. You’re an irresponsible! I wouldn’t have hired you if Bartolomeu hadn’t asked me.” He then changed expression. “What happened to you?”
Johnny hesitated. He saw an indefinite sense of bewilderment into his interlocutor’s blazing eyes. Or was it mercy? He would rather get his usual scolding than discuss about his meeting with Alejandro.
“It’s not your business, old man”, he addressed him.
Avery’s wrinkled face seemed to relax. He let him go and scratched his bald head, crossed by just two wisps of grey hair on his ears.
“It was the fat Spanish, wasn’t it?”, he asked.
The boy turned his eyes away.
“Ok”, Avery went on. “Do as you like. You don’t need adding anything else. Let’s try to understand whether your nose is broken. Then we’ll find an excuse for your mother. We could tell her you got hurt here. That woman is always worrying too much about you. You’ll break her heart one day.”
“How do you know?”, Johnny replied.
“There are lots of things you don’t know about me.”
And that was true.
He knew almost nothing about Bennet Avery.
Some rumours depicted him as the protagonist of raids made on board the Queen Anne’s Revenge, pirate Blackbeard’s vessel. Obviously, according to the old man that was only nonsense spread to give him problems. But Johnny had still some doubts. He had often wondered if it was his fancy speaking: maybe he had better not let it so free.