"An' bugger you all for it," Neil said. He turned and marched up to William. "They're just babes, Will. Babes. Nothing is being gained with all this. The rallies are over. All the honest men have stayed out, but it is the hooligans running the streets now."

"Your whore wife throwed me out of the house, Neil. Am I a hooligan too?"

The back doors finally collapsed under the axes. Rush of air. A huge tongue of fire licked the sky like the devil's tongue. The firemen tumbled backwards. Neil ran, jumping over one of them and rushing inside, ducking the flames.

William just watched for a moment, then ran back around to the front of the asylum. The fire was raging, spilling out of the windows and dancing up onto the roof. The spun towers on the corners burned like torches and lit the otherwise dirty gray sky like a bowl of sunrise and sunset overturned and placed atop the world. William craned his neck far back, watching and listening to the ropy muscles of his neck hiss and bubble. He didn't notice the Black Joke wagons arrive, or hear the scuffle, till Michael called out, "We're dyin' here, bugger boy!"

William twisted and sprung, and scrambled to the edge of the brawl. The Engine Company's last three wagons had arrived, with water instead of flaming sheaves. They've turned, the bastards!

The men were climbing off the wagons, ready with their hose, their buckets and their axes. Michael was grappling with one of them over the handle of an axe, and being forced to the ground. A few more of his gang were swinging wild haymakers, knocking over buckets and wrestling with the drivers.

William watched. He didn't want to ball up his fists and punch anybody. Niggers are just bodies, they ain't any body. And the Black Joke's fightin' back. He looked to run, but stepped into the jaw of the company's dog, a lanky dalmatian with a mouth big enough for William's ankle. Teeth tore right through William's pants and bit deep into calloused flesh and bone. William didn't know what to do--he shouted, windmilled his arms like a lunatic, and kicked helplessly. He shouted, "Bad dog!" and even wondered to the Virgin Mary if he had the right to call a dog a bad one anymore.

Two more wagons, beer wagons, rattlied down the Avenue, overflowing with workingmen, workingmen ready and jumping off the edge and into the fight on the now–smoldering lawn. The horses, foaming with sweat, wouldn't break, and sent a few more of the boys tumbling into the street, but even they picked themselves up and haved-at the Black Joke. William knew what to do now. He took a heavy step, then another, and limped, pulling the dog with him like an enormous, cursed foot, back around the side of the building, so nobody would see what a buffoon he was.

William ripped a switch from a sapling and swung at the dalmatian till it retreated. He chased after it, whipping it hard, feinting and weaving, as it crouched, growled, feinted then sprung, teeth bared. William got it right between the eyes, and was rewarded with a gushing stream of blood and a plaintive howl. Black and white and red all over. The stick was slippery in his hand, bark splitting and twisting into his sweaty palm. He reared back and hit the dog again, and again, splitting open its flank, its shoulder, the crown of his head, taking a nip of its snout. The dog bared its teeth and leaped, but too slow, and stumbled into the wilted grass. Arm up and down. Like a piston. Branch ripped through the air like a whip. More blood, more howls, the dog closed its eyes and whimpered, fight leaking out of it in red puddles. William's arm tired, that's why he stopped, he told himself. His bicep throbbed and just gave out. The switch, greased with blood and sweat, flew out of his hands anyway. The dalmatian lurched away, dragging its ass a few feet while William watched through teary eyes and breathed smoke. It didn't look back when it tipped over like a bag of blood, or even yelp. God damn dog, William thought, God damn that dog to nigger heaven, nigger hell. The dog took to its feet again and tried to scuttle away but couldn't. Then it whimpered once, choked and spit out its last mouthful of bloody life. William had won.

He smiled. And he knew why. It was right, after all, to fight for something you believed in. He could taste it, like blood in his mouth. And William believed in staying alive and making sure other people did the dying now.

"Let it burn, boyos," Michael told the fire truck, "just let it burn."

They got home after midnight. Erin was gone, and she had taken the babies with her. They raided the storage bin for turnips and cheese, bathed in brown laundry water, slept fitfully and were out the door at six o'clock in the morning to pick up their torches and their morning pints.

They dragged another black man down Sixth Avenue on Wednesday, leaving a five–block long red and black streak down the middle of the dirt road. Neil took the man's fingers and feet with an ax and William pissed in the corpse's mouth till the urine bubbled over and dribbled over the man's dusty cheeks. The crowd cheered and William raised his fists in victory.

"Freedom!" he shouted. "Freedom!"

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