Guy Vanderhaeghe - Man Descending

That started the stampede. “Fight! Fight!” The younger kids, the ones thirteen and fourteen, were really excited; the mob kind of swept Marvin and Gene out the door, across the street and into the OK Economy parking lot where most beefs get settled. There’s lots of dancing-room there. A nice big ring.

Marvin settled in real quick. He tugged the brim of his Massey-Ferguson special a couple of times, got his dukes up and started to hop around like he’d stepped right out of the pages of Ring magazine. He looked pretty stupid, especially when Gene just looked at him, and kept his hands rammed in his jacket pockets. Marvin kind of clomped from foot to foot for a bit and then he said: “Get ’em up.”

“You get first punch,” said Gene.

“What?” said Marv. He was so surprised his yap fell open.

“If I hit you first,” said Gene, “you’ll charge me with assault. I know your kind.”

Marvin stopped clomping. I suspect it took too much coordination for him to clomp and think at the same time. “Oh no,” he said, “I ain’t falling for that. If I hit you first, you’ll charge me with assault.” No flies on Marvin. “You get the first punch.”

“Fight. Come on, fight,” said some ass-hole, real disgusted with all the talk and no action.

“Oh no,” said Gene. “I ain’t hitting you first.”

Marvin brought his hands down. “Come on, come on, let fly.”

“You’re sure?” asked Gene.

“Give her your best shot,” said Marvin. “You couldn’t hurt a fly, you scrawny shit. Quit stalling. Get this show on the road.”

Gene uncorked on him. It looked like a real pansy punch. His right arm whipped out of his jacket pocket, stiff at the elbow like a girl’s when she slaps. It didn’t look like it had nothing behind it, sort of like Gene had smacked him kind of contemptuous in the mouth with the flat of his hand. That’s how it looked. It sounded like he’d hit him in the mouth with a ball-peen hammer. Honest to God, you could hear the teeth crunch when they broke.

Big Marvin dropped on his knees like he’d been shot in the back of the neck. His hands flew up to his face and the blood just ran through his fingers and into his cuffs. It looked blue under the parking-lot lights. There was an awful lot of it.

“Get up, you dick licker,” said Gene.

Marvin pushed off his knees with a crazy kind of grunt that might have been a sob. I couldn’t tell. He came up under Gene’s arms, swept him off his feet and dangled him in the air, crushing his ribs in a bear hug.

“Waauugh!” said Gene. I started looking around right smartly for something to hit the galoot with before he popped my brother like a pimple.

But then Gene lifted his fist high above Marvin’s head and brought it down on his skull, hard as he could. It made a sound like he was banging coconuts together. Marvin sagged a little at the knees and staggered. Chunk! Chunk! Gene hit him two more times and Marvin toppled over backwards. My brother landed on top of him and right away started pasting him left and right. Everybody was screaming encouragement. There was no invitation to the dick licker to get up this time. Gene was still clobbering him when I saw the cherry popping on the cop car two blocks away. I dragged him off Marvin.

“Cops,” I said, yanking at his sleeve. Gene was trying to get one last kick at Marvin. “Come on, fucker,” he was yelling. “Fight now!”

“Jesus,” I said, looking at Gene’s jacket and shirt, “you stupid bugger, you’re all over blood.” It was smeared all over him. Marvin tried to get up. He only made it to his hands and knees. There he stayed, drooling blood and saliva on the asphalt. The crowd started to edge away as the cop car bounced up over the curb and gave a long, low whine out of its siren.

I took off my windbreaker and gave it to Gene. He pulled off his jacket and threw it down. “Get the fuck out of here,” I said. “Beat it.”

“I took the wheels off his little red wagon,” said Gene. “It don’t pull so good now.” His hands were shaking and so was his voice. He hadn’t had half enough yet. “I remember that other guy,” he said. “Where’s his friend?”

I gave him a shove. “Get going.” Gene slid into the crowd that was slipping quickly away. Then I remembered his hockey jacket. It was wet with blood. It also had flashes with his name and number on it. It wouldn’t take no Sherlock Holmes cop to figure out who’d beat on Marvin. I picked it up and hugged it to my belly. Right away I felt something hard in the pocket. Hard and round. I started to walk away. I heard a car door slam. I knew what was in that pocket. The controversial four ball old Gene had palmed when he pretended to put it back. He likes to win.

I must have been walking too fast or with a guilty hunch to my shoulders, because I heard the cop call, “Hey you, the kid with the hair.” Me, I’m kind of a hippy for this place, I guess. Lots of people mention my hair.

I ran. I scooted round the corner of the supermarket and let that pool ball fly as hard as I could, way down the alley. I never rifled a shot like that in my life. If coach Al had seen me trigger that baby he’d have strapped me into a belly pad himself. Of course, a jacket don’t fly for shit. The bull came storming around the corner just as I give it the heave-ho. I was kind of caught with shit on my face, if you know what I mean?

Now a guy with half a brain could have talked his way out of that without too much trouble. Even a cop understands how somebody would try to help his brother. They don’t hold it too much against you. And I couldn’t really protect Gene. That geek Marvin would have flapped his trap if I hadn’t. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t done old Gene some good. After all, they never found out about that pool ball. The judge would have pinned Gene’s ears back for him if he’d known he was going around thwacking people with a hunk of shatter-proof plastic. So Gene came out smelling like a rose, same suspended sentence as me, and a reputation for having hands of stone.

But at a time like that you get the nuttiest ideas ever. I watched them load Marvin in a squad car to drive him to the hospital while I sat in the back seat of another. And I thought to myself: I’ll play along with this. Let the old man come down to the cop shop over me for once. Me he takes for granted. Let him worry about Billy for a change. It wouldn’t hurt him .

So I never said one word about not being the guy who hopped Marvin. It was kind of fun in a crazy way, making like a hard case. At the station I was real rude and lippy. Particularly to a sergeant who was a grade A dink if I ever saw one. It was only when they took my shoe-laces and belt that I started to get nervous.

“Ain’t you going to call my old man?” I asked.

The ass-hole sergeant gave me a real smile. “In the morning,” he said. “All in good time.”

“In the morning?” And then I said like a dope: “Where am I going to sleep?”

“Show young Mr. Simpson where he’s going to sleep,” said the sergeant. He smiled again. It looked like a ripple on a slop pail. The constable who he was ordering around like he was his own personal slave took me down into the basement of the station. Down there it smelled of stale piss and old puke. I kind of gagged. I got a weak stomach.

Boy, was I nervous. I saw where he was taking me. There were four cells. They weren’t even made out of bars. Just metal strips riveted into a cross hatch you couldn’t stick your hand through. They were all empty.

“Your choice,” said the corporal. He was real humorous too, like his boss.

“You don’t have to put me in one of them, sir,” I said. “I won’t run away.”