Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

We sat at the edge of a long concrete pier, and we fished together. The sun was nice, and the breeze was nice, and I had the whole day with my father. I caught four fish, two bluegills, a walleye, and a perch. We cleaned the walleye and the perch and tossed back the bluegills. My father didn’t catch anything at all, which was a point of pride for me. He was fishing a naked hook, of course, but I didn’t know that then, just like I didn’t know he’d traded away his knife. By the time we ran out of a bait, it was getting dark, and we needed to drive home. I’d been trolling the bottom with a treble hook for the last hour or so, and I realized I’d gotten hung up. We switched poles so my father could try to get mine free. He yanked and twisted, pulled on the line, but it wouldn’t come free.

I reeled his line in and saw that his hook was cleaned.

“Guess they got me again,” he said.

“Sorry, dad,” I said. “I guess we’ll just have to cut mine.”

He reached into his pocket for his knife and realized it wasn’t there. Then he just yanked at my line as hard as he could, which ripped the leader clean off. He tousled my hair and we threw the poles in the truck bed and drove home, where I bragged to my mother and brother about how I’d caught fish but my father hadn’t. I was eleven years old. I had no idea that my father was the world’s quietest hero.

I finished filling in the grave and tamped down the loose soil and squatted next to him. There was no headstone, not for my father, not for anyone else, but I knew who was where.

There’s a guy who works down the line from you, Mick Sligo, and he’s convinced you stole the king of spades from his deck of cards. He plays euchre during breaks, and he needs that king of spades. He pokes you in the chest, hard, says you need to give it back pronto. He’s a brutish sort of guy, tattooed forearms, shaved head, mound of beer gut. He wears cut-off shirts and always manages to sweat through them until they look translucent with grease. He drives a Chevy with six wheels and tells loud jokes about Polacks.

You did not steal Mick Sligo’s king of spades, but that hardly seems to matter. You try to reason with him. What would you do with a single king of spades? It’s an odd thing to steal, no? Mick Sligo doesn’t care. His blood is up, and he’s chosen you. Find it by the end of the shift, he says. He does not say or else , does not explain what he will do to you when you do not find it.

You realize that for first time in your life, you’ll need to throw a punch. Mick Sligo cannot be reasoned with. He’s a hulking barbarian, and you can hardly blame him for choosing combat over diplomacy. You think of your wife and three-year-old daughter at home, asleep. You moved to second shift when she was born so you could see them during the day. But you ended up on the same team as Mick Sligo. Your wife won’t approve of violence, but she’ll help ice you down when you get home, hopefully your knuckles, but probably your jaw.

You need to know that this probably won’t end well. You shouldn’t punch guys who have lots of tattoos. You shouldn’t punch guys who are more than a head taller than you or a foot wider than you. You shouldn’t punch guys who seem too eager. You shouldn’t punch guys with fighter nicknames: Snake, T-Rex, Bomber, Ninja, Mick Sligo.

If you have any say, it’s better to punch guys who wear things like this: bow ties, braces, top hats, eye patches, prosthetic arms. Punch guys who have lots of facial piercings. Punch guys who’ve just eaten a big burrito. Punch guys with chronic diarrhea.

But in your case, the fight seems inevitable. You’ll have to punch Mick Sligo. You should know that you’ll look ridiculous throwing a punch at first. Everyone does. You’ll swing too hard, end up falling on your can. You’ll tweak your wrist. You’ll miss by two feet. Think of the time when you were sixteen at the turnabout dance, and Marla Wolters let you take her bra off one-handed; it will be that awkward.

So you need to practice before the fight. Head to the bathroom during every line stop. Go into the handicapped stall. Start by spreading your legs to shoulder width. Then scissor them so they’re catty-cornered, left in front of right. This distributes your weight the right way to keep you from falling on your can. Practice bouncing your weight from your back leg to your front leg. That’s where your power comes from. You see lots of those schmucks with muscles growing all over their arms and necks like tumors, jerks who swing with only their shoulders. These guys are idiots. Never took a physics class. Real power comes from your hips and your legs. It’s technique, all of it. Practice swinging like this: Two jabs and an uppercut. Two jabs and an overhand right. Two jabs and anything. Those jabs set everything else up. They don’t need to connect; they just need to change his posture. And when they do, you flatten him.

You want your knuckles to connect, not the hairy part of your fingers. That’s a good way to dislocate a finger. Keep your wrists locked tight. Don’t bend them at all or they’ll crumple. Punch into the meat of your hand for practice. Your knuckles should go deep into it. It should start to bruise. Do this over and over. Let Mick Sligo see you do this. Do not make eye contact with him all night. Do not look at him when his back is to you. He could turn around at any moment. Focus on what you must do, which is punch Mick Sligo hard enough that he’s convinced you did not steal his king of spades.

When the moment comes, do not partake in pre-fight antics. Do not tell Mick Sligo, “Bitch, I’m gonna to drop you like a B-52.” Do not bump chests. Do not say mama jokes. Walk directly up to Mick Sligo, scissor your legs, torque your hips, and pop him in the temple.

This is the most important rule of throwing a punch: always get the first punch in. Street fighting is not pugilism; it’s a race. Most people have never been hit in the head. It rattles your damn bones. The earth tilts on its axis and goes fuzzy. You feel incapable of basic thought. Scientists did a study and found that even twenty minutes after head trauma, subjects could not do basic long division or identify secondary colors (fuchsia, magenta, puce). You must do this to Mick Sligo. Even if he recovers, you got that one punch in, and that’s something. Make him forget puce.

At the end of the shift, Mick Sligo will look down the line at you. His cut-off will be translucent, his chest hair underneath clinging to it like tiny, fibrous worms. You will feel his eyes on you for several moments before you decide to look up and meet them. When you do, they will look mean and hungry, as if you are the porterhouse that he is rearing to eat. But you will stare straight back. Perhaps you will even nod at him. Perhaps you are feeling particularly roguish, and you wink. Perhaps you hope to be remembered for a dash of bravado, which is a perfectly natural wish.

Regardless, you will eventually turn away, grab your cooler, and head toward the exit. You will feel a commotion behind you, a growing crowd of interest. You will feel Mick Sligo back there also. It is a long walk, back upstairs, across the bridge that spans the line, past the air-conditioned sales offices. You will stop to clock out, and you will feel the crowd growing, growing closer to you. You will fumble with your ID and be forced to rescan it twice. You will taste something sharp and metallic, and this will be the adrenaline. Your torso will grow cold with fear.

“Hey!”

You’ll hear it behind you, not far. The unmistakable yell of Mick Sligo seeking his king of spades. But you will not turn around. You will move forward, past the security desk, through the foyer, and out into the parking lot. The night air will splash your face like cold water, and you will breathe it deeply as if surfacing. The crowd of men, twenty or so, instinctively circles around you.