Twenty-Two
I FEEL A high heat rising up and out of me now the way it would out on that field when I felt like somebody had put a cheap shot on me before some of my teammates would hold me back, in one of those moments when I possessed exactly none of my grandmother’s calm.
Nobody to hold me back now.
I push myself off the wall and keep going.
The punks see me approaching.
As I do, a third guy, also in a hoodie—maybe it’s the team uniform—climbs out of the pickup, where two blond girls, giggling, poke their heads up in the back.
Maybe high school girls. Maybe younger. One of the girls says something to the guy just out of the truck, and he reaches over and shoves her in the face with a hand.
“Well, if it ain’t old 109,” the punk closest to me, the one who’d handed the envelope into the compact car, says.
He carries himself like he’s the group leader, biggest of the three, looking at me with sullen eyes, or just dull ones.
“Heard he died,” the guy standing to my right says. “Must’ve heard wrong.”
The two on the outside fan slowly out a little from the one doing the talking now.
“We know each other?” I ask the group leader.
“You don’t know me,” he says. “But everybody around here knows you. Or who you used to be, I guess I should say.”
He turns one way, then the other, looking at his buddies. They move away from him a little more. Like spreading out a defense.
He says, “Boys, you know what’s right there in the middle of 109 these days? A big old zero. Like a big, fat old nothing.”
They all laugh at that one.
I’m on the one in the middle, the one doing most of the talking, before he has time to move or react. Or cover up. Like he’s just one more guy surprised at how fast somebody my size can cover ground.
I don’t even think about my bad shoulder as I backhand him with my right hand and then do the same with my left at lightning speed, snapping his head to one side and then the other before he ends up on the ground and on his back, bleeding from the nose and mouth.
I see the guy to my right making a move on me then, and I turn and grab him with both hands, feeling it again in my right shoulder when I lift him over my head like this is some kind of dead lift in the gym, hearing this high singing in my ears now as I throw him through the air, his body spinning around until he crashes into the closed main gate of Silas Tucker Field.
I watch as he hits the ground and is still.
“Hey, man,” the kid to my left says, frozen in place. “Hey, that’s assault right there.”
“Wow,” I say. “Look how you picked right up on that. And I thought y’all were just a bunch of dumb shitkickers.”
I look over at his buddy lying in a heap at the foot of the gate. “Maybe we should call a cop or something.”
His answer is to turn and run.
I don’t hesitate.
I run after him, in this all the way now.
I’m not as quick as I was, not on these legs. But quick enough. The two blond girls are standing now in the back of the pickup, wide-eyed. No longer giggling. Like they’re the ones frozen in place.
I catch up with this one before he gets to the truck.
I don’t know whether he’s there to grab a weapon or just put the heap in gear and leave his two buddies where they are.
And don’t much care. This is adrenaline and anger working like they’re the drugs in me now.
This is all of it, everything that I’ve been carrying around in me coming out.
This is getting that chance to hit somebody.
I grab the third punk by his long hair, like it’s one of those horse-collar tackles that get you flagged in football, and I throw him to the ground like I’m spiking the son of a bitch.
As I do, I see him pulling a handgun out of the back pocket of his jeans.
But not for long, because I’m twisting it out of his hand with a neat Americana move that a Navy SEAL had shown me one time at UNC when he’d asked to work out with me.
The gun falls to the ground next to him, but when he reaches for it, I stomp on his hand with the heel of my Red Wing boot, and he screams in pain.
One of the girls is screaming, too. Or maybe both of them are.
I pick up the gun and briefly point it at him.
“What, you gonna shoot me with that?” the guy asks, his hand in his lap like some kind of dead thing. “Go the fuck ahead.”
I shake my head, almost sadly, then swing the gun at the passenger-side window, shattering it like I’d just fired a bullet into it. Then I stand next to the windshield and swing the gun again, and that side of the windshield explodes before I walk around the truck and do the same to the other side.
I walk back to where the girls are standing again in the back of the truck, the two of them hugging each other now, and say, “How old are you?”
Neither one of them speaks.
“Are you students here?”
Finally, the girl who’s more blond than the other says, “Juniors.”
“What are you doing with these losers?”
“Just riding around,” she says.
“Well, you’re on the wrong road,” I say. “You need to get out of here.”
“And go where?” the other one asks.
“Anywhere but here,” I say, and then add, “You’re welcome.”
They look at each other and then back at me and finally climb out of the truck toward the street in front of the school, Pine Street, without looking back.
The guy I’d stomped on with my boot is still moaning, making no move to get up, staring down at his hand.
I lean down and get close to him. He flinches as I do.
“If I ever see any of you anywhere near this school again, I’m gonna really get mad,” I say. “And then give you an even worse beating than this before I go for fucking ice cream.”
Then I say, “Nod if you understand what I just told you.”
He nods, then goes back to holding his wrist and whimpering as he does.
I leave him where he is and go back for the leader, who’s sitting up now, shaking his head like a horse trying to shake away flies, like he’s trying to un-ring his own damn bell.
“Who do you work for?” I ask.
“Fuck you,” he says.
“I could beat it out of you, just for fun.”
“Thought you just did, Big Nothing,” he says.
I slap him again, and then I’m grabbing him by the front of his hoodie and lifting him up the way you’d lift up a doll, then putting my face close enough to his that I can smell the beer on his breath.
“Fuck you,” he says again. “You don’t know the trouble you just made for yourself.”
“I’m thinking that’s pretty tough talk for a guy with his feet dangling in the air.”
“I’m done talking,” he says. “Do what you gotta do.”
“How about you do something for me instead?” I ask. “How about you walk your ass over to that gate and pick up the trash and get out of here before I really lose my temper.”
“This ain’t nearly over,” he says.
“And just like that,” I say, “my day just got better.”
I put him on the ground and give him a good shove in the direction of his buddy and tell him to start walking. He does, his hand coming up to his face as he gives one quick look back at me, maybe to see if I’m about to come at him one last time.
I’m walking back to my own truck, trying to get my breathing back to normal, my right shoulder feeling as if somebody set fire to it, thinking what a dumb-ass I was to use my right hand on him, when I hear the police siren.
When I turn to see where it’s coming from, I hear a voice that I immediately know belongs to Taylor McCarter Webb.
“Silas,” she yells. “Look out!”
And I see that an out-of-control vehicle, an old pickup not being driven by a friend this time, is coming straight for me.