Seventy
“WE REALLY DON’T have time for this,” I hear Helene say from behind me, now that she’s spotted Roof, too.
“Maybe you don’t,” I say.
Roof Crockett is about twenty yards from everybody else over there. No Lynyrd. None of his other boys that I can see. Just him. Looking right at me the way I’m looking right at him. Waiting there for me.
When I get over to him, I ask, “You come to gloat?”
“Just to pay my condolences.”
“He’s not dead,” I say.
“Well, heard he wasn’t all that much alive, either.”
Maybe it’s his tone. Or a look on his face almost like he’s doing his best to hold back a smile. Or, more than likely, it’s the whole damn thing.
But I hit Roof Crockett with all the left hook I have in me then, the one I’ve only ever used on the heavy bag in the corner of my home gym.
I go with my left hand because I know I’ve got more power from that side, a lot more, now that my shoulder—throwing shoulder, even for punches—has turned to shit.
The punch catches him square on the jaw and lifts him up and into the air and then puts him on his back in the dirt on the side of the road.
He lands hard, his head bouncing off the dirt.
I stare over at the rest of the people in the crowd and maybe it’s the look on my face, or what just happened, but no one moves.
Roof Crockett is dazed from the shot he’s just taken, that’s plain enough when he opens his eyes to let me know I haven’t knocked him out cold.
But not so dazed, or confused, that he doesn’t immediately start to reach for the front pocket of his jeans, to reach almost by reflex for the gun he likely has in there, before he seems to think better of it.
Doesn’t matter one way or another because I’m on him fast and already have a knee on his chest.
“I had nothing to do with this,” he says, fighting for air. “We had nothing to do with it.”
“Is that so?” I say calmly.
I look down at him, seeing the side of his jaw already beginning to swell, and want to hit him again.
I want to hit him and keep hitting him maybe until he’s the one on his way to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
“You can believe whatever you want to,” he says, “but I’m not fool enough to shoot a cop.”
“Low bar,” I say, and press down harder with my knee, putting as much of my weight on him as I possibly can.
“Can’t… breathe,” he says.
“Must be an awful feeling.”
But now I shift just slightly enough to take some of the weight off him.
“You better hope Burt Webb lives.”
“So that punch just now, that was for him?” Roof asks, his voice sounding so weak and raspy it’s like my knee is really pressing down on his throat.
“For my father,” I say.