Fall and Rise

by Stephen Dixon

  Maybe I’m not doing this right. He steps back to the sidewalk, tucks the back of his shirt into his pants, wipes what dirt he can off his pants and sleeves, sees through the shirt-rip his elbow’s cut and dried blood he didn’t know was there. Feels his pocket for his comb. Must’ve been in his coat. Runs his fingers through his hair to smooth it back. “Aie yie yie,” don’t do that. Stands in the street and signals an approaching cab. Off-duty sign’s on he sees as it passes. Another cab comes. Getting lucky: two in a minute. “Cab,” he yells. Passes, no off-duty sign and no passengers inside. Cheek hurts, right one. Maybe only now getting unfrozen. Feels it. “Ah, oh,” very sore, and coasting over it, swollen. Better when numb, but maybe it’s only now begun its natural healing process. Doesn’t remember being hit there, and what he’d do now for a few aspirins. Four he’d take, and then just to lie back on a bed and rest the back of his head on a pillow. But the guy was on top of him slamming away with his fists—nobody could say what he did with the phone receiver—while I was on my hands and knees, head still echoing from the phone receiver blow, so who knows where I was hit on the head, though bystanders said everywhere. What a scene. “Beware of adrenalin, gentlemen,” a Hasenai line with a little help from me. But what am I saying? There’s always been a bit of the hothead and tough in me. “Cab! Cab! Go screw you too. You want to be so selective in whom you take, put on your off-duty sign.” Half block away by now, arm still out the cab window and middle finger raised: “Asshole!” But said to himself then: “It’s now or never, this guy’s going to beat you on the head till you’re brainless, so do something, don’t be lazy now of all times,” and still on one hand and my knees, grabbed one of his legs—both straddled me—and started bucking the guy with my back to put him off-balance and maybe to shake myself up a little and also I know so I could have time to think what else to do and then thought “Strength, use your fucking strength,” and turned around on my knees and lifted him up as I started to stand up and standing fully up threw him into the air. He must’ve weighed two-fifty but I just threw him and he flew back a few feet, tried to land standing up but landed on his behind. Then I got over him as he started to get up and grabbed his head with both hands and banged and banged it on the ground till his eyes started to stay less open than closed and then worked him up to one knee by pulling on his hair and head and still holding that head but now by the forehead and chin, lunged it at the phone booth a foot or two away, but there was no glass in the bottom panels to ram his head through—it had already been smashed out. “Cab, cab!…Thank you, got the message.” Guy’s head went through the part where the glass had been and then he just kept pushing him into the booth from behind till the guy was entirely inside except for his feet, which he shoved in. Then he ran around the booth and tried to lock him inside by keeping the door shut, not thinking the guy could crawl out through the empty bottom part, but the guy stood up, forced his way out the door though Dan pushed back, and said “Now I’m going to finish you.” The crowd surrounding them—must’ve been fifty people by now, men and women, some kids even, thirteen, fourteen years old—started to make boxing crowd noises, whistles, cheers, saying “Give it to him, fatso,” saying “Let him have it good, slim,” which I suppose was me. They thought it was just a fight. Who knows what they thought. Where was the news vendor? I felt I needed help. Later the vendor said—Cab’s coming. Get set. Nice smile. Waves, says “Hey,” but it turns into the sidestreet before it reaches him, no directional signal on. Vendor later said “Thanks,” when he shook Dan’s hand, and told him to take any newspaper or magazine for free, and that he was too afraid during the fight to do anything but run across the street and call the police from the booth there. Police came. But not before the guy, just out of the booth, walked toward Dan, saying not only was he going to finish him but “I’m going to kill you, you’ll see.” Guy’s friend—who’d pinned Dan’s arms back when the big guy said “Oh, you don’t want to go away?” and Dan had said “How can I when you’re stealing from this newsguy and about to break his glasses and beat in his face?”—now wasn’t around. Then the guy started to take something out of his back pocket. This was before the fight, when the friend held Dan’s arms back, and what knocked Dan to the ground. Dan first thought it was a handgun—it was black—and his chest got cold and heart was beating hard and he thought “What am I to do? This is the end,” and then when this thing in the back pocket was up a few inches it looked like a knife handle and he thought “Oh no, he’s going to stab me,” and strained to get free but the friend held Dan’s arms back and then the big guy pulled this object in his pocket higher and took it out and it was a phone receiver and with a blow Dan didn’t see knocked him down and kept pounding his head with it and then he was only using his fists, so maybe the receiver had flown out of his hand or he’d thrown it away. So there he was. After that: fighting back and the phone booth scene and the guy coming at him again saying he was going to catch and kill him, he’ll see. Where was the guy’s friend? Every so often he looked around for him, so the friend wouldn’t jump him from behind. Later he learned that another man, who left right after the fight, so Dan never had a chance to thank him, stepped in front of the friend when the friend tried to join the big guy in beating up Dan on the ground and said, this short but very muscular man with only a T-shirt on people said, “Let the two have it out—it’s only fair.” Dan said to the crowd when the big guy was coming to finish him “Listen, help me stop him. He tried to rob and beat up the owner of this newsstand, who I don’t see now but he could tell you, and I stepped in to help the newsguy and that’s why this big goon’s fighting me.” Nobody made a move to help. He didn’t see the friend in the crowd at the time. Later he did, when he first heard the police siren, but only the friend racing out of it and down the sidestreet. Several people said “Kill him,” either to Dan or the big guy coming at him or both. The big guy got closer, though Dan stepped back a step to each of the guy’s forward steps. The people behind Dan moved aside and he was backed up against a parked car. Jump over it? Could be done. But he didn’t want to run. There was his coat for one thing—how would he come back for it if the big guy and his friend were still here? Besides, he felt from the smells when the guy threatened him that he was fairly loaded and if he could dart around him fast enough he could grab him and knock him down. He yelled “Hey hey, look at that,” pointing behind the guy, but he didn’t bite. Then Dan jumped around him, grabbed him in a bear hug and threw him against the car. The guy bounced off it and fell to the ground on his back. Dan said “Now I’m going to beat your stupid head in, you sonofabitch, so you won’t forget this,” and sat on top of him, grabbed his shirt at the collar and wanted to punch him in the face but couldn’t. He had his fist raised and the guy said “Do it, go on, do it,” and seemed serious about it and Dan said “You’re crazy.” “I mean it, don’t be a jellyfish, hit me, you won a ticket to,” and Dan released his grip. He stood up, looked for dog shit to step in and put in the guy’s face. Looked only around him—gutter, on the sidewalk, few feet into the street—since he felt safer being near the guy while he was on the ground than he would farther away from him where the guy would have time to stand and maybe go after him. Was none. New dog-litter law this summer—something, seemed to be working, for usually it would be there every ten to fifteen feet. Then the police siren. Now he doesn’t know if he would’ve stepped in it and put it in the guy’s face. Probably not, but he can’t say for sure. He was that mad, so he could’ve, but the guy looked so stupid and for a few seconds after he said to hit him, pathetic, that he kind of doubts it. At the most he might’ve stepped in it and kept his foot raised a couple of inches above the guy’s face. Then two sirens from police cars coming from different directions. “Hold him for the cops,” someone said. He stepped back when the guy started to get up. “Get the hell out of here,” he said and the guy didn’t look at him but ran alongside his friend who’d just run out of the crowd shouting “Z-J, here, follow me!” and they ran up th
e sidestreet. When Dan first stepped in for the vendor and they said “Better stay out of it, sucker,” and he said he couldn’t unless they left the vendor alone and they said “Then we’ll bust you instead,” he felt there might be a fight—nothing much, more like a scuffle with Dan eventually talking them out of anything rougher—and took off his coat so he wouldn’t rip it, even if he knew this might seem to them as if he wanted his arms free to defend himself and was even keen on a fight or just not doing enough to avoid one or to show he was afraid of one or them—and threw it to the ground, though right away he knew he should’ve just dropped it, and told a man closest to it “Look after my coat, please,” said this softly so the two guys would know from his voice and the words he used that he was a peaceful and polite guy, and after the fight the man he’d told this to was gone with his coat. Maybe he thought Dan had meant for him to take it. Course not. Police came. About twelve of them—they kept coming, several in plain clothes—all in regular and unmarked cars. He gave a report of the fight and a description of the two men—“One was tall and dumpy, other tall and wiry, both around my height, maybe an inch or two taller—white—and wiry one with hair on his face, trim beard and mustache, dumpy one with ungroomed muttonchops, and actually the dumpy one about three inches taller than I but because of his bulk looked shorter than he was, wiry one inch or two shorter than I, and dumpy one with bright blue eyes and thin light hair covering his bald spots and wiry one with lots of thick dark curls beginning in the middle of his forehead and extremely white teeth, compared to the dumpy one’s rotting ones, but I never got a good look at his eyes”—and said he’d lost his coat with a few of his most precious belongings in it—“Book of poems in Japanese I was working on that will set me back a few weeks.” “Write it down, title and writer’s name,” a policeman said, “just so if it’s turned in,” and Dan said “Who will? Nobody,” and the policeman said “Just take the time, all of ten seconds, and if you do get it back through us, remember that I had to break your arm,” and Dan thought up an English title for the book and wrote it and the Japanese title in Japanese and Hasenai’s name in English on the report. “The Hungry Landowner?” the policeman said. “Which one of these means hungry?” and Dan said “None.” “Is the book about a hungry landowner?” and Dan said “I’ve no idea why the author called it that, since not only isn’t it the title of any of the poems but it’s not the theme, even stretching the point, of the book in general or any group of poems in total or any of the individual poems too, but maybe I’d have to think about that last point more.” Just then a man of about eighty came over, raised his arm with his fist cocked to Dan and said “Good for you, brother. I saw it all from the start and would have jumped in to help but you looked like you could handle it yourself, and did he ever? Officer, it was a real joy to watch the good guy win in real life for a change.” “I don’t know if anybody won,” Dan said, touching a tender spot in his head and the man said “Sure you did, don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. Can I look at the descriptions of those two bullies, sir?” and the policeman said “Anything you can add to it, do.” The man looked at the report, said “What’s to add? This’s what they looked like, right down to the fat one’s eyes, except I’d also say both were on drugs or drunk,” and Dan said “He’s right. The wiry one I’m not so sure about but the big guy, which is how I was able to throw him to the ground, I’ll tell you.” “You never know what your strength is at times if something gets you going,” the policeman said, and the old man said, “Strength? In circuses you see such strength. Lifted him like a feather”—“Anyway,” Dan said, “the big guy definitely smelled from booze, though I don’t see how that’s going to help you unless he passes out from it on the street,” and signed the report and said yes, he would bring charges against the men if they were caught, why not? even if the news vendor wasn’t sure he would since they ended up not taking anything or hurting him. The policeman said “Want us to take you to the hospital?” and Dan said “Think I need to?” and he said “You don’t seem that hurt, but I don’t want to tell you what to do.” “Let me see,” the old man said and the policeman said “You a physician?” and he said “No, but I’ve seen accidents and know what stops cuts,” and the policeman said “So do we and all his cuts have stopped—just get lost,” and the man walked away with his fist cocked to Dan again, saying “That a way to go, Mr. Krin—I got your name off that report—that a way to go, good show.” Policeman left. Crowd broke up. Vendor was closing up. “Usually all-night or least till four,” he said. “Not tonight. Too something in the air tonight—the sky. And truly, any newspaper, two of them, or magazine is yours.” Dan said “Instead of a magazine could I have a token or enough change to take a subway—someone stole my coat during the fight you might’ve heard and all my money and other things were in it,” and the vendor gave him eighty cents, said he wished he could afford more. “No no, this’ll be enough for fare and a couple of phone calls and if I need more I’ll try to borrow it from someone else,” and then used some of the change on phone calls from the booth he’d shoved the big guy in. Vendor locked up the stand, knocked on the phone-booth door while Dan was listening to a locksmith on an answering machine say he wasn’t in this minute, said “I’m going now—your name is what?…Mine is Shafik, Dan, and anything from this day I can do for you but give you more money, because I can’t, I do, and you always know where I am, ten hours a day every day starting at five. Before that and weekends I work at a place where there’s no phone,” and Dan shook his hand and patted his back, said “I really appreciate that, thanks.” Shafik left. He had a brown bag with maybe his dinner in it he didn’t eat or maybe his change. Dan made more calls from that booth and booths a few blocks north, borrowed a dime on his first try by saying “Excuse me, sir, but I was robbed of my wallet tonight and all I need now is a dime to call my wife from this booth if you’d be so kind,” called Helene. He tries to flag down a cab. Passes. Two right behind it. Same. What? All the empties afraid or maybe through for the night and going back to the cab garage or going back to it for gas or repairs or else their gas tanks are low and they’re looking for a gas station or going to one they know of or on call or on their breaks but haven’t their on-call or off-duty signs on. “Fucks. One of you could’ve taken me.” Walks back to Twenty-third, goes into the subway station and up to one of the new bulletproof-glass token booths and says to the clerk through the gridded speaking hole “Excuse me, but do you know the news vendor upstairs, Shafik?”