“Now that they’re gone, I have to go take care of something. Will you be good for two seconds alone?” Shoddy asked.
He didn’t wait for an answer before leaving me sitting on the sidewalk, my back propped against the side of the bar. He turned the corner and went back to Primal’s front door.
He told me later that his goal was to calm the crowd still left on the sidewalk: those too drunk to know the fight ended or too sober to not care about the drinks Duncan and I had made them spill. Shoddy knew he had to make good on my behalf. After a few false apologies, some invites to non-existent parties and too many promised rounds that would obviously never be fulfilled, the swarm started to disperse with the help of the Primal bouncers. Most buzzed back into the bar and rejoined the revelry as if nothing happened. Shoddy escaped before the mob sacrificed him for his wallet and his blood.
By the time Shoddy returned, my eyes were open fully and the bruise on my face purpling.
“Everyone is gone,” he said. “And I didn’t see that little weasel or his idiot goons.”
“Probably good for them,” I muffled and then coughed. I immediately clenched my side.
Shoddy stood over me, a smirk slithered across his face and a thousand different praises scrambled through his mind. He had every right to hate Duncan as much as I did. Duncan had caused problems for the both of us. Shoddy may have been thinking about Lily. He may have been remembering all the trouble Duncan caused me, his best friend. Or maybe he was thinking about the rumors Duncan spread about Shoddy and unwilling young women. Duncan tarnished his reputation, even though none of what he ever said was true. Not many people ever believed the stories but the damage was done. For years Shoddy and I discussed the day one of us would get a chance at revenge.
“Come on Rocky, let’s get out of sight for a while,” Shoddy said.
“I need a minute,” I replied. “My chest and side are killing me.”
Shoddy lifted me effortlessly to my feet and propped my arm around his shoulder.
“That’s fine. Let’s just go back here and get our bearings,” he said, a touch of compassion and fatherly pride in his voice. He dragged me further down the side of the bar, away from the main road. We followed Primal’s outer wall and then turned a sharp right into an alley behind the bar. He leaned me against the back wall of Primal.
“Do you want to sit down?” he asked.
“No, I’m good. I just need to collect my thoughts.”
The history that defined Duncan and I throbbed in my head, or it may have been the bruises. Either way, the pulsing in my veins just would not dissipate. I thought my heart would explode. I remembered every insult and every backstabbing maneuver Duncan made. All of the lies he told to my friends and to my face surged back. I thought about Lily and her easy, thin smile. My body shivered and Shoddy put a hand on my shoulder.
“You look like you’re gonna kill someone. Or like you just saw a ghost. I’m not sure which. Maybe both?”
His voice was like a breeze through a tree. I heard him speak but I just shivered and ignored it. My devil and my angel climbed in from my shoulders to my ears and were waging an epic war on the battlefields of my conscience.
“Fight’s over, Shaw. You won. Duncan got a beating and you’re the one who gave it to him.”
I didn’t want to hear it.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“What?” Shoddy gasped, his breath short like I had physically slapped him.
“Give me a couple minutes,” I pleaded. “Alone.”
“They must have hit you harder than I thought,” Shoddy said. “If you think I’m leaving you alone in a sketchy alley, you must be out of your mind”
“I’m fine,” I shouted.
Shoddy’s face screwed up, confused and concerned. I didn’t look at him.
“Please,” I said, and made up a lie just to get him away. “I need some water or ice or something. I can’t walk back to campus like this.”
His face softened. He bought it.
“Alright, fine. But if Lindsey ever finds out I left you alone she’ll beat me worse than you beat Duncan. I’ll take a walk up to 7-11 and get you a bottle of water and something cold. Just sit here, I’ll be back in a few.”
I nodded my approval but instead my whole body swayed. Shoddy put his hand on my shoulder to keep me standing upright.
“Or maybe I’ll stay here,” he said, his hand steadying me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Water would be fantastic right now.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone. Any more stupid things, I should say.”
It was a poor attempt to get a laugh out of me. Internally I chuckled, though I didn’t have the energy to vocalize it.
Shoddy walked away slowly. He looked over his shoulder persistently as he moved out from our alley behind the bar, turned up the dark street, took a right onto the main road and walked past the corner cemetery and up toward the convenience store and campus—the same route Ben had ushered the girls.
I was alone, rubbing my sore knuckles against my sore head.
The darkness was heavy, pulling down on me like a drenched wool coat. I slouched against the dirty back wall of Primal, slid down until the small of my back wedged where the building met the pavement. I let myself crumble onto a broken wooden palette, just another discarded piece of garbage waiting for the pickup. I roused something that then splashed through a puddle a few feet away, scurried beneath a torn Dunkin Donuts bag and vacated the alley.
Then I was completely alone in the darkness and the filth. Emotions rushed over me. That sour, sick taste crept up my throat and I longed for that scurrying creature to return to distract my body and mind.
I thought of Lily. I thought of the one year that had passed since she died. I could barely remember any of it. One whole year; more than two college semesters, three months of summer internships, vacations, nights out, nights in, other girls, innumerable beers, Lindsey, Shoddy and I couldn’t think of a single worthwhile memory to cling to. They all felt hollow, lifeless, like dead goldfish floating upside down in a glass bowl.
Sitting on the cold alley ground, I searched the files for anything significant that occurred in my life since Lily died.
Nothing. Empty. Black as the night closing in on me.
Then the files updated, the search got to something recent. Suddenly I was replaying a few minutes before, the mental video of my fist hitting a face. I thought of Duncan’s nose breaking earlier in front of the Primal crowd, and it rolled over and over again, his nose cracking repeatedly like a broken record on loop.
I started recalling the entire fight. There were the two massive bodies bearing down, accompanied by a jolt of pain in my head and my kidneys and chest.
The video skipped into full rewind, shooting past this evening, back to all the jabs, the snide remarks and the cruel jokes that dotted our years of knowing each other—years that began with friendship. Everything that Duncan said, did or insinuated played quickly in reverse, all the way back to high school. Then the tape ran out, spun off its reel and with it, my equilibrium that had thus far been maintained by a steady dosage of repression. My throat burned and a haze blurred my vision, nausea took over.
I was crouched on all fours staring across the alley at an old metal dumpster and a pile of dented trashcans. I vomited on the splintered wooden palette. The sour sick dripped through the slats. When there was nothing solid left, liquid acid scorched its way out, purging my throat and tongue of the digested bits of that afternoon’s lunch.
After vomiting, the haze and the nausea cleared, but in its place the truth crept in.
Suddenly I was alone, broken, and sad. Only one bare yellowing light bulb buzzed above me, hanging over Primal’s back door.
What was I doing? A year filled with best friends, girls, possibly love and I fixated on a dead girl. A year filled with potential, opportunity and memorable events and I only recalled fights with Duncan. F
ighting at Primal? Puking in an alley? Proud because I broke the nose of some ignoble jerk? I needed change.
I was consumed by her life and his, not my own. I wanted to stop being that way. It had to end.
Chapter 28
The old Westerns followed some pretty standard archetypal patterns when it came to endings. Two cowboys would meet under a hazy high noon sun, dry and dust-covered in their raggedy hats and spurred boots. If he wasn’t John Wayne he was Clint Eastwood. If he wasn’t Clint Eastwood he was about to die.
A tumbleweed or two would always dance past, lightly kissing the dirt as it skipped across the line of fire oblivious to the tangible, dense air that smelled like impending death, if impending death had a smell. The two archenemies would stare each other down; perhaps the camera would close up on the rigid, determined eyes set deep into a cracked, parched and morally vacant face. Until one flinched. Then, with a leathery snap and a metallic crackle one would fall, slowly and lifelessly and explode the dusty ground, disappearing for the last time in a hazy cloud of dirt and desperation. The other, the winner, rode off into the sunset, a hero to the beleaguered townspeople and an icon to the satisfied audience.
But that’s Hollywood—old Hollywood, and it may not even exist anymore.
Behind Primal, on a cold, damp, morally vacant March night, it definitely did not exist. There was a less-than-epic showdown. There was no sun, just moon. There were no hats or boots, just collared shirts and jeans smeared with mud and dried blood. It was not scheduled. It was not witnessed. There were no citizens besieged by the bad guy. There was no audience salivating for good to triumph over evil. There was no prize or pride to be won. Honor was suffocated by the stench. Dignity buzzed with the flies in the dumpster.
The midnight moon broke from behind the clouds and lit up the alley behind Primal like it was midday. It consumed the single bulb above the doorway and in an instant, revealed the sunken mass of a human, hunched over on the grimy pavement in a pool of his own sick and self-pity.
My eyes adjusted to the moonlight, enough to fully take in my surroundings. I recognized my reflection broken into a dozen shards in the puddle between my knees. My eyes were set deep and, even in the liquid mirror, seemed dry, tired and fragile. A few crumpled sections from a week-old Providence Journal skidded across the wet asphalt alley, pushed along by the steady March breeze that also carried the incoherent smell of rotting garbage. I thought, perhaps that is what impending death smelled like—a myriad of disregarded junk that, at one time, meant something to somebody.
A rat sprinted from a corner, skirted the edge of light where the shadows began and disappeared behind the dumpster.
Whether it was the rat, my reflection or the moonlight illumination that distracted me, I never heard the footsteps and wheezy, heavy breathing behind me until I felt the pain they accompanied.
Duncan’s bony fist cracked into the back of my head, just above the base of my neck, and sent my already kneeling body sprawling forward. My broken puddle face kissed my broken fleshy face as I crashed headfirst into whatever fluids had concocted on the alley ground in front of me. I never had time to put my hands out to brace the impact.
“I’ll keell you, beetch,” Duncan wheezed. His breathing was intermittent; I assumed the broken nose contributed to that. It also made him sound like he had the flu and was every now and then playing a slide whistle.
“Geet up and fight!”
Still on all fours, I peered over my shoulder and saw blood coagulating under his swollen nose—a wad of toilet paper protruding from one nostril. Instantly, he swung his foot like a Brazilian soccer player into my ribs. My entire body hiccupped and I collapsed onto my back.
Duncan wasted no time taking advantage of the upside-down tortoise position. He took a short stride forward and drove his foot into my right kidney. The dull thuds pushed all the air from my lungs and up through my mouth in the form of a long, low, “fuuuuuuck.”
My eyes closed. I didn’t want to reopen them. If I could have relaxed all my muscles, forgotten the world and drifted into sleep, I would have right there on the soiled pavement behind Primal.
Instead I was drawn back to reality by another foot-jab to the side. This one was more startling than painful.
I opened my eyes wide and stared them directly at Duncan. It jolted him and he fell instinctively into a half retreat.
That was easy, I thought. All I had to do was look at the kid. I didn’t want to fight him and apparently I didn’t have to. I just had to pretend like I would. But I wouldn’t fight him.
“Hey Dunk, have you ever seen any of the Rocky movies?” I asked him, keeping my voice as steady and nonchalant as possible.
“What?” he replied and got antsier. His eyes searched mine for meaning. “What are you talking about?”
“Have you ever seen any of the Rocky movies?”
“Fuck you, man. I know what you’re doing and your buddy isn’t going to come save you so stop stalling.”
“I’m just asking you a simple question.”
“Yes, of course I’ve seen Rocky. What the fuck does it have to do with anything, besides that I’m going to beat you like that Russian guy did?”
“The Russian guy lost, dumbass. But that’s not the point,” I said. “Do you remember what Mick said to Rocky after Rocky got his nose shattered? Something like, you broke your nose but it’s an improvement.”
He sprung, leg cocked back ready to shoot another kick, this time aimed at my head.
Instinctively I rolled in his direction, reached out and grabbed his foot in mid-stride, twisted it to the left like a steering wheel and with the help of a slippery ground, sent him spinning.
Duncan did an involuntary triple Lutz about three inches off the muddy asphalt. I chuckled at the similarity he finally had with his younger athlete of a sister. Pain stung my ribs as I did and I fell onto my back. I made a mental note to refrain from laughing.
Rather than move we both lay motionless with the streaks of moonlight and dirty light bulb dancing over the whole tired, morbid scene. A passerby would have mistaken us for bags of garbage strewn about the alley or homeless men taking refuge by the dumpster.
I rolled my head to look at Duncan, still lying motionless, seemingly collecting himself. I looked past him, out the gaping alley entrance, across the side street and into the darkness of the cemetery. Here and there, the moon illuminated some of the gravestones, which all looked like they were in prison because of the wrought iron fence that encircled the entire cemetery.
Taller than the rest, one headstone rose above the iron fence. There was a carved stone angel perched atop a heavy granite slab. The moon shone on the angel’s face, a face that gazed down on me from afar—but not too far. Even from across the street, lying on my back in a shadowy alley, I could make out deeply carved and worn crevices. This stone angel was unlike those I walked past outside the college campus chapel. The chapel angels were new, emotional and passionate but unabashed standing watch outside a house of God. Pain and mourning lined this stone angel, cutting deep under its eyes that were set far under rock locks of unkempt hair. Its mouth was closed and the corners of its lips bent slightly downward. One of the wings was chipped; hewn by vandals, I assumed, or simply weathered away by years of solitary vigil. This angel was not sad. Rather, disappointed or maybe just apathetic.
My stomach churned and it felt like a combination of too much booze and too much guilt.
A boney elbow darted into my shoulder, brought me back to the now.
Duncan clamored to his feet, his hands slipping on the ground. He steadied himself on the dumpster, leaning most of his weight against the flimsy green metal.
“So are you going to geet up and fight meee or just lie there and take it like one of your girlfriends,” he squeaked, air struggling to get out of his deformed nostrils.
He didn’t wait for an answer, but swung his left leg at me just as I slid my body upright into a sitting position. He missed my entire body and l
et out a small yip of pain at the hyperextension.
I dragged myself to my feet and once standing, assessed the situation. Duncan was in pain.
On the ground was a broken wooden palette. He had fallen through it and now was clutching his abdomen, wincing with every movement.
The churning in my stomach called again. Duncan looked like a mongrel dog, small and mangy and wretchedly in pain.
I surprised myself by saying, “Duncan, this is ridiculous. Let’s call it a night. You go your way, I go mine.”
“Fuck you,” was his response.
“I don’t want to fight you,” I said. “I mean, I do, believe me I do. But this fight to the death thing is a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t help but throw in an insult. “Plus you’ll get your nice new Wal-Mart sweater all dirty.”
He spat at me but it just hung from his tongue, then his lower lip and chin, stretching almost all the way to the ground.
“You always were funny, Shaw. But you never knew when to shut your mouth.”
The dumpster barely shifted when he pushed off of it and threw his body at me, headfirst like a bull to the matador. And like that matador I shifted easily to the side, swished, unscathed, 180-degrees around to catch a glimpse of Duncan throw his hands out to stop from slamming into the back wall of Primal.
He stopped himself from falling to the ground again, but said with wheezy malice in his voice, “I’ve beeen wanting to shut you up for a long time.”
“Jesus, Duncan, why are you still so angry?” I asked. “Can’t be about the cheating thing. I told you I had nothing to do with you getting in trouble. You fuckin’ cheated, man. Own up to it. Own up to something in your life for once. Be a real man.”
“I’ll own up to tagging your leettle girlfriend. I was the only real man she ever had!”
I knew he was trying to get under my skin, and yet it was a feeble attempt.
“Oh please,” I said, “Lily would never have touched you.”
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