Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [115]
DRIVING THERESA home to where she lived with her mother down in the avenues, Sam had slowed for the right he’d have to take at the corner of Fifth and Cedar, but there was a massive oak tree at the corner, its roots having buckled the sidewalk long ago, and he had to edge up almost into Cedar Street and that’s when a car shot in front of his hood, nearly clipping it. The car slowed immediately and Sam saw the flashing blue light on the dashboard, an unmarked police car. It pulled over, and the cop was sitting there, Sam thought, studying him, the black Duster that almost hit him.
Instead of turning right for Sixth Avenue, Sam turned left and eased up behind the unmarked car. He was ready to explain himself, to explain the big oak he couldn’t see around. Inside the car, the blue light was still flashing, and Sam waited for the cop to step out first, but when he didn’t, Sam did, and now the cop stepped out too, a young guy in a leather jacket and dark pants and motorcycle boots standing in the path of Sam’s headlights. He had stringy black hair and he just stood there looking at Sam, then past him to the Duster. Maybe he could see Theresa, maybe he couldn’t. Then the front and back passenger doors opened and three more guys climbed out, all of them in denim or leather jackets, and a white light rocked through Sam’s head, his chin a numbing burn, the kid who’d just punched him standing there like it was Sam’s move now.
“Yeah?” Sam jerked down the zipper of his jacket and yanked it off his shoulders and dropped it to the ground. “I’ll fight all you pieces of shit, let’s go.”
Sam was wearing a short-sleeve polo shirt, and maybe if he hadn’t worn that one, maybe if he’d worn a loose sweater or work shirt, the kid who’d punched him wouldn’t have seen so clearly Sam’s deeply muscled chest, his impossibly thick shoulders and upper arms, and he wouldn’t have pulled the knife he now waved in front of him, the base of the blade between his thumb and forefinger, the handle in his palm. Like this was something he did all the time, pulled knives on people in fights, people he’d just pulled over in his phony unmarked cruiser.
“Fine,” Sam said, “fine. We’re going to call this one over, all right?” He could feel his chin bleeding, the liquid itch of it, and he walked backwards to his Duster, the four of them standing there in his headlights. One of them laughed and another stepped closer. The kid’s knife blade glinted dully in his hand, and the blue light still flashed, and Sam climbed in behind his wheel and pulled the door shut after him, and Theresa said, “I got their plate number, Sam.”
Sam put the Duster in reverse. He rolled his window down and yelled out into the cold air. “Remember this face. You hear me? Remember this face.”
THE KID with the knife must’ve had a big ring on his hand; behind the black whiskers of Sam’s beard a chunk of flesh was missing from his chin, and somebody—Theresa or Liz—had gotten him a damp paper towel from a bathroom and he was pressing it to the wound. He’d told us their story that way, his hand pressed to his chin in the dim fluorescent light of Vinny’s small office. There were droplets of blood on Sam’s shirt, and I kept thinking of that kid and his sucker punch and his knife. I pictured my best friend stabbed and bleeding to death down in the avenues, his fiancée no longer his fiancée, and then what would they have done to her? What were they hoping to do with their phony police flasher and their knives?
Vinny had Sam pull the paper towel from his chin. “You’re gonna have to get that stitched up, Sam.”
Liz and Theresa were already at the door. There were the words hospital and Let’s go, but Theresa had given Vinny the license plate number and Sam and I stood in front of Vinny’s desk as he called