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By Root 800 0

window, my elbow shooting into the chin of the one closest to me, his head snapping back, and I could see it was a big head on a big body that was trying to stand. There was more movement and noise, human shouts and cries, the one near the window being jerked out of the booth, Vinny’s voice, Motherfucker, and Sam’s wide back, then the kid who’d pulled the knife dragged off his bench, and there was the constant thud and jolt of my right hand and shoulder as I kept punching the big one’s wincing face, his head not moving enough, his neck thick, a lifter, much bigger than I was, much stronger than I was, and look what I’d started, this is what will kill me, this is who will do it if I stop hitting him, if I ever stop hitting him he’ll rise up and beat me to death, but look how he falls to the tiled floor, look how he curls up on his side and covers his face and squirms for the door, and I straddle him and keep punching him in the skull, the ear, the temple, his bare hands, his neck. My throat burns from vibration, the wind in my head a sound, my sound, the wind shrieking through barbed wire, Fuck you, you piece of shit you fuckin’ piece of shit. And I’m standing and kicking him in the head, my work boots doing it, the boots with the steel toes that when it’s cold freeze your feet that feel nothing now, and his head keeps bouncing back and rolling forward, bouncing back and rolling forward, but he can still get up and if he does he will kill me, he will kill me, he will kill me.

Liz’s face there now, so strange to see it. She is kneeling, her hands in the air, and she looks up at me, her eyes shining, and words are coming out, but they’re lost in mine which don’t stop, have never stopped. There is the cry of wind through the wire and now it’s her wind but she seems to be whispering, her eyes so shiny, “You’re killing him. Stop, you’re killing him. Please, stop.”

His hands have fallen and no part of him moves. The last kicks have gone under Liz’s fingers, but his eyes are closed as if in sleep, his mouth a bloody hole in his face, the wind in my legs now, pulling me to Sam’s voice.

You pull a knife on me? You pull a knife?

The kid, the driver, the smirker and sucker puncher, is on his knees and elbows, and Sam’s hand is in his hair and he pulls till the kid’s face shows, his eyes squeezed shut, and Sam punches it, then pushes it back to the floor, then does it again and again. A muffled voice there. “I’m only sixteen. I’m only sixteen.” A wire turning in the wind, my boot toe sinking into his ribs, then off his hip, then into his ribs again, and what are all these people doing here? These seated men and women who stare at us and do not move? At the far end of the counter, there is a flurry of movement, Vinny’s dark hair, his arm punching someone I can’t see, and the wind pushes me through this painting of a diner of people dressed in red and black and denim, this haze of cigarette smoke, these perfumes and colognes and coffees, and my hand reaches behind the lady in the silver rayon dress, a sound from her as I grab a full ketchup bottle, its neck in my fist, and I’m at the end of the counter and my arm swings the bottle down on it, an explosion of glass, but Vinny is on the third one now, punching him over and over again, this face with whiskers, a punch-smudged face I hold the broken bottle to, but my hand throws it down and I punch the face Vinny punches, I kick the man’s hip, his thigh, his knee, the wind louder than it’s ever been, my face burning, and it’s the burning that sends me back to Sam and the two others on the floor, Liz kneeling there by the big one who doesn’t move, and beyond, in the brighter light of the entryway, a woman at the pay phone is punching in numbers, and Theresa is there too, pressing the hang-up button, shaking her head at the woman who is smaller and turns and hurries back through the doors into the wind.

Fellas, please, fellas. A cook in white, his short mustache, his pink face. He stands behind the counter of still people, his arms half raised as if in surrender, but this is a scrap of