Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [126]
“I’m talking to you.” The man behind Hailey put his big hand on her shoulder and she turned, her hair whipping. “I said to fuck off.” Just a string of words instantly swallowed up in the barroom noise. She shrugged her shoulder away from him.
I’d never seen him before. Twenty-two or -three, over six feet, maybe 230, 240. He had a handsome face, all jaw and cheekbones, but there was a dullness in his eyes, not stupid but predatory, and now maybe a little pissed off too. He put his hand back on her shoulder. I rested my bottle on the bar next to the two I hadn’t delivered yet. Why should I do something? What did Hailey and her friends with their secret T-shirts think they’d find down here anyway? But she was clearly done with him and that should be it. That should always be it.
“Hey, brother, she’s all set.”
I was shorter than he was, smaller, two things he took in as he was taking in the main thing: that I was sticking my face into his business.
“I’m not your fuckin’ brother.”
“Outside then.” I jerked my head toward the door.
“Let’s go.” These words the answer to a riddle floating down a river I was also floating down, the crowd parting and moving, the red and gold glow of a neon Miller sign above the door that opened for me on its own. But my heart hadn’t even woken up for this. I could be nodding off somewhere; there was no fear, none of that marrow-electric jolt that put something I needed into my arms and legs, no pounding heart and shallow breath, no keen eye on any movement coming my way. There was just the steady forward momentum of having broken through the membrane—because the invitation to fight is a breaking too—and this was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?
It was school all over again. The crowd sensed the change in the air, and now people were outside and ringed around us under the white light over the door. I had both hands up, but my back foot kept slipping on ice and I couldn’t plant it but jabbed at him anyway, this pathetic move from a boxing ring nobody used in a real fight, and how had I forgotten that? Why all of a sudden did I think there were some rules to this?
He feinted away from it, his head ramming into my chest, and I was lifted and there was the back-slap of pavement, a weight on my sternum. The first punches were almost a surprise, hard and fast from the right and left, sparks behind my eyes. I opened them, and there he was on my chest. His face was in shadow, and it was hard to breathe and he kept punching and my hands grabbed both his wrists and wouldn’t let go.
“Kill him, man. Fuckin’ kill ’em.”
There were more words out there in the air around us, men’s voices, then Jeb’s, “That’s my brother.” His hands on the shoulders of the one on me, but then other hands pulled him away and there was yelling, had been for a long time, from the one on me who had a handful of hair on both sides of my head, my fingers still locked around his wrists, and he began to lift my head and slam it back down, lift it and slam it, the concrete beneath me felt like a betrayal, and I tried to tense the muscles in my neck but that only slowed his momentum and at the corners of my eyes darkness welled and I tried to pull his hands from my hair but he was too strong. I began kneeing him in the back, but that only loosened my neck and he slammed harder, the back of my skull thinner now, more brittle, and I could only see the shadow of his face meeting more shadows, my eyes filling with them, and if I didn’t keep him from this and if no one was going to pull him off, this would be it, this will be it, this is it, this can’t be it, this can’t be it, every muscle I’d ever worked going rigid, my neck a clamp, and maybe he was getting tired, but my fingers were now part of his wrists against the sides of my head and he could no longer move, and he was spitting, hawking and spitting into my face, this warm wet evidence of a street rage I’d either forgotten to