Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [89]
It was cold, but a lot of them wore T-shirts. One of them had a smoking cigarette between his lips, and he told me cool your fuckin’ jets. The big one was bleeding from his nose and mouth. He was telling two men how I jumped him for no reason, that I was crazy. And now his friend, short and thick-looking, close to thirty and wearing an Irish scully cap, was pacing back and forth behind him, breathing hard, his fists clenched, and I knew what he was doing. He was getting himself to where he had to be. Because now he had a good look at me, this nineteen-year-old in a borrowed suit jacket and old corduroys, who was so much smaller than his big friend and probably not as strong as he was either, and you couldn’t let the rush fade or there’d be nothing to fight with, and I yelled, “C’mon! You want to go at it? You want to fuckin’ go at it?!”
He rushed at me but two or three regulars held him back, the big one surrounded by four more. The one smoking the cigarette pulled at my arm. “I said cool it.”
The bridesmaids were going inside now. A few gripped small shiny night bags, a few others bouquets of flowers, and Marjan looked over her shoulder at me as if she’d never seen me before, did not even know my name.
The function hall was smoky and dimly lit, the DJ playing loud disco. Marjan was at the head table with the bride and groom, and I sat in a chair where I could see the door. The term sucker punch was in my head, my face heating up with the knowledge that that’s what I’d done, surprised a sitting man with a fist to the face. I kept hearing his voice out there in the parking lot calling me fucking crazy, and now my arms and legs felt spent and heavy and it would be bad if the two of them came in now.
“Why the fighting?”
A man sat beside me. He was five or ten years older than I was. He had long black hair tied in a ponytail. He wore a string tie with a turquoise and silver clasp at his throat, and he had narrow shoulders and dark eyes and high cheekbones.
I shook my head. I shrugged.
“Violence only leads to more violence, man.”
“Yeah? What about the girls? The driver wasn’t doing anything about it.”
“Were they really in danger?”
“Yep.” I stood and made my way through the tables for the bar and a beer. Men and women were talking and smiling at one another, laughing and drinking, and I felt like some kind of dimwitted brute.
Weeks later, drunk at Ronnie D’s with Suzanne and her new boyfriend, Fred, a gentle mechanic with a bushy beard, I’d look up every time the door opened or closed; I was still expecting to see the Lynches or the Murphys coming for me, and I was tired of this, tired of the flare of adrenaline every time air from the street drifted in, and I turned to Fred and asked him if he’d give me a lift down to Riverside. It’s where the Lynches and some of their cousins drank, at a bar in a Chinese restaurant in the shopping plaza next to the stadium. Fred said he would but first I needed the bathroom, and I made my way through the crowd and an opening in a partition wall and there was Pop, sitting at a table with three Bradford girls. The bar was loud with talk and laughter and you couldn’t even hear the jukebox, just the dull thumping of a bass guitar, a black man singing somewhere beneath it. Pop wore one of his Akubra hats tilted back on his head, a drink in front of him, a smoking cigarette between two fingers on the table. The girls across from him were laughing hard about something, the one beside Pop laughing too, and I knew who they were but didn’t know them. He saw me and waved me over.
“Want a drink?”
“I can’t.”
“What?” He cupped his hand to his ear. I walked around and leaned in close, could smell the Marlboro smoke in his hair. “I can’t. I’ve gotta go fight somebody.” It’s the most I’d told him about anything, and he looked up at me, his face somber, and I squeezed his shoulder and left him for the bathroom.
In the blue