“People who fight are weak.”
He tried to catch my nose between two knuckles. “Don’t jerk away from me, boy. You’re about to get on your knees. That’s the only way this is going to end.”
I tried to push his hand aside. Saber was walking toward us now, the tire iron behind his leg.
“Why were you spying on my house?” Loren said.
“Why would I want to spy on your house? I couldn’t care less about your house.”
“Because that’s what dingleberries do. I hear you’re a momma’s boy and your old man is a lush.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Go wash your face. You can use my garden hose.”
“Get back, Saber,” I said.
Loren realized he had forgotten about Saber. He turned in Saber’s direction as though in a dream.
“Put it away, Saber,” I said.
“Well, you little shit,” Loren said, sliding his right hand into his pocket.
“Look at me, Loren,” I said.
“What is it now?” he said.
I thought about saying something clever, but I didn’t. I felt like a helpless child watching his best friend about to cross a line and perhaps ruin his life. The wind was as warm as blood; I could feel the tears drying on my cheeks.
I caught Loren Nichols on the mouth, bursting his lips against his teeth. I never saw anyone look so surprised. He cupped his hand to keep the flow from his mouth off his chest and drapes. I had never been in a fight and did not know what I was supposed to do next. Then I saw the pain and shock go out of his eyes. From that point on, I didn’t think.
I used both fists and hit him so hard, I knew the blood on my knuckles was from me and not from him. He tripped backward over the curb and tried to lift his forearm across his face, but I clubbed his head and the back of his neck and drove one punch into his eye when he looked up at me for mercy.
My mother had been the first to call the blank spaces in my days “spells,” maybe because spells and blackouts ran in her family. The Hollands were a violent people, capable of turning their weapons on themselves as well as others. My grandfather was a Texas Ranger who put John Wesley Hardin in jail, something Wild Bill Hickok tried and couldn’t do. My mother often went to places in her head that no normal person dared visit. I believe Loren Nichols realized his mistake and wanted to undo it even as I drove him across the dirt yard onto the rotting steps of his house, even as I continued to beat and stomp him in front of the old woman, who had madness in her eyes but seemed to see nothing.
For the first time in my life, I understood that I was capable of killing a man with my bare hands. The world turned to a red and purple melt while Loren Nichols’s face was coming apart. Then I felt Saber’s arms grab me from behind, his hands locking on my chest, pulling me backward as I kicked at Loren and missed.
I tried to get loose, but I was finished, the adrenaline gone, my strength draining like water through the soles of my feet. The old woman was making a keening sound, her body shaking. Loren rolled into a ball on the ground. His face didn’t look human.
“We’re in the skillet,” Saber said. “Did you hear me? We’re deep in Indian country, Aaron. Snap out of it. His friends will pull our teeth with pliers.”
He carried me upright to the street as he would an upended hogshead, and body-slammed me on the swale. I stared up at him, the sky and the trees and the houses along the block spinning out of control.
“Is that you, Saber?” I asked. “Did you just throw me on the ground? What in the world is the matter with you?”
I MADE HIM DRIVE me to the alley that led behind Valerie Epstein’s house.
“You’re going up to her door like that?” he said, looking at my clothes and hands.
“I’m going to use her hose.”
Valerie’s yard was deep in shadow, the fronds of the banana plants next to her garage rattling in the wind. The air smelled of fertilizer and the damp soil in the flower beds, an odor like a fresh wound in the earth. An odor like a grave. I heard a siren several blocks away.
“They’re coming,” Saber said.
“Nichols started it.”
“I’m scared,” he said.