Joseph took the prescription and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. He stood up and shook the doctor’s hand.
“You all right?” the doctor asked.
Joseph smiled. “Apparently not.”
Joseph thought about his wife as he drove his pickup out of the parking lot of the medical center. Cora was no pessimist. He knew that she believed with every ounce of herself that her husband would step through the front door and tell her that he was all right. He knew she expected this and so he planned to lie. Just an ulcer, he would say, then stand witness to her relief. And she would tell him again that it was because he held things in. At a stoplight in the middle of town he recalled how much he disliked the city; he couldn’t see any purpose in living like that. He also failed to see the point in telling a lie like the one he had planned, a lie that could not be maintained indefinitely. He would tell Cora the truth and be with her while she came to terms with things. He would tell her, she would stiffen a little, straighten her back, and say that they would see their way through. Then he’d tell her that he was refusing treatment because it would only moderately prolong his life and greatly enhance his suffering, at which point she would fall to the floor crying and cursing him. Truth of the matter was he had no idea how it would go, or even if he would have the courage to tell her.
Joseph was thirty-eight, a young man. He was younger with the passing of every block as he left the city behind. He saw some teenagers on the basketball courts of a middle school. He parked and went to stand by the far goal, where he leaned against the post. An errant pass bounced his way. He stopped the ball and picked it up, held it.
“Mind if I take a shot?” he asked.
They told him to go ahead. He put his hat on the ground and stepped forward, dribbled a couple of times. He threw up a thirty-foot jumper that bounced long off the rim back to him. He walked closer to the basket, bouncing the ball slowly, feeling it rise each time to meet his palm and fingers.
“Come on, man, shoot,” said one of the boys.
“Why don’t you try guarding me?” Joseph said. A breeze pushed at his back.
The boys laughed and the one who had told him to hurry came forward, flashing a smile back at his buddies. He was a tall boy with long arms and fancy basketball shoes. He took a quick swipe at the ball, but Joseph turned his body.
“Make a move, old man.”
Joseph gave the kid a head fake and dribbled left. The kid stayed with him, so he spun right on the heel of his boot and put a fall-away jumper.
“Yes,” Joseph said as the ball banged around the rim and fell through the hole. “How do you like it, sonny?”
The boys teased their friend. The kid shrugged it off, got the ball, and dribbled to the top of the key. He pointed at Joseph and gestured for him to come. Joseph smiled and went to him. The kid tried to drive right, but Joseph stepped over and stopped him. Joseph feigned a move for the ball and the boy almost lost control of it.
“Okay, old man,” the teenager said and made a quick move again to the right.
Joseph was caught flat-footed in his heavy cowboy boots and fell a full step behind. Joseph reached out and pushed the kid in the back. The shot went wild and the boy fell and rolled across the blacktop into the grass.
The kid got up. “What’s the matter with you, man?” The other boys rallied behind him.
Joseph was confused, but angry and he found himself stepping up to the kid. “What’s the problem?” He squinted up at the sun. “Are you mad at me?” he asked the boy. The kid looked at him like he was crazy; he was ready to back away, ready to run, but Joseph wouldn’t let him. “You’re mad at me. I can see that. You want to hit me, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“Nah, man, I don’t want to hit you. I just want you to go away.”
“Come on,” Joseph said. He knew what it felt like to be a jerk. He pushed his chin out. “Punch for punch, midface. You go first.”
“You’re crazy,” the kid said.
Joseph moved closer. He was just inches from the boy’s face, and could see him sweating. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Why don’t you just go someplace?” another boy said.
Joseph silenced the smaller boy with a look and returned his attention to the first kid. Joseph pushed the boy in the chest with both hands. “I said for you to hit me.”
The boy fell back a step and swallowed hard, his eyes wide open. “Hey, man.”
Joseph shoved him again.
The other teenagers stepped in and stood between them. They were all unsteady, heaving in deep breaths, shifting their weight left to right.
“Go home,” the kid said from behind his friends.
“All right, I’ll go home, but first I want you to punch me. Hey, I’ve been an asshole out here. A real asshole. I won’t hit you back, I promise. You can’t let somebody be such a jerk and get away with it.”
“Go on and hit him, John,” one of the boys said.
“Yeah,” said another.
“I don’t want to,” John said.
“Your pals are here, so I can’t very well hit you back, right?” Joseph felt a smile on his face, an unfamiliar smile, a hollow smile, a mean smile.
The kid squeezed through his friends and Joseph thrust out his chin again and pointed to it. The boy threw out a weak open-handed tap that Joseph barely felt on his cheek.
“Harder,” Joseph said, pointing again to his chin. “Right there.”
Another blow, a little sharper. The boy was trembling, his lips parted and quivering.
“Hit me like a man!”
“Let him have it, John.”
“Yeah.”
When Joseph came around, he was alone. The sun was almost gone and a light drizzle was falling. His face hurt. The wind blew trash across the blacktop. His brain throbbed. A violent shudder ran through his body as he thought about what he had done. He wanted to find the boy he had terrorized and apologize. Then he hoped that the punch had been good enough, satisfying for him, hoped that the boy’s fear would be short-lived, hoped he would never see him again. Maybe all the boys would get a good laugh out of it. They would be nervous and falsely cocky at first, Joseph imagined, but later genuine laughter. “John, remember that crazy …” he could hear them saying.
He felt better when he could see the hills scissor-cut against the western sky. It was dark when he rolled home. The night smelled good. When he entered the house he found there was little need to tell Cora anything. She looked at his swollen face and started to cry. She begged him not to die.
“Okay,” he said. He held her for a while there by the door and took deep breaths, thought about things like insurance and debts.
She pulled from him and walked stiffly away.
Joseph went into the bathroom and looked at his face in the mirror, rubbed his jaw.
Wes came in.
“Hey there, cowboy,” Joseph said. He could hear Cora crying in the bedroom.
“You okay?”
“Nah, I guess I’m not doing so hot.”
“What happened to your jaw?” the boy asked.
“Tried to knock some sense into myself.” He looked at Wes’s face in the mirror. “Why don’t you see about your mother?”
Squeeze
“You sure you ain’t got no Indian blood in you?” the heavily mustached Lucius Carter asked again.
Jack Winston castrated the bull and tossed the severed parts behind him where they landed in the dirt at the base of the shed wall.
Carter rubbed the neck of his bay, which chomped its bit and stamped the parched ground. He looked down at the man kneeling behind the young bull confined in the squeeze gate. “Just a touch?”