He hobbled back up to a run, soon passing the garage on his left as his knees screamed in outrage, and began to calculate the next leg of his route to Amanda’s. He knew it was probably safer to run around the back of Jake’s cabin but that made a longer trip, and he sure didn’t like his chances if he was cut off from getting there. The faster path was the one that ran direct to her doorstep, which took him by the front porch, but he’d make that run naked and unarmed.
He cursed himself seven kinds of fool for not having a weapon; not even a simple pistol. It had seemed such a reasonable trade-off at the time. He knew he’d end up lugging both Wang and all Wang’s gear up that damned mountain (a disjointed, fractured piece of his mind filled in the words “tote Wang up the mountin’” in Lum’s lazy drawl). It had made good sense to Fred not to add any additional weight to his burden.
Only now, here he was, running his ass off through a developing war zone without so much as a sharp stick to defend himself.
He resolved to be fast and lucky; it was all he had left since leaving smart and prepared behind. He picked up the pace, ignoring the destruction of his joints, and cut a line for the front of Jake’s cabin.
When Fred entered the alley between the cabin and garage, things seemed fairly doable, if not goddamned hectic. When he halved the distance to the alley’s exit and saw Pap trot into view, he thought again of his brilliant plan to take the direct route to Amanda’s. Between this decision and his lack of firepower, Fred figured he was batting a thousand.
Pap saw him coming, and even in the darkness under the trees, Fred could see that white, doughy face jiggle its way into an aspect of utter shock. He saw the cowboy dip his hand to the revolver riding low on his hip, had a split second to marvel at the man’s speed (Son of a bitch must’ve been practicin’ that mess out in Shitkickertonville, Fred thought in a flash of frenetic wonder), and decided he had no option better than forward. He lowered his head like the ballplayer he’d once been, somehow feeling a certain comfort in the physical act, bellowed his rage, and drove forth.
He heard a pistol shot as he pounded across the dirt—the sound so deafening Fred thought the revolver might have discharged next to his ear—and felt the caving of Pap’s body around his good shoulder as he plowed through the man. It was perhaps the sweetest, most perfect hit he’d ever delivered; he hardly felt resistance at all as he took his target up off the ground and continued to drive, displacing Pap at least thirty feet away before doubling over and pile-driving his spine into the hard pack, transmitting the sheer force of every ounce of his two hundred and ninety pounds directly into the bastard’s guts.
Pap grunted at the first impact and bellowed unhinged, furious pain at the second. If he’d been constructed of bricks and mortar, the force of Fred’s impact would have unmoored him from his foundation.
They fell to rolling through the dirt, neither of the men being able to do much in the way of fighting or breathing, so complete had the poleaxing been. Fred sprawled across Pap’s legs and chest, waving one hand over his head to protect himself, and fumbled around at the man’s side in search of the revolver. Understanding what Fred was up to, Pap did the same, searching wildly with his right hand while raining down hammer blows with his left fist. They spit, grunted, and cursed each other, swallowing what dirt passed between their teeth, and rolled and hitched against each other, and bit, and grabbed, and howled like alley cats. When he accepted the reality that his Model Twenty-Nine was nowhere to be found, Pap pressed both hands against Fred’s shoulders and began to scoot his hips out from underneath, and Fred, knowing it was all over if Pap got away, wrapped his fingers into Pap’s belt and pursued after him on his knees. They reverse-crawled a few feet before Pap gave up, dropped his ass, and began levering Fred up off him so he could get away.
“Git the fuck off’n me… fuckin’… whale!” Pap snarled.
Fred heaved into the hands jammed against his shoulders, reaching for handfuls of the other’s clothing to drag himself higher, and there came a rapid expansion beneath his body like his adversary was in the process of exploding in slow motion. Then Fred heard a grunt that turned immediately into a scream, and then his spine was suddenly folding back on itself despite everything he did to resist. The space between them grew; distance being the first requirement to an excellent haymaker, it was either get the hell away from Pap or take a shot to the face—either from Pap’s fist or his foot—and Fred didn’t trust his ability to stay conscious from either. He threw his mass out to the right, falling away from Pap’s body, and was horrified to discover that Pap had managed to hold on, that Fred’s sideways fall was pulling him along for the ride. By the time Fred came to rest, he found himself laying on his back. Pap huddled above him, pulled into what Otter Warren used to call the Sideways-Mount, and Fred took a sharp, exploratory knee to his ribs before he suddenly realized that he was in the deepest shit of his life. Following this realization, an elbow descended, and because Fred was already flat on his back, his head had nowhere to go. Bone impacted bone, and he experienced a sickening explosion of lights.
Then there was nothing for a while, and it was lovely. Fred forgot what was happening; thought maybe he was having some sort of dream where he was supposed to be doing something… important? He remembered he was missing a hammer somewhere. It was his favorite hammer, and maybe Oscar knew where it was. Why the hell was it so dark?
He came out of the daze painfully slow, his sense of time restoring at the same rate as his sense of feeling. It seemed to him as though he’d been out forever, but then he felt another punch amidst the pins and needles running over his face, hands, and feet, like his extremities were likewise awakening; felt the lack of pain; heard the lack of sound. Pap hit him again, rocking his head sideways, but it didn’t dizzy him like before. It was nothing close to that first elbow, and that was damned good. If he could just keep awake, Fred thought he might have a chance of surviving.
He took another knee to the ribs, which hurt a little more than the last few shots. Fred wondered if that meant he was still coming to or if a rib had busted. He could hear gunfire again and wondered if the shooting had continued on this whole time. Pap hovered over him, yelling and cursing; leaning over his right side. Fred lifted his right arm and slapped at Pap’s face, not trying to do any damage so much as hinder the man from throwing any more punches. It worked for a little while, until Pap pulled his head way back, eyes rolling in their sockets like spinning bearings, and bit down into the meat of Fred’s thumb. Fred was amazed at how much it hurt, especially after all the blunt force trauma he’d sustained, and screamed without shame. He pulled away until his hand came free. Pap spat and resumed struggling with Fred’s flailing arms, looking for his next target.
At some point, Fred cast out with his left hand along the dirt, maybe looking again for that gun. Looking for something; any goddamned thing that would help. As luck would have it, something was what he found.
He was too numb to understand what he had. His fingers told him it was hard, whatever it might be, and that he could palm it. He took another punch to the face, half defended by an upraised arm, nearly lost whatever he’d found, located it again, and then swung it over in a wild arc before Pap could organize another attack. Whatever Fred held, it collided full force with Pap’s nose, which flattened into his face in a spray of blood like a rotten tomato. He went over on his back, thoroughly astonished, and the two men lay like that a few seconds, shoulder to shoulder and panting as heavily as draft horses.