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I yelled something unintelligible, and Jo Jo woke up screaming, and then I tried to get to my feet, but a knee came up and just missed my dimpled chin and caught me on the shoulder. It did no damage, but set me down again.

I came off the floor, adrenaline flowing. Before I could get off a punch, he threw a looping left hook. I blocked it with my right forearm, and he came at me with a right. Now I was in the defensive position of the double forearm block, sort of like Floyd Patterson’s peek-a-boo defense. His punches kept coming, landing like concrete blocks on my triceps and forearms, and so far, I hadn’t even swung.

I backed up a step and tossed a jab. So did he, and his reach exceeded mine. He peppered my face with two more stinging straight lefts. I wanted to get a clear shot at him, but unlike almost any brawl I’d ever been in, he was bigger and stronger, and for all I knew, could beat me in the forty-yard dash.

I feinted with the left, came across the top with a right and hit him on the side of the nose. I heard cartilage splinter, and I was showered with blood. His eyes would be closed and watering now, so I came in close, tucked my head into his chest, and shot upward, butting him under the chin. I heard a snap and hoped I broke his jaw. He grunted and gagged.

I took a step back and went for his chin again, this time with a long left hook. I had a lot of hip behind it, but I was too slow. Story of my life.

He stepped to his left and hit me squarely in the solar plexus with a short right I never saw. I doubled over and fell to the floor, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. I dipped a shoulder and rolled into him just as he lifted a foot to kick me. The foot was encased in pointed burgundy cowboy boots that shimmered in the moonlight. The toe skimmed the top of my skull, and the heel slammed me in the forehead. Still, the weight of my body pinned his other foot to the floor. I kept rolling, trying to hyperextend his knee and tear his anterior cruciate ligaments into strands of spaghetti. It would have worked, too, if he hadn’t had the legs of an ox.

I weigh two hundred twenty-two pounds, and I didn’t budge him. This left me at his feet. He locked his hands and brought them down hard on the back of my neck, and I saw the Milky Way and Orion, with Betelgeuse particularly bright. I reached into the dazzling light to fight my way into the next galaxy, but just floated for a while. I tried to grab him behind one knee and buckle his leg, but I couldn’t have squeezed the breath out of a kitten.

I heard Jo Jo screaming.?Que demonios haces aqui? Vete ahora mismo! ” She came off the bed at him, but he lifted her effortlessly and tossed her across the room.

I was on my knees, now, vaguely aware of a voice above me and warm blood dripping onto me. “Where is he?”

I was dazed and didn’t get it. “Who he?”

He grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head back. “Where’s Baroso? Where’s the little son of a bitch?”

“ I don’t know. Hurt, dead, I don’t know.”

He yanked harder on my hair. “The two of you screwed me good, didn’t you, lawyer?”

“ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He dropped my head and called out, “Josefina, where’s that low-life brother of yours?”

She was huddled on the bed, crying. “I don’t know. Leave us alone.” She gathered herself up and threw a pillow at him. It did about as much good as my left jabs. I was on all fours now, trying to get up, expecting another blow, but it didn’t come. From above me, a booming voice: “Stay out of my affairs, lawyer! Stay out of my affairs, or you’re a dead man. Do you understand?”

I must not have, because he lifted up a foot and stomped my right hand. I heard the knuckles fracture-the sound of a cue ball on a break-long before I felt the pain.

Chapter 12

A BUMPY NIGHT

Kip watched in silent fascination as Doc Charlie Riggs mixed water with plaster for the cast.

“ Does it hurt much?” Kip asked, gently touching my swollen hand.

“ Only when I play ‘Dueling Banjos.’

“ Out of the way, Kip,” Charlie advised, approaching with a strip of gauze soaked in dripping plaster, some of which had become affixed to his bushy beard. I was sprawled on the sofa in the pit-not a conversation pit, just a pit-of my living room, my arm slung onto the sailboard coffee table.

“ You ever do this before?” I asked the doc, who was leaning over me, squinting through his lopsided eyeglasses.

He harrumphed. “You’ll be my first patient who lived.”

“ Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Kip leaned close as Charlie began wrapping my hand. “What’s AMAL YNOT?” the kid asked.

I peered at the back of my hand through a nearly closed eye. The hand disappeared under the wet gauze. “The lasting impression of a Tony Lama boot, size sixteen, quadruple E.”

“ Bummer,” Kip said. “The dude went ballistic, huh?” He ran a finger over bruises the color of ripe eggplants on my bare arms.

“ Third and fourth metacarpals fractured, ligaments stretched, but not torn,” Charlie Riggs announced. “Tylenol with codeine for the pain.” He studied me a moment. “How do you feel?”

“ Like I was blindsided by a Mack truck. Next time I run into that cowboy, I’m going to tear his heart out.”

Charlie gave my hand a gentle squeeze and a jolt of electricity shot up my arm. “Not for a long time, my friend.”

Charlie poked around for a while, shining a light in my eyes to check pupil dilation, taking my blood pressure, pinching and poking this part and that. When he was done, Kip nudged me and whispered, “You didn’t thank the doc.”

He was right. I was beginning to take my friend for granted, another of my failings, right up there with my inability to ward off bedroom attackers. My self-esteem was taking a beating, along with my body. “Thanks, Charlie. You’re always there for me, and sometimes I don’t show my appreciation.”

He dismissed the idea with a wave of a pudgy hand. “ Tacent satis laudant. Silence is praise enough.”

***

Codeine took the pain away with a drowsy, cloudy half sleep. I awoke with a throbbing hand and a head filled with bowling balls that rolled whichever way I tilted. It was dark outside, and the mockingbird in the chinaberry tree was whistling for a mate.

Which made me think of Jo Jo Baroso. What did it mean, the friction of body parts and remembrance of old times, so rudely interrupted? I took two pills and started to drift off again, vaguely aware that Kip kept opening my bedroom door, looking in at me, during breaks between TV movies.

“ Want to split a beer, Uncle Jake?” he asked during one of my periods of semi-consciousness. The aroma of home-delivery pizza entered the room with him. I thought he was doing well in the self-sufficiency department. Kids left on their own somehow manage. I ought to know.

I shook my head, and the effort made my head pound with a pain that kept time with my heartbeat. Kip came over and put a hand on my forehead, and for some reason I couldn’t explain, tears came to my eyes and then sleep overtook me.

***

“ You look like death warmed over.” She opened the blinds with an irritating clackety-clack, and bright sun slanted through the window and across the bed. “Lord-y, you look even worse in the daylight.”

I pried my eyes open and squinted into the glare, finding a silhouette of Granny Lassiter leaning over me. “Good morning to you, too, Florence Nightingale.”

Granny clucked her disapproval and began straightening up the room, picking up perfectly clean T-shirts that happened to be crumpled into piles on the floor. She rearranged my stylish collection of Dolphins commemorative Super Bowl ashtrays, ran a finger over a chest of drawers, leaving a trail in the dust. “Brought you some white lightning,” she said, hoisting a wicker picnic basket onto the bed. She pulled out a mason jar filled with a liquid that could power a Saturn rocket. “It’ll stop the pain dead in its tracks.”