"Do you mind moving your car now so I can go?" I asked.
"Okay," Coach Bobby said, "but I warned you."
"Warned me about what?"
He was back in my personal space. "You don't want to fight, fine. But then it's hunting season on your boy out there."
I felt a rush of blood in my ears.
"What are you talking about?"
"The spastic kid who shot in the wrong basket? The rest of the season he's a target. We have a chance at a cheap shot, we take it. We see an opportunity to get in his head, we go for it."
My mouth may have dropped open, I'm not sure. I looked toward Win to make sure I heard right. Win no longer looked so crestfallen. He rubbed his hands together.
I turned back to Coach Bobby. "Are you serious?"
"Like a heart attack."
I replayed my promise to Ali, looking for a loophole. After my career-ending basketball injury I needed to prove to the world that I was just fine, thank you very much. So I attended law school-at Harvard. Myron Bolitar, the complete package-scholar-athlete, overeducated-though-debonair attorney. I had a law degree. And that meant I could find loopholes.
What had I actually promised to do here? I thought about Ali's exact words: "Don't go to the bar tonight. Promise me."
Well, this wasn't a bar, was it? It was a wooded area behind a high school. Sure, I might be defying the intent of the law, but not the letter. And the letter was key here.
"Let's do this," I said.
The six of us started toward the woods. Win practically skipped. About twenty yards into the trees, there was an opening. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and beer cans. High school. It never changes.
Coach Bobby took his place in the center of the opening. He lifted his right arm and beckoned for me to join him. I did.
"Gentlemen," Win said, "a moment of your time before they commence."
All eyes turned to him. Win stood with Assistant Coach Pat and the two bruisers near a large maple tree.
"I would feel remiss," Win continued, "if I failed to offer up this important advisory."
"What the hell are you babbling about?" Coach Bobby said.
"I'm not speaking to you. This advisory is for your three chums." Win's gaze traveled over their faces. "You may be tempted to step in and help Coach Bobby at some point. That will be a huge mistake. The first one of you who takes even one step in their direction will be hospitalized. Note I did not say stopped, hurt, or even harmed. Hospitalized."
They all just looked at him.
"That's the end of my advisory." He turned back toward Coach Bobby and me. "We now return you to our regularly scheduled brawl."
Coach Bobby looked at me. "This guy for real?"
But I was in the zone right now and it wasn't a good one. Rage was consuming me. That's a mistake when you fight. You need to slow things down, keep your pulse from racing, keep your adrenaline rush from paralyzing you.
Bobby looked at me and for the first time I saw doubt in his eyes. But now I remembered how he laughed, how he pointed to the wrong basket, what he'd said:
"Hey, kid, do that again!"
I took a deep breath.
Coach Bobby put up his fists like a boxer. I did likewise, though my stance was far less rigid. I kept my knees flexed, bounced a bit. Bobby was a very big guy and local-neighborhood tough and used to intimidating opponents. But he was out of his league.
A few quick facts about fighting. One, the cardinal rule: You never really know how it is going to go. Anyone can land a lucky blow. Overconfidence is always a mistake. But the truth was, Coach Bobby had virtually no chance. I don't say this to sound immodest or repetitive. Despite what the parents in those rickety stands want to believe with their private coaches and overly aggressive third-grade travel league schedules, athletes are mostly created in the womb. Yes, you need the hunger and the training and the practice, but the difference, the big difference, is natural ability.
Nature over nurture every time.
I had been gifted with ridiculously quick reflexes and hand-eye coordination. That's not bragging. It's like your hair color or your height or your hearing. It just is. And I'm not even talking here about the years of training I did to improve my body and to learn how to fight. But that's there too.
Coach Bobby did the predictable thing. He stepped in and threw a wild roundhouse. A roundhouse isn't an effective punch against a seasoned fighter. You learn quickly that when it counts, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You are better off throwing blows with that knowledge.
I slid a little to the right. Not a lot. Just enough so that I could deflect the blow with my left hand and stay close enough to counter. I stepped inside Bobby's exposed defense. Time had slowed down now. I could hit one of several soft targets.
I chose the throat.
I bent my right arm and smashed my forearm into the Adam's apple.
Coach Bobby made a squawking noise. The fight was over right there. I knew that. Or at least I should have. I should have stepped back and let him gasp to the ground.
But that mocking voice was still in my head…
"Hey, kid, do that again… The rest of the season he's a target… We have a chance at a cheap shot, we take it… Chicken!"
I should have let him fall. I should have asked him if he'd had enough and ended it that way. But the anger was out now. I couldn't harness it. I bent my left arm and began to spin full force counterclockwise. I planned on landing an elbow blow directly to the big man's face.
It would be, I realized as I spun, a devastating blow. The kind of blow that caves in the bones of a face. The kind of blow that leads to surgery and months of pain meds.
At the last second, I came just enough to my senses. I didn't stop, but I pulled back a little. Instead of landing square, my elbow careened across Bobby's nose. Blood spurted. There was a sound like someone had stepped on dried twigs.
Bobby fell hard to the ground.
"Bobby!"
It was Assistant Coach Pat. I turned toward him, put up my palms, and shouted, "Don't!"
But it was too late. Pat took a step forward, his fist cocked.
Win's body barely moved. Just his leg. He snapped a kick at Coach Pat's left knee. The joint bent sidewise, in a way it was never supposed to. Pat screamed and dropped to the dirt as though he'd been shot.
Win smiled and arched his eyebrow toward the other two men. "Next?"
Neither man did so much as breathe.
My rage dissipated all at once. Coach Bobby was on his knees now, cradling his nose as if it were a wounded animal. I looked down at him. It amazed me how much a beaten man looks like a little boy.
"Let me help you," I said.
Blood poured from his nose through his fingers. "Get away from me!"
"You need to put pressure on that. Stop the bleeding."
"I said, stay away!"
I was about to say something in my defense, but I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Win. He shook his head as if to say, No use. He was right.
We left the woods without another word.
When I got home an hour later, there were two voice mails. Both were short and very much to the point. The first was hardly a surprise. Bad news travels fast in small towns.
Ali said, "I can't believe you broke your promise."
That was it.
I sighed. Violence doesn't solve anything. Win would make a face when I said that, but the truth was, whenever I resorted to violence, which used to be fairly frequently, it never just ended there. Violence ripples and reverberates. It echoes and really never seems to go silent.
The second message on the voice mail came from Terese:
"Please come."
Any attempt at hiding the desperation was gone.
Two minutes later my cell vibrated. The caller ID told me it was Win.
"We have a small situation," he said.
"What's that?"
"Assistant Coach Pat, he of the need for orthopedic surgery?"
"What about him?"
"He is a police officer in Kasselton. A captain, in fact, though I won't ask to wear his varsity jacket to the prom."