I saw Caliber launch a punch at someone, but he caught a solid one to the side of the head and went down. I saw Billy grabbing men and jerking them away from me and Leonard, but it was like trying to bail out the ocean. Gray Suit was standing up in the booth looking down on the action like Xerxes watching the last defenders of Thermopylae go down. He had a fresh unlit cigarette in his mouth.
Bodies were pressing me so tight I was using nothing but elbows, leg stomps, head-butts, and knees, but it was useless. I started falling. I was being hit so hard and often my face felt as if it were exploding. I came down hard on my back, and above me were thrashing legs and bleeding, hateful faces; the fat guys, the old men, the blue-haired lady.
Their fists and shoes tumbled down on me like an avalanche. My balls took a few shots. I wondered if Chief Cantuck and I might be able to get matching trusses. Maybe he could wear his nut to the right, I could wear mine to the left. We could walk side by side. Kind of a balance thing.
The lights of the cafe went dark, then bright again, but I was seeing them through a sheen of blood, and it was my blood.
Too much pain.
My last vision before darkness was the blue-haired hag's shoe coming at me, accurately aimed at my head.
When I awoke, I was in great pain and I was wet and getting wetter and I was shaking from the cold. I realized too I had pissed myself and there was vomit on the front of my shirt and jacket. I was up against an alley wall, out back of the cafe most likely, and it was raining hard, and my mouth tasted of copper and one of my eyes was nearly swollen shut. One of my teeth felt loose. My kidneys hurt. My ribs hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. I feared if I moved too rapidly an arm or a leg might fall off.
I could hear grunting and I turned my head, carefully, just to make sure it didn't bowl a strike. The alley was full of people from the cafe, and the alley was full of rain.
Two fat guys, one with a couple of black eyes, the other with a wide split in his lip, had a mostly unconscious Leonard held up between them. His knees were bent and his legs were flared out behind him, the tops of his boots dragged the ground. His head was about the size of a medicine ball, and his lips and nose and eyes blended together in a knobby topography of swollen flesh. His breath steamed from his mouth and turned into little white clouds that faded to nothing.
The blue-haired lady was in front of him. She said, "Hold him up better."
She tried to kick Leonard in the balls, but the alley was wet, and she slipped and fell on her ass. The crowd moved toward the woman, and two men pulled her to her feet. When the crowd moved, I saw that Billy and Caliber were lying in the alley too. They looked to have taken a pretty good beating. Their mother was between them. Her hair was plastered to her head like seaweed to a rock. She was screaming her boys were hurt and wouldn't somebody do something, but nobody did. She squatted next to Billy and held his head in her lap, screamed, "Stop it! Stop it! Now! Stop it!"
Billy's hand came up and touched her hair. He said something, not very loud, then his hand went down again. He got the hand under him and pushed to a sitting position and scooted his back against the alley wall. He didn't look as if he cared much about what was happening now, long as it wasn't happening to him.
Maude rose suddenly, pushed through the crowd and went inside the cafe.
The blue-haired lady had a solid stance now. She kicked Leonard firm in the nuts with a football style kick. Leonard let out a burst of air, it puffed white and went wide and far, like a blast from a dragon. He sagged between the two men even more. The old lady said: "Niggers is what's wrong with this country."
I tried to get up, but couldn't. I fell over on my side and watched the alley wall lean at me. I turned my head toward Leonard, saw that Blue Hair had been replaced by Gray Suit. The rain had pushed his evangelist do apart and it had fallen into his face. I noticed, pushed down like that, he had been covering a half-dollar-sized bald spot at the back of his head. Good. I was glad he had a bald spot. I really didn't like this guy.
He had ketchup on his suit and the rain had spread it into rusty patches all over his jacket. His white shirt looked as if it were spotted with blood. He said, "Hold him," and the two guys picked Leonard up higher and held him firm, and Gray Suit began to work on him. Pounding him in the stomach, once in the jaw, but that hurt Gray Suit's hand. He jerked it back, said "Damn," and kicked Leonard in the shin. Then the leg. Leonard's bad leg.
Gray Suit reached in his pants pocket and got out a large pocketknife, pinched a blade open.
I tried to crawl toward Leonard, but I wasn't making any time at all. I felt like a slug nailed to the ground. I felt like I was in a car and it had skidded off the road, and everything had gone slow motion, and I could see a telephone pole coming through the windshield and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
Gray Suit said, "Way you tame a nigger . . . way you make em good, is just like you do a rambunctious stallion. You got to severely lower their testosterone level. All that ball juice just leads a nigger to trouble."
The men in the crowd laughed. One came forward, got hold of Leonard's zipper and pulled it down, reached in his pants and pulled out Leonard's equipment.
"No," I said. "Don't," but my words sounded like coughs.
Gray Suit turned, looked at me. He showed me that pretty dimple. It looked so deep now you'd have thought it ought to have a winch and bucket perched over it. He said, "Well, the nigger lover's come around. I cut this nigger's boo-doodles off, I'm gonna put 'em in your pocket, boy."
Gray Suit came forward and grabbed Leonard's testicles and lifted them and reached with the knife, and a gunshot split the air.
It was Maude. She had a pistol in one hand, a Winchester in the other, tucked under her armpit.
"You ain't gonna do this. Not in my place. Not out back of my place." Maude fired a shot with the revolver and made a trash can jump. She pointed the revolver and the rifle at Gray Suit, who still held Leonard's balls and the knife. She said, "Jackson Brown, you cut that nigger, you touch one of my boys, you come for me or that fella on the ground over there, any of you make a move to do that kinda business, I'm gonna blow what little brains you got out of the back of your head. And I'll do it too. Don't think I won't. Now all you cretins get on your horses and ride."
Gray Suit said, "You're gonna bring yourself some serious grief, Maude."
"You don't own my place yet, Jackson. You don't threaten me. You hear? Let go of that nigger's rocks."
So this was Tim's father. Jackson Truman Brown, the Lord of Grovetown. Standing in a wet alley with a pocketknife in one hand, Leonard's balls in the other.
Gently, the Lord unhanded Leonard's gonads, folded up his knife and put it away. Way he did it, you'd have thought he just used it to clean his fingernails. The two fatties dropped Leonard on his face. He hit so hard he cut a fart, then lay still.
A siren whooped once, went quiet. I turned to see the Chief's car at the mouth of the alley. Officer Reynolds was driving. He got out of the car and strolled up the alley, sucking his last Toot-see Roll Pop. "That's enough," he said. "All y'all go home."
"Draighten and Ray are on the floor in the restaurant," one of the fatties said. "These fellas hurt 'em bad."
"Yeah," Reynolds said. "Well, haul 'em off. Get 'em a doctor, they need it. I want all y'all out of here. Now."