I began to grope for a graceful way out. Even a not so graceful one, but Leonard, as is often the case, closed the door.
'Before we get on with the butt-whippin',' he said, sliding slowly off his stool, turning his body slightly to the side. 'I got one question for the big guy.' Leonard gestured to Elephant. 'Man, tell me true. Is that your ass following you around, or are you pullin' a trailer?'
Chapter 17
Elephant was a step closer than Bear, and no sooner had Leonard finished his remark than he stepped with his right foot and threw a hot haymaker at Leonard's head. It was such a wide and uncalculated blow, Leonard could have eaten a plate of eggs and biscuits and half a cup of coffee before it got there.
Leonard stepped in and blocked with his left hand and hit Elephant on his left temple with the edge of his right hand; hit him hard enough Elephant's greasy black hair flew up like a frightened monkey springing for cover.
Before the hair settled, Leonard captured Elephant's punching arm, swung under it, pushed against the big bastard's elbow and drove his head forward into the lunch counter, smacking Elephant’s noggin into it with a noise akin to the crack of doom.
Leonard grabbed Elephant's hair, jerked his head up, brought it down into the counter again, let him go. What was left of Elephant’s face smashed into a bar stool. Some of his cheek turned red and greasy and slid to the right of the stool while the rest of him fell left. I tell you, it was enough to make me lose my breakfast, had I eaten any.
All of this took no time at all.
Bear was on me then. I had already reached back and got hold of the ketchup bottle, and I swung it. It was still in the rack with the salt and pepper and Tabasco, and the bottle and the rack caught Bear alongside the head solid enough the ketchup exploded. Wads of red went all over Bear and across the cafe and onto Gray Suit's coat.
Gray Suit said, 'Goddamn!'
The world froze. We were like prehistoric flies in amber, but one look at the fine citizens of Grovetown, and I could sense a sort of fire building inside them. Nothing like a nigger smacking a white man to stir a bunch of crackers, and a white man taking a black man's side didn't cheer them much either. The first was like being made to eat shit. The second was like making them eat it and smile.
I dropped what was left of the ketchup bottle and the rack. It hit the floor with a sound so sharp we all jumped. Then things went still again. I couldn't take it anymore. I said, 'Well, you assholes gonna do it, or what?'
'Don't y'all do it,' Caliber said. 'You leave 'em be. You do it, you're gonna pay damages. You're gonna pay lawsuits.'
Gray Suit said, 'Git 'em! Kill the sonsabitches!'
And the mass of them came unstuck in time and space, rushed fast and hard, and I swung an elbow and saw someone's teeth fly, then I got hit on the right side of the jaw and a floating rib ceased to float, and I got my fingers in one guy's face and raked his eyes, side-kicked his knee out from under him, then someone was on my back and I was swinging my elbows, trying to throw him, but someone had me around the waist, and I couldn't get the torque, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Leonard dot a fat fucker's eyes with a rapid left, right, then kick another fatty between the legs solid enough to lift him. He back-elbowed an old guy, who spat his tobacco onto the back of Leonard's head, then Leonard was swarmed. He went down beneath a pile of writhing, punching bodies, his teeth clamped on some dude's ear, his hat beneath another's feet.
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
