Chapter 3

Things got really busy right after I watched my father collapse to the ground with spurting blood coming out of his eye socket. I heard my mother screaming and my sister Annie yelling "Get up Daddy! Get up!" I closed in with my two guys and faked a shot at one of them before turning and dropping the bigger one right in his tracks. A boot to the head as he fell took away any doubts I might have had about him getting back into the fray. As I was moving to get position on the other one, I saw Billy all over his guy. He looked to have things well in hand, but when I glanced back at where my father had landed, I couldn't see him. I really didn't have the time to worry about him until I finished up with what he'd given me to do. I turned aside from a kick the guy sent my way and managed to deflect the worst of it. There was an exchange of punches between us before we both stepped back at the same time. We moved back into punching space and I ducked under his thrown right hand, and got in a crippling blow of my own to his solar plexus. There was just an instant in time, before I ended it all with him, when I almost decided to give him a break, and allow him to quit while he was still standing. I might have followed through with that merciful instinct too, if it hadn't been for what these guys had done to my father when they had him outnumbered five to one. Instead of sparing him, I doubled up on his midsection and then put him away with a purposeful downward chop with my left hand right on the point of his chin. I heard his teeth click together and felt his neck give away and relax while I followed through with the punch.

I looked around me and saw that the fight was over except for my father and the guy he had called Baby Huey. There was a lot of blood that had flowed out of my father, his shirt and his pants were drenched with it. I saw him swinging at the big guys ribs, and heard the sound as each fist hammered home. It took another minute for the big guy to go down, but, by then, everyone there was wishing he'd just give it up. He was game, I'd have to give him that much, but once my father had him down on the ground, he was never going to be allowed to get back up again. He made several feeble attempts to stand again, but each attempt was met with a purposeful kick. The last time, the kick was right in his face, but I noticed he didn't get it from the toe, only the top instep of the foot. In his own way, my father was showing to the big guy some mercy. When none of the six of them moved anymore, the fight was finally over. Terry didn't have a mark on him and neither did I. "Mouse" had a cut lip and a bad tooth cut on one of his knuckles. Billy had a red mark under his eye that would turn purple the next morning. My father had a nice cut in the corner of his eye up high on the bridge of his nose. My mother had some ice in her hanky and was pressing it to the wound. Annie was holding onto my father's arm, trying to get him to go inside where it wasn't as cold.

I didn't pay any attention to what condition the bowlers were in. For all I cared, they could look after themselves. I went over to my father and helped Annie get him back into the bar. I went and got him a shot of Four Roses as soon as we had him off of his feet, sitting back at his table. Someone came running into the bar to tell everyone that Jimmy Coogan was outside taking a piss on some of the bowlers. Some people ran out to witness that, but those of us who had participated in the fight didn't go back out there. Pissing on a defeated opponent was not a new thing, it had been done for many thousands of years. Usually though, that action was reserved solely to the victor, on someone that he had personally vanquished. None of us begrudged Jimmy his victory piss though. He came through the back door about five minutes later and walked to the men's room, presumably to wash his hands. When he came out he walked to the bar and rang the bell signaling his intention to buy everyone in the bar a round of drinks. By then I'd noticed that Ellen was nowhere to be seen. I asked Theresa if she knew where Ellen was, but she said she had lost track of her during all the excitement. Annie told me that Ellen had driven over by herself and then she took me out the front door to show me where Ellen had parked. Ellen's car was gone, so I figured that she'd just gotten disgusted and driven herself home. I got my father packed into Annie's car with my mother sitting up front with him to keep the ice pressed to his cut. The bleeding seemed to be stopped, but they were going to visit the hospital to see whether the cut needed stitching, and to have my father checked out for concussion and to have his vital signs checked. He looked like he'd lost a lot of blood, but he didn't seem that concerned about anything.

After I walked back into the tavern, I noticed Billy and Theresa sitting side by side at the bar talking together quietly while Theresa carefully examined every square inch of his face for any damages. Billy waved me over and asked me if I'd seen the beginning of the fight, when my dad had been hit and knocked down. I told him that I didn't see it, but that I'd heard the punch that had dropped him. "It was incredible Jackie. He just stood there and invited that guy to take the first shot. When I saw the way the guy got him, I never thought he'd ever get back up. I went after my guy then, hoping we could get a couple guys finished up before Baby Huey started picking us off one by one. I was banging away on my guy when I heard someone get hit right in the guts. I turned around and there was your pop, pounding that guys ribs and belly for all he was worth. He would have made a hell of a crew worker, Uncle John would. He chopped down that big bastard as efficiently as anything I ever saw. I almost yelled 'timber' when he finally went down. We talked for a few more minutes before Billy and Theresa took off in Billy's truck, leaving her car parked out in the street overnight. She wanted to make sure that Billy didn't leave her sight until she got him home and safely in bed

I thanked "Mouse" and Terry for their help and told them my dad would keep in touch with them in case there were any future problems with those guys. "Mouse" told me that he was moving out to someplace in California in two weeks, as soon as the sale on his boat was final. He had a brother living out there who told him he could get him a good job with an oil refinery. Terry said he'd drop by the folks house the next day to see if my father needed him for anything. Terry was a good man. He always appreciated the way my father had looked after him in the Navy, helping him on a few occasions when he got jammed up himself. I went out the back way and climbed up into my truck cab. Two of the bowlers were up on their feet, and one of the others was sitting up holding his head in both hands. The two still laying flat were the second guy I fought, and Baby Huey. I started the truck and let it warm up, before slipping it into gear and driving away. When I got home, Ellen's car was parked in it's usual spot. I parked and went inside the front door. She wasn't in the living room or the kitchen, so I walked over to our bedroom.

"Don't turn the light on Jackie, please." Ellen was crying when she said that. Dealing with her reaction to what she had witnessed

"Are you okay, babe? Do you want to talk?"

"Talk? What should we talk about Jackie? Should we talk about what you and Billy and your father did to those other men tonight? Maybe we should talk about how it felt for you to be standing there one minute, watching your own father getting hit hard enough to kill almost anyone else, and then the next minute you calmly turned away so that you could do the exact same thing to someone else. Maybe we can discuss whether it's normal for a wife to get sick and throw up as she watches her husband beating up two men at a time? The thing that troubled me the most Jackie, was that I saw that you felt right at home out there in that alley, patiently waiting to do what you'd been ordered to do."

"I didn't ask you to go there, or even want you to come to the tavern tonight, honey. Do you think that that's how I want you to see me? I love you Ellen, I want you to love me too, and to think well of me. Tonight was necessary, if my father, Billy and I were going to remain comfortable with our image of who we think we are. You haven't been a part of that image Ellen. I've tried changing that image of myself with you, so that you don't have to see very much of that side of me. The man in that alley tonight, he was a son and a cousin, not a husband, certainly not your husband. Here, in this house right now, I'm your husband, and that is all I want to be."

"You can't be one man with your family and a different man with me. It's all the same man. It is the sum of all that you do, and are capable of doing, that makes you who you are. You can't just pick and choose who you're going to be from one minute to the next."

"That's right, I can't pick. If he needs me there in that alley, or even if he thinks he wants me there, I'll always have to go. That's who I am. Whatever I'd do for him though, I'd do the same, a hundred times over for you. I've been taught ever since I was a little boy that my survival depended absolutely on all of us sticking together in support of each other. I've taken his support and his protection all of my life, knowing that my loyalty to him and to the family was the price I'd have to pay for it. It's too late for me to break that contract now, and I don't think I'd want to break it, even if I could. Family is everything. You are family to me, the best of my family, but I can't and won't turn away from any of the people who've looked after me every day since I was born. I tried explaining this to you even before we got married. I've got this other commitment, and it needs to be honored."

"Do you feel bad about what you did tonight? Do you at least wish you hadn't had to participate in it?"

"I want to tell you that I do feel bad, but I really don't. It bothered you that I turned away from my father when he got knocked down and I could see that he'd been hurt? That could have been any one of the five of us that got hit like that. We each had agreed to do something out there tonight. My job was to do exactly what I did. When I was done with what I'd agreed to do, then I could afford to worry about my father and the others. By the time I was finished and the others were finished with what they had agreed to do, my father didn't need any help from any of us. As far as wanting to participate tonight, let's just say I'd have been hurt if they hadn't asked me to be a part of it. Ray doesn't like that sort of thing. He's better at other things than I am, but Billy and I are a lot better at fighting. Ray doesn't feel bad about not being asked to be there tonight, because that isn't his area of expertise. Uncle Donald is going to be pissed when he finds out what's been going on, and that he wasn't invited to participate. My father will give him a reasonable explanation and that will be the end of it. Uncle Donald will remember that he'd been left out though, and sometime in the future my father will pay some price for the slight."

"I don't know what to say to you Jackie. It's just so sad to have lived like you have, and to have internalized their values."

"I understand what you're saying Ellen, and I feel sorry for you sometimes too, when I see what it was like for you to grow up as your mother's daughter. That is what made you who you are though, and I love who you are, though not necessarily how you came to be that way. I want you to love me, the way I am, knowing that I try, at least most of the time, to be a better me than I was before I met you."

"Okay Jackie, let's just go to bed and maybe we'll both feel better in the morning." I changed out of my clothes and crawled into bed with her. We were spooned together and I was enjoying the warmth of her body. I was very close to nodding off when she asked me how my father was after the fight. I told her that he was all right, maybe needing some stitches for his cut, but that my mother had managed to stop his bleeding. "Did you see your mother and Theresa when your father got knocked down Jackie?"

"No hon, I was looking at my father laying there, and then I got too busy to look at anything that wasn't in front of me and trying to hit me. I might have heard my mother scream something, but I don't remember seeing or hearing Theresa until after it was all over. So, what did they do?"