I already whipped Doug’s ass once, about a year and half ago. It was in the winter, January or February, I believe. I can’t remember which. I only know it was cold and my knuckles hurt real bad when I was roofing them apartment buildings after I punched him in the goddam forehead. You’d think I would know better than to punch a man in the hardest fucking bone on his body. I know it was one of my toughest fights. Fighting’s always been my favorite hobby. Doug’s a big bastard and evidently someone told him he could take me, and I’ll be a stripped-ass ape if he didn’t almost do it. He’s the strongest cocksucker I ever fought, most diesel mechanics are strong, and he was the strongest one of ‘em. He ran straight at me and slammed my back against the bar and grabbed me with both hands around my neck. He tried to drag me down and I reckon he would have killed me if he had got me to the floor. I don’t know, but I don’t think no one would of stopped him. My buddy Ellis wasn’t there and everyone else wanted Doug to strangle the life out of me. Might be cause I whipped some of them too. Well, he never got me to the floor. I stuck my pointer finger in his eye all the way up to the second knuckle. He let out a groan, turned me loose, grabbed his leaking eye, and bent over at the waist and tried to cover up. I musta hit him thirty times before he went down and out, busted up my knuckles something awful. Hell, I even had to kick him in the jaw to keep him from getting back up. Like I said, it was one of my toughest fights.
+++++I’ve had so many that most of them kinda all run together. A couple do stand out. Me and Ellis was hanging out in New Orleans not long after we got discharged from the Army after the war. Ellis ran whores down in the Quarter and we’d walk the streets after dark looking for some fresh young tail to screw or sell. Anyway, we walked into an alley bar we hadn’t noticed before. We musta drank a gallon of suds before we realized that the whole place was filled with a bunch of gunsel queens.
+++++Ellis said, “let’s get the hell outta here.”
+++++I told him to wait a minute and just about that time one of them fruits swished by the bar and I drove my switch-blade all the way up to the hilt in the cheek of his ass. I figured he’d like something in his ass, but I was wrong. He let out a squeal and them fags jumped on us like hens on a june-bug. They hit us with everything in the place and they would have surely killed us both if Ellis hadn’t pulled out that Luger he’d took off one of them Nazi corpses and shot one of them choir boys right in the knee. The place cleared out pretty damn quick. I heard later the cops found out about that fruit bar and beat most of them swishy-sweet boys about half to death with their nightsticks and closed the place down.
+++++That was a bad one, but I reckon the worst one was that skinny-ass copperhead boy in Galveston. His girl had red hair too and a big old red bush down there too. She liked to show that thing to all the fellas up and down the docks. I was just ONE of them fellas, so I don’t know why that ole boy got so mad at me, maybe cause she kept on coming back to my room about midnight for two weeks or so. I guess maybe he had a limit about how often you could poke her. She didn’t have no limit. Mosta them freckled-ass broads don’t. It was good stuff. She didn’t have no whole lotta rules about where you could put things neither, and when I got to goin’ at her pretty hard, my whole room smelled like someone was simmerin’ collard greens. Anyway, I came out one morning to head for work, and left her in the bed, and I’ll be damned if that old boy was waiting for me outside. And lo-and-be-goddam-hold, he had a big old German police-dog on a length of logging chain, and just as soon as he saw me he said, “sic em boy.”
+++++That mutt jumped straight at my face. I threw up my arm to stop him and he grabbed that arm and began to shake his head back and forth. Bout that time, that old boy jumped in and started punching me in the back of my head and neck. One of them blows busted something down inside my ear and I still can’t hear too good out of it. I went down on my knees and I thought I was done-for till I remembered that knife that I stuck in the fairy’s ass. I pulled that thing outta my boot with my left hand and stuck that German police-dog four or five times in his side. He turned me loose and started trying to bite at his side where I had stuck him. He made a couple of circles like as he was chasing his tail, then coughed up a glob of blood and fell over, dead as hell. That carrot-top boy just stood there looking stupid and so I kicked him right in his nutsack. He fell down right next to his cut-up mutt and began crying. I was bout to cut his goddam throat when that collard-smellin’ gal came out screamin’ and wailin’. She called me every motherfucker in the motherfucker dictionary and sat down there next to her regular beau in that rain water and dog blood and cried with him. Last I looked, as I walked away, she was rubbing on his busted-up sack.
+++++I heard later that they worked things out, moved up to Houston and had a red-headded baby boy. I hope they’re happy. She wasn’t too bad of an old gal, but I damn sure wouldn’t kiss her if I was him.
+++++Anyway, I know I went around the barn with that story, but like I said, I already whipped Doug’s ass once, about a year and half ago. That’s why I was surprised when I seen him walk in the bar last night. He didn’t even hesitate. He walked straight for me. When he got close I seent that he had brass knucks on his right hand. I could also see that his eye was still milky and scrambled where I had poked it. Maybe that’s why he missed when he swung at me. Havin’ one eye will fuck up your aim. I cracked him across the noggin with a heavy beer mug and he went down like a sack of taters. I then stomped his hand with my heavy work boots. His fingers cracked like thin stove wood slivers. I took his knucks off his crushed hand, walked outside and threw ‘em in the saw-briars next to the parking lot.
+++++When I came back inside, his friends had him sittin’ up in a chair. I told him there was no hard feelings. He agreed. I bought him a drink of I.W. Harper. He held it with his good hand. He then told me he got canned after our first fight cause he couldn’t see the tiny washers no more and left something out and some rich man’s bulldozer threw a rod. He said he’d spent his last three dollars on them knucks he had bought to beat my ass with. I told him if we found them he might get his money back since they really weren’t used much. We spent most of the rest of last night crawlin’ round in them goddam briars looking for them blessed things.
+++++We never found them though, so I gave him his three dollars back. It was the least I could do.

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Alan Caldwell

Alan Caldwell has been teaching in Georgia since 1994 but only began submitting writing in May 2022. He has since been published in over two dozen journals and magazines, including Southern Gothic Creations, The Backwoodsman, You Might Need To Hear This, The Chamber, Heartwood Literary Journal, Rural Fiction Magazine, Deep Wild Journal and many others.

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