“Handcuffs! Handcuffs! I’ll kick your dick over the fence, cocksucker.”
“Calm down, Ella May,” he said.
“Calm down, my ass. Motherfucker run over me… You’re hurtin’ my arm, goddamn it. I’ll remember your ugly face.”
The headlights from my truck, the lights in the lot, the darkness between and around them swirled together and I remembered feeling hot, trying to bend over to breathe better, trying not to faint, but when I bent forward I just kept going.
3
“Ouch,” I said. “Take it easy.”
Leonard was poking at the deep cut over my eye with the tip of his finger, examining the stitches.
“One of ’em looks to be sewed too loose,” he said.
“It’ll do,” I said.
I was sitting on a gurney in a little room just off of the emergency room hall. An intern had just sewn me up and left. Now there was just me, Leonard, and John.
A cop, a friend of mine, Charlie Blank, had been in earlier to take my side of the story. He left shortly after Leonard’s and John’s arrival.
The young woman who had been beaten was in intensive care, and word was she wasn’t doing too well. One thing was certain, she had lost some teeth and an eye.
“Well,” Leonard said, “you did say you saw a wood rat out by the trees.”
“I just didn’t know he was so mean.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t as afraid of you as you thought.”
“I don’t think this sonofabitch was afraid of anything. I tell you, Leonard, he was the toughest dude I’ve ever fought. I’d rather fight three guys than fight him again, and me with a pipe wrench. I think Ella May wants a piece of him, though.”
“Ella May,” John said, “hasn’t got the sense of two nickels rubbed together. I’ve known her all my life. Before she was cutting chicken throats, she worked at the aluminum chair plant with me. She put the damn riveter through her fingers two or three times. I’m surprised she hasn’t cut her own throat at the chicken plant.”