“Prudell, aren’t we a little too old for this?”

“Shut up and fight,” he said. He swung at me with everything he had. The man didn’t know how to fight, but he could still hurt me if I wasn’t careful. And unfortunately, he probably wasn’t quite as drunk as I hoped he was.

“Prudell, you aren’t even coming close,” I said. “Maybe you should stick to throwing your keys.” Get him mad, I thought. Don’t let him settle down and start finding his range.

“I’ve got a wife and two kids, you know.” He kept throwing big roundhouse punches with his right hand. “My wife isn’t going to get her new car now. And my kids won’t be going to Disney World like I promised them.”

I ducked a right, then another right, then another. Let’s see a left, I thought. I want a nice lazy drunken left hand, Prudell.

“I had a guy working for me, helping me out when I was on a job,” he said. “I swear to God, McKnight, that was the only thing keeping him together. If something happens to him now, it’s all on your head.”

He tried a couple more right-hand haymakers before the idea of a left-hand jab bubbled up through all the rage and whiskey in his brain. When it came, it was as long and slow as a mudslide. I stepped into him and threw a right hook to the point of his chin, turning the punch slightly downward at the end, just like my old third base coach had taught me. Prudell went down hard and stayed down.

I stood there watching him while I rubbed my right shoulder. “Get up, Prudell,” I said. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

I was just about to get worried when he finally pulled himself up from the gravel. “McKnight, I will get you,” he said. “I promise you that right now.”

“I’m here most Saturday nights,” I said. “Hell, most nights period. You know where to find me.”

“Count on it,” he said. He stumbled around the parking lot for a full minute until he remembered what his car looked like. In the distance I could hear the waves dying on the rocks.