"Good," I said, turning to move on when I heard the big one suck in a quick snort of air.
Even professional fighters give away their intentions with breathing patterns. It is a natural instinct to draw in a snatch of air before expending the tight energy used to deliver a blow or make a hard move. Everyone does it. Amateurs are just louder and sloppier.
When I heard the whistle of air I turned and spun inside his first roundhouse punch, aimed at the back of my head, and caught the blow instead on my left forearm. I had blocked a lot of punches in my hours at O'Hara's Gym and this one was no light shot. His second swing I caught on my right elbow and it felt like a baseball bat. The guy knew leverage and was throwing his weight behind his swings. But he was easy to read and I knew what was coming and covered up, my fists high next to my temples and elbows in to my ribs. Protect your head and heart, Frankie's dad had always coached, even to the pro boxers he trained.
With his friends rooting him on, the big boy kept throwing and I kept stepping inside, taking his best on my shoulders and arms. He was already breathing hard. I knew he'd burn himself out. Only once did he try to come in low and even though I blocked the shot with my elbow the force crunched into the ribs I'd bruised in the plane crash and the pain set a new fire in my chest.
Then one of the others decided to get in on it and came at me from the side and fired a skinny punch that caught me on the cheek and I knew this had to end before it turned into a stomping.
I circled the big one, moving away from his right hand and timed my own punch as perfectly as Frankie's dad had ever hoped to teach a rangy, whitebread football player from the neighborhood. Stepping inside just as he was drawing a deep breath, I planted my right foot and using the power of a thousand hours of river paddling and beach running I drove a short right fist into his chest. The blow caught him just below the sternum, right in the notch where the ribs meet, and the air came out of his throat like a bubble bursting on the surface of a lake.
He went down hard on the seat of his pants and sat there, arms flopped to his side, eyes open but sightless, looking like an old stuffed bear left useless in the corner of the room.
His friends were stunned and stood frozen, looking down at him while I turned and stepped up on the porch and without a word walked through the front door of the Loop Road Frontier.
Inside I stood in what passed for a lobby, leaned against a wall and shook. My knees were quivering, my hands trembled and I knew that if I could see them, the pupils of my eyes would be huge. Adrenaline. You couldn't avoid it. It's a biological reaction in every animal that ever hunted or was hunted. It surges through the blood to help you flee or fight. And it pumps regardless of the choice.
I paced a bit, flexing my hands open and closed and letting the feeling leech away. The entryway I was standing in was small and paneled in Dade County Pine similar to my river shack. But this was polished and gave off a dark glow in the light of a small chandelier hanging from the eight-foot ceiling. At an empty counter a placard with a ridge of dust along its top edge was propped up and read: No Rooms.
A hotel with no rooms. I didn't wonder. But I could hear the distinctive sound of clinking glassware around the corner and followed it to the expected barroom.
The room was dusky with heavy wood and dull sidelights on the walls sheathed in smoked yellow glass. A mahogany bar ran the length of one wall. It was backed by an impressive ten- foot-long mirror set in a scrolled wood frame that matched the hue of the mahogany. Two men sat at the bar. A broad circular table held four more and I could not see around into the darkest end of the room where booths and at least one other table sat. There were no windows to the outside.
I sat down on a stool and the bartender ignored me for a full five minutes. She was a thin woman with bleached blond hair pulled back in a tufted ponytail held by a red rubber band. She wore belted jeans with a cowboy buckle and the kind of white insulated shirt with three-quarter sleeves that up north we called long underwear. Finally she moved down the bar to me, a damp rag of a woman.
"Can I get ya?"
I had already checked the bar preference.
"Bud," I said.
"Three fifty."
Her face was white and stern. Her only makeup was a smear of lipstick and she kept her dull brown eyes turned away. She didn't move until I put a ten-dollar bill on the bar top and only then went to get me a cold bottle and a wet glass. She didn't even grunt when she made change. The other patrons two seats away never looked up from their cribbage game.
I propped my elbows on the bar. My arms and shoulders ached from the big boy's hammering. When I looked in the mirror across from me I could see swelling already lumping up the side of my face from the other one's cheap shot and I could feel where my teeth had gouged the inside of my mouth. I took a mouthful of beer, swished it around and swallowed the mixture of cold alcohol and blood. A sweating, shaking stranger with a fresh knot on his face didn't seem to draw even a second look from the regulars.
I swiveled around on the stool. An alligator skin that had to be eleven or twelve feet long was tacked on a side wall above a row of booths. A stuffed, mangy-looking bobcat was snarling from his perch above the coat rack. I drained the beer and figured that when the bartender got around to granting me another overpriced drink I'd take a chance and ask for Nate Brown.
My back was to the entrance when the boys from the parking lot came in. They'd apparently gulped a few more shots of courage from a bottle in their rusty truck. They shuffled up and took up positions around me. No one else bothered to look up.
"You're fuckin' meat," the skinny cheapshot announced. The big one stood back out of range, his face still a shade pale, his breathing still raggedy.
The men at the bar turned and rag woman crossed her arms and watched like they were viewing a half interesting rerun of an old TV episode.
"Get up, meat," the big boy rasped.
I tightened my grip on the beer bottle in my hand and felt suddenly tired, the adrenaline glands confused.
"Don't you boys go breakin' stuff in here again, Cory Brooker," the bartender offered, but made no move to come closer.
The circle tightened. Cheapshot sucked in his breath and his right arm started to come up. I was a split second from bringing my foot up into his crotch when a brown wizened hand reached in and clamped the boy's forearm. He tried to fight it but when he turned to see who had hold of him, he blanched and stepped back.
The owner of the hand stepped into the circle and all eyes fell on him. His close-cropped steel-gray hair bristled up from a deeply tanned scalp and his eyes were so pale as to be nearly colorless. He still had a grip on the skinny one and I could see the ridged muscle, taut as wound cable, running up his forearm.
"Cain't have it," he said, and the tone of authority caused all four of us to flinch.
"B-But, Mr. Brown, this…," the big boy started to whine.
"Shut up," the old man explained.
All three of them exchanged glances and backed away, their necks in hangdog position. The old man watched the group move out of the entrance before turning to me.
"Nate Brown," he said, extending what I now considered a magical hand. "You're the one pulled Fred Gunther out of the swamp?"
"Max Freeman," I answered, shaking the hand, which felt for all the world like a bunch of rolled pennies wrapped in old leather.
"Walk with me, Max."
I followed him to the far corner of the room while those at the bar turned back to their card game. Back in the recesses of the room, at a round wooden table, Brown introduced me to three middle-aged men who rose to their feet in a polite fashion and shook my hand.
Rory Sims, Mitch Blackman, Dave Ashley.