I’m going to knock the shit out of you, Hoyt Raines said. Let go of me.
They commenced to fight. Hoyt slapped at the old man’s white head and they whirled around and suddenly from behind them the blonde barmaid reached in and grabbed a fistful of Hoyt’s hair. Hoyt’s head jerked backward and his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he swung about with the old man still hanging on to him and grabbed the woman by the throat and hurled her against the bar. Her blouse tore open, uncovering her breasts in the skimpy pink brassiere, and she let go and clutched at her blouse. Then the boy grabbed a bottle from the bar and smashed Hoyt Raines across the face with it. The bottle broke on his temple and tore his ear and he fell sideways, his knees buckling, and he righted himself and bent forward, bleeding from the side of the face onto the barroom floor. The boy waited to see what else he would do. He held the jagged bottle as if he’d stab him with it if he tried anything.
But the bartender had rushed out from behind the bar, and now he and two other men dragged Hoyt by the arms out the front door onto the sidewalk. When he turned and tried to push past them to come back inside, they shoved him violently away and he fell across the hood of one of the parked cars at the curb and lay sprawled. His face was cut and he was bleeding from the ear, the blood streamed down his neck. He rose gasping, weaving. He began to curse them.
Get the hell out of here, the bartender said. You’re not coming back in here. Go on. He shoved Hoyt.
Fuck you, Hoyt said. He stood glaring at them, wobbly on his feet. Fuck every last one of you.
The bartender shoved him again and he stumbled backward off the sidewalk and sat down in the gutter. He looked all around, then rose and staggered southward down the middle of Main Street in the midst of Saturday night traffic. The cars veered around him, honking and blaring, the people inside the cars, high-school kids, shouting at him, whistling, jeering, and he cursed them too, cursed them all, gesturing at each car obscenely as it went by. He staggered on. Then he turned off into a side street and stumbled into the back alley. Halfway into the alley he stopped and leaned against the brick wall at the rear of one of the stores. A patrol car drove by out in the street. He squatted down behind a trash barrel. Blood was dripping from his ear, and the side of his face felt raw and numb. He waited, panting, squatted in the dark. He managed to light a cigarette and he cupped it in his hand. Then he stood and pissed against the brick wall of the store and stepped away in the shadows, headed out toward the street. When he saw no patrol car he turned toward Detroit.
INSIDE THE TAVERN THE BARMAID HAD HURRIED BACK TO the rest room holding her blouse together, and the men were tending to the old man, who’d bumped his head on one of the tables and was sitting awkwardly on the floor. There was a knot above his ear and he kept mumbling something. They lifted him to his feet and one of the men patted the boy on the back, congratulating him for what he’d done, but the boy ducked away from under the man’s hand.
Leave us alone! he cried. All of you, leave us alone! He stood facing the ring of men. He was almost in tears. Leave us alone, goddamn you!
Why, what the hell? one of the men said. You little son of a bitch, we were trying to help you.
We don’t want your help. Leave us alone.
He took his grandfather by the arm and led him back to their table. We got to go home, he said. He helped the old man into his coat and put on his own coat and gathered up his homework papers, and they went outside.
They walked down the sidewalk past the darkened storefronts. Cars drove past in the street. Across the tracks they turned in at their quiet neighborhood, and went on toward the little dark house. He put his grandfather to bed in the back room, helping him remove his overalls and workshirt and covering him with blankets. The old man lay back in his long underwear and shut his eyes.