"And I'm keeping your stick, too."
1985. My sister and I were hanging out with friends on their front steps, when some guy who was fairly new to the neighborhood came running up to the cast iron fence. We had been watching the lesbians enter and exit the Kit Kat Club. Yes, another bar. We had three in a two block radius. I don't remember this guy's name, but I'll never forget his face. He was skinny, with thinning hair, and wire rimmed glasses. He didn't look like he could harm a flea. Skinny guy grabbed the front gate and shouted, "You've got to help me! He's trying to kill me!" I remember this part so clearly. His pupils were dilated and he had blood on the knuckles of his right hand. He was wearing tight blue jeans and a white striped button down shirt.
The eldest in our group ran for the phone to call 911. The rest of us saw T, a good friend and really upstanding guy, come running around the corner. He was in a rage, and he was moving fast. We could feel the anger radiating off of him like a fire. T ran up and popped Skinny upside the head with a broken baseball bat. The force of the blow spun him halfway around, spraying little droplets of blood across the sidewalk and out into the street. My eyes tracked his glasses as they flew off his face, tumbled twice, then skittered across the pavement. I remember thinking, "God, I hope a car doesn't come by and drive over those."
T kicked skinny guy into the street and started thrashing him with the bat, his fists, whatever was closest to the guy's skin. Even with drunken bar fights, I had never seen violence like this. There came a point where T paused for breath; the skinny guy crawling around at his feet, crying and pleading, "Please don't kill me, man. Please God, don't kill me." We thought T probably would. He pulled himself up on the bumper of a car and had almost made it to his feet, when T ran over and cracked that half a bat across the guy's back, knocking him to the ground again. He twitched, trying to get up, and vomited down the front of his shirt. T stood over him, chest heaving and covered in sweat. He hit Skinny guy in the head a few more times and then said, "There!...and I'm keeping your stick, too!" Then he walked away, leaving a mess of a human being lying unconscious in the steet. We thought he was dead, and didn't know what to do... but then he moved. We all crowded up to the gate and someone called out, "Hey, man! Are you o.k?"
None of us had the guts to cross the barrier of the 3 ft high cast iron fence. We were safe on this side. Crossing the barrier would make us participants. None of us wanted to get any closer to the brutality we had just witnessed. He staggered around for a while, then said, "Hey man, you seen my glasses?" I quietly pointed them out to him. One of the lenses was cracked. He put the glasses back on his face and started feeling around in his mouth. I guess he was counting his teeth. He sat down in the street and began sobbing softly. We knew that grown men don't cry, yet there he was; sobbing and feeling his teeth. We didn't know what to do. It was uncomfortable watching him sway back and forth, unable to get up - refusing to lay down.
The eldest called the cops again, and not too long after that an ambulance showed up and took the guy away. we discussed what had happened for a long time, trying to bring some measure of security back to our world. We were pretty shaken. Once we had talked ourselves out, my sister and I headed for home. We almost jumped out of our shoes when we heard "Psst!" from a shadow-filled gangway. T was hiding there, terrified. He asked, "Are the cops gone?" We assured him they were. He came out of the shadows and asked if we knew what had happened. When we told him we had been sitting right there, he looked like he was going to throw up. He said, "Geez, guys, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean for you to see that. You're just kids!"
I asked if he still had the stick. He said, "What?" I said, "The stick...'And I'm keeping your stick too'???" And he said, "Oh. You know my sister's pregnant, right? Well he was her boyfriend, and tonight I came home and saw him beating her with this baseball bat."
He had taken it away from skinny guy, and paid him back in spades. It completely changed how we felt about the situation. 5 minutes before, we were ready to hear him out and then tell the cops where he was hiding. Now we were willing to take it to our graves. He had come to the rescue of his sister. He had (violently) righted a wrong. We were safe again and everything was right with the world.