I’m always vague when describing my writing, but this time I’m also lying.  I am writing.  I’m writing about that night fourteen years ago when Hollis gave Dane his beating.  I’m writing about the months that led up to it, months in which Dane lived with Hollis rent free after being thrown out by his baby’s mother.  I’m writing about the day that led to the night of the beating, a day that began with keg beer and the ongoing X-Men cartoon series we loved and included a narrowly averted car accident in front of the police station and an incident of public urination that the neighbors all ignored.

           In the kind of non-sequitur we’ve always employed in our conversations, Hollis says without setup “You talk to Paul lately?”  I confess that I haven’t, and suddenly a piece of memory lashes out and hits me like a broken rubber band.  Hollis’s talking about Paul’s new girlfriend, an English teacher at a school where he once served as vice-principal.  I interrupt him. 

           “Paul was there, wasn’t he?  He’s the one who hit Dane first.”  Hollis confirms that Paul was both present for and an active part of Dane’s beating fourteen years ago.

           The holes in my memory, holes I hadn’t even seen, fill so suddenly that I blink.  My hand shakes, and I drop the tiny screw I’m holding.  It rolls across the surface of my workbench, scarred from past projects and marred by paint and stain, and drops to the cement floor.

           It wasn’t just Hollis and Dane in the kitchen drinking whiskey.  Paul was there.  I listen to Hollis with half an ear, not really following the conversation any more.  Something about drinking fifteen beers each one night at The Office Tavern in Spokane, Washington.

           It wasn’t just Hollis fighting with Dane.  Paul was there.  “The Office is gone,” I tell Hollis as I bend down to search for the fallen screw.  I don’t want it to end up in my wife’s tire.  Or my children’s mouths.  “They knocked it down years ago and built a muffler place and a burger joint.”

           After Dane stumbled, bleeding and broken and screaming, into the dark, it was the three of us on the porch, not just me and Hollis.  I pinch the screw between my thumb and middle finger and flick it into the proper pile.

           Paul was there.

***

            I’m watching Reservoir Dogs and sitting on the couch.  I hear Hollis and Paul suddenly yelling at Dane, Dane responding with drunken fury—incoherent yelling that makes me grimace and causes goose bumps to sprint down my arms.  I rush to the kitchen when the bar tips over with a crash—heavy wooden furniture hitting old linoleum, the sound of breaking glass. 

            
           I never hear why he tipped the bar over, never bother to ask, but I see everything that happens afterwards.

            
           Dane’s swaying and panting, surveying the ruin of the bar that’s strewn across the kitchen.  Hollis’s moving out from what used to be “behind the bar” but is now simply “the kitchen corner.”

            
           “Grab the whiskey,” he tells Paul, who’s just standing and looking from Dane to the bar’s remains.  One side’s broken, and the entire top has torn off the frame.  Paul’s still dressed in his stereo salesman clothes, although he’s loosened his tie.  When he picks up the half-gallon bottle, the entire bottom falls off.  Jim Beam goes everywhere, flooding the floor and sending a blast of pungent whiskey scent through the room.

            
           Hollis hits Dane without a word, so fast I barely see it—and Dane doesn’t see it at all.  He reels across the kitchen, grabbing at a rack of clean dishes and pots and spilling it to the floor as his legs fail him.

            
           He slams his head against the refrigerator, leaving a dent.  In a few months Hollis and Paul will both simply shrug when the landlord asks about this damage to his wheezing icebox.

            
           Almost before he comes to rest—and while a pot lid is still loudly spinning on the floor—Dane’s trying to get back up.  Paul stands over him, still holding the broken bottle in one hand.  “Stay down,” he tells Dane quietly, slowly rolling his right hand into a fist.  Paul’s a big guy, as big as Hollis, and doesn’t need to raise his voice.

            
           Dane moves to get up.  Paul hits him, slamming Dane back onto the floor.  I see whiskey actually shoot out from under him, splashing the cupboard doors.  I pull Paul away, and this is a mistake.  Once he’s back up on his feet, Dane charges Hollis.  The two slam together, Hollis nearly a foot taller and much heavier, Dane wild and drunk and strong enough to be very dangerous.

            
           They struggle across the kitchen, grappling and shoving and stomping bowls and plates into oblivion—slipping in spilled whiskey the entire time.  Paul and I watch, knowing better than to get between them.  Paul’s hand is already swelling at the knuckles, and he’s still holding the broken-off top of the bottle.

            
           They fight through the living room and onto the porch, where Hollis finally lands the punch he’s been building to.  Dane staggers back, falls off the porch, reels backwards across the lawn and sidewalk, and lands with a deadweight thump in the street.  Hollis strides after him all the way, intent on finishing what he’s started.

            
           I see porch lights coming on in all directions.  There’s no traffic.  I’m alone on the porch, and it doesn’t occur to me to wonder where Paul is.

            
           Before Dane can stand—he’s barely trying to stand—Hollis’s on him, stomping and kicking.  Neither of them is talking or yelling any more; there are only the sound effects of a fight that’s gotten wildly out of control.

            
           I run into the street and give Hollis a shove.  I’m even smaller than Dane and not nearly as strong, but Hollis rocks back and stops stomping.  I scream into his face:  “Stop kicking him for Christ’s sake!  The neighbors are calling the cops!”  We leave Dane in the street, don’t see him get up and stagger off, bleeding and drunk, clothing torn.  Even from inside the house, though, we can hear him screaming.

***

Our conversation ends with talk of The Office Tavern and fond rehashing of its jukebox play list, nicely skewed to Metallica and Elvis; I stop sorting screws.  It kept my hands busy while Hollis and I talked—kept them from reaching for a bottle or a cigarette—but wasn’t a job that needed doing, otherwise.  It’s always easier to talk to Hollis if I keep my hands busy.

           Quietly, not waking my children, I walk down the hallway past their room, lightly dragging my left hand along the wall to keep my bearings in the dark.  We’ve only lived in this house in Nevada for a few months, and I still don’t know it well enough to navigate by dead reckoning.

           Even dragging my hand on the wall, I lose myself and walk into the closed office door, invisible in the dark.  The carpet keeps even the light from the computer screen from shining under the door.  The knob clicks loudly when I turn it, a grinding sort of noise that suggests an inner part of the lock is about to go.  Thanks to a liberal application of spray lubricant, the hinges no longer squeak as the door opens then closes.  I dismiss my screensaver by tapping the mouse.  I’ve been writing about Hollis and Dane and their fight recently, so the Word file is waiting on my desktop. 

           “My past isn’t going anywhere,” I told Hollis while my hands sorted screws, and this is so wildly inaccurate that it borders on being a lie. 

            
           Nothing in my life is more in motion than my past.

            
           I scan my latest introductory paragraph:  Hollis takes a long last drag on his cigarette, the tip glowing so bright in the dark that it casts red highlights onto his cheeks.  He flicks the butt with his middle finger, arcing it over the lawn and into the street.  It explodes in a shower of sparks, a tiny carcinogenic artillery shell.  We’re sitting side-by-side on the porch, feet buried in the weeds that used to be a flowerbed.  So drunk he can barely stand, Hollis still managed to flick his smoke more than thirty feet.  I can’t help but be impressed.  I remember the mug shot and Paul and the taste of spiced rum in the dark, flavored with anxiety and cigarette smoke. 

            
           My wife sleeping in the next room, my children sleeping down the hall, I cut, revise, and re-member.

***

            Hollis takes a pull off the bottle and hands it back to me.  The tip of his cigarette glows in the dark.  I drink and give the bottle to Paul.  We’re sitting side-by-side on the porch, feet buried in the weeds that used to be a flowerbed and waiting for the police.

           Hollis’s sitting on my left, Paul on my right.  They’re just shadows in the dark.  Big shadows, both over six feet.  I look like their little shadow brother.  It’s my rum that we’re passing.  Normally, neither of them would drink rum, but all the whiskey was spilled in the fight.

           The police car appears down at the corner, spotlighted by the street lamp.  We’re still in the shadows, but we immediately shift into cover mode.  Hollis and I stand, moving a step or two ahead to block the cop’s view of Paul.  It’s like we’ve choreographed and practiced the move.  It makes us look guilty.

            
           Paul finishes the rum, leans over, and pitches the empty bottle under the porch.  It’ll still be there six months later when they move out.  It’s probably still there.

            
           The cop pulls into the driveway, which curves in an odd slope upwards to the left and then straightens out as it runs beside the house—with a pretty good drop-off, maybe ten feet of steeply angled weed bed, to the right.  The cop pulls all the way in, swinging around the uphill curve and nosing in behind Hollis’s Thunderbird.

            
            

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