Day Twenty-One (Sautrday, July 17, 1971)

Betty and Ralph hosted for a day at Yosemite National Park.

The four of us drove up. Ralph pointed out the giant 250-foot sequoias of Mariposa Grove, where the evergreen trunks were so thick that you could drive your car through. Ralph had a strange way of expressing his love for trees.

“Don’t you just want to go up and hug the bark?” he urged. “Go on up and embrace a trunk, Roger. Don’t be shy. That’s it, hold it tight. That’s five hundred years of history you’re holding on to.”

“I feel like Jack with no beanstalk.” I gripped the ridges.

We stopped at Yosemite Falls to “study” them; then considered, in succession, Bridalveil Falls, Ribbon Falls, and Horsetail Falls. “Each waterfall has its own character.” Ralph stood in the spray, with me next to him. My clothes stuck to my skin and my shoes were slippery against the rocks. “It’s great to get up close to the action, isn’t it? You feel part of nature that way.”

He snapped pictures throughout Yosemite Valley, mostly of Otto and me with awesome mountain peaks in the background. At El Capitan, the most renowned peak, he located with binoculars two climbers who had gained notoriety for scaling its bare, freestanding precipice. Later in the woods, I saw my first bear.

“He’s a black bear, Ursus Americanus.” Ralph smiled with glee. “They’re usually gentle and docile, but don’t provoke them, boy. They’ll eat you if they feel threatened.”

Glacier Point was our final attraction. “I’m saving this spot for last because of its spectacular view of Yosemite Valley,” Ralph explained. “A very inspirational lookout.”

Unfortunately, it was raining by the time we got there. It came from out of nowhere. Ralph groaned, “Our view might be hindered, but just you wait. You’re about to be part of something spectacular. It’ll be an event you’ll never forget, I promise you.”

We drove to an overhanging ledge 3,200 feet above Yosemite Valley. There wasn’t any more land, just air. Brackish clouds hung ominously low, spritzing water. A flash of lightning streaked beyond the closest mountain range, then a boom of thunder. Most cars’ occupants were either waiting out the storm or left.

“See the top of Half Dome over there?” Ralph pointed through the window. “We’ll be able to see that real well. Eagle Peak ought to look great, too. It looks like visibility isn’t cut too much. This is your day, Roger.”

Rain pelted my face as I stepped onto the slippery parking lot. Ralph gave us a garbage bag each from the trunk. He punched a hole through their bottoms, and worked them over our bodies. He furnished everyone with a hat. Another jag of lightning ripped above us. Thunder boomed.

“The rain’s trying to discourage us, but I tell you, the view is a doozy. You don’t want to miss it. You only need a minute out there to get the full effect. Come on, last one there is a rotten egg.”

“You won’t get me out in this rain,” Betty asserted from inside the car, entertaining herself with a Parliament. “You fellas go. I’ll skip it. I’ve had enough for one day. I’m ready for my cocktail.”

It was tremendous to be walking around in the rain in a garbage bag. Ralph was not only a good uncle but an inventor. I took leaps toward the stairway, leaving the other two behind. Water droplets ran down the side of my plastic bag. I strut across the summit, feeling like I was in Tibet about to meet the Dalai Lama for an ecumenical conference.

A great view came into sight as I neared the observation area. The towering mountain ranges were a string of blunted peaks, shaded in gray. I peeked over the side of the railing to locate Yosemite Village. The dark lavender clouds pushed against a sinister wind.

“Dzzzt!”

A juicy-hot spear peppered my forehead. It was a buzzing bullet, sizzling with amperage. I raised my eyes to the source of the sensation.

My Lord and my God, a bolt of lightning was attached to my head!

It was a close-up of something I didn’t need to see. Long, white, and jagged. A rope of circular molecules, fuming hot, dangling endlessly upward. A high-intensity umbilical cord.

It ripped through my head and zigzagged through my body. The surge passed so quickly I didn’t have time to wonder if I was deceased. I short-circuited for a moment and blacked out. The tips of my fingers tingled. Then nothing.

I felt myself standing there, still alive, flinching in the garbage bag, my feathered beret lying at my feet.

Ralph shook me hard through the bag. “Roger, you all right? Was that lightning? Where did it hit? Roger! Speak to me!” Otto knelt at my feet.

I was hypnotized by the image of that white, jagged bolt extended upward from my forehead. My eyes felt blown out of their sockets. My hair felt frizzled, like it had had a quick session with a hot air blower. My fingers and toes felt hyper-extended and warm.

“Don’t tell me that struck you!” Ralph forced me to look him in the face. “What happened? Have it out, son!”

“It did. I swear to God. It got me right on the forehead.”

“Are you hurt? Do you need to sit down? Where on the forehead? How do you feel? Tell me!”

“I’m all right, I guess.” I was more shocked I was able to function, I think, instead of writhing on the ground in pain. My body burst into perspiration; rain teemed down like a tropical storm in a jungle. Thunder roared like an angry tiger.

“I backed off when I saw this white streak come down in front of us. Then I realized it was on you.”

Otto’s hands were clasped in prayer. “I thought it was curtains, Roger.”

Ralph pushed my beret back onto my head while looking skyward. He was quick to smile, though shaking his head. “It knocked the hat right off your head, huh? That’s what I thought happened and was too afraid to believe it. Your knees buckled and I thought you were going to collapse. I was scared to death. You sure you’re all right? Don’t fool with this.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “I’m fine.” Actually, now that I could feel my own breathing, I felt great. I didn’t collapse and what’s more, I was struck by lightning and lived to tell about it.

I tried to get Otto to laugh during the ride back home. “Anytime you need your batteries recharged, a little zap of lightning works wonders.”

“We’ll add this to the list.” He sounded sarcastic.

“What list?”

“The list I’m gonna submit to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Right after where it says ‘delivered a baby without medical knowledge.’”

Ralph whistled from behind the wheel. “It wasn’t your day to die, I guess. It’s as simple as that.”

“You’re amazing, Roger.” Otto still wasn’t smiling. “A little too amazing.”

He pointed out a curious fact about my run-in with nature. The numerology lined up. I was 17 years old when I got struck. The date was 7/17/71. If you converted the occurrence to military time, I got struck at exactly 1700 hours. He also counted the number of concrete steps while running up to the viewing platform. There were seventeen.

I was afraid Betty might go into hysterics or something over the news, but she said little. She listened to what happened over a few cigarettes and drinks, and that was about it. “Your huge appetite at dinnertime surely ends any chance of side effects.”

Ralph shook his head again and again in wonderment, making jokes now that it could be laughed about.

“The spirit world was telling you to stay ready, I guess.”

“You came up with a new meaning to the term ‘dead on your feet.’”

“That would have gotten your dad talking—putting you under my care and then sending you home in a casket. Boy oh boy.”

“You’re a freak of nature.” Otto said. “Emphasis on freak.”

“I’m fine,” I assured everyone. “I have a small headache. That’s all. It feels like I ate too much ice cream.”

“That’s where your brain melted,” Otto said.

The Serridges were exhausted and planned a quiet evening watching a Bob Hope special on color TV.

Otto and I checked out a local rock concert advertised in the Hanford Sentinel. We paid $1.75 each to see “Invention” and “Six-Pack” at the civic auditorium downtown. It passed for an evening in a strange town. He and I withdrew at about midnight, with electric guitars and drums blaring in our ears behind the walls.

“Enough racket for one day,” Otto said. “From you and elsewhere.”

People were lingering in groups, trying to attach themselves to something in the night. Otto and I made a swing around the park, sat for awhile, and approached the civic building from the far side. The music stopped and diehard supporters were filtering out.

“Let’s walk up there and get into a good fight.” I indicated one group of rough-looking hoods standing near the auditorium steps who were scuffing their feet and smoking.

I smiled to myself at their dull, mean faces, their all-black attire, how they dominated the prime location, snickering, making furtive laughter, acting tough.

One of them called out as we walked past. “Hey pussies.”

I walked ahead, minding my own business. Otto had an uneasy smile for me when I glanced over.

“Hey, pussies!” The leader of the pack stepped in our direction. “What are you hippies doing in town?”

The goon was slightly shorter than his friends, but had the biggest chest measurements under his black teeshirt. He stood there baiting us, his greasy hair shining in the streetlamp. Five other hoods circled tightly around him in the night air.

I signaled Otto to carry on. The guy cut us off.

“Answer me, assholes! I said, what are you goddamn hippies doing in town?”

Otto looked limp and unstable. I felt sandwiched. The guy spit at my feet. “You pussies afraid to fight?” Veins stuck out from his neck. His skin was red and he clenched his fists. The other hoods closed in, forming a tight wall of muscles.

“Let’s beat it, Roger,” Otto said.

A clear voice of authority intervened. “Okay, Duffy! Enough! Knock it off! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

It was a cop. An older, special patrol guard, the kind of fuzz who doesn’t carry a gun. But he was official all right, with a badge and uniform and nightstick. He was cautious and watchful of Duffy’s movements. Duffy shifted his weight and attention.

“What’re you up to tonight, Duffy? Planning to go home?”

Duffy glance was loathsome. “Yeah, what about it?”

“How you plan on getting there?”

“I got a ride.”

“Well why don’t you and your friends sit yourselves down on that bench by the street and wait for your ride over there?”

“I ain’t been doing nothin’.”

“You were disturbing the peace and looking for attention. So go on. If you say you’re waiting for a ride, then go to that bench and prove it. All of you, move. I’ll wait with you to make sure someone is coming. Then do me a favor, will you, Duff? Go home and sleep it off.”

“I ain’t had nothin’ to drink!” Duffy snorted, but turned and marched through the line of his buddies toward the bench near the sidewalk. The hoods followed. The cop brought up the rear.

“That’s cuttin’ things too close, Roger.” Otto was peaked and irritated. “We wanna get back home ourselves. Now.”

Betty’s house was about a mile away. The only thing was, we had to walk past Duffy & company in order to get up Douty Street. But that was okay because the cop was keeping vigil. There he was, pacing back and forth in front of the group and waving his stick. Police headquarters were right in the basement of the civic auditorium.

“For once I’m pleased to have been rendered police services.”

“Just stay on the side of law and order for once, will you?” Otto was pissed. “You’re so damn reckless it’s ridiculous.”

Duffy growled as Otto and I walked past. He was seething to be bound to the bench while I walked off scot free. My mind slipped between the cool comfort of Betty’s guestsheets as I threw the group a little wave.

“So long, boys.”

The hoods glared. The furor in Duffy’s face boiled back. “My name isn’t boy!”

He burst up. He would’ve whupped me if the cop wasn’t there to step between us. The two crashed like linebacker and fullback at the line of scrimmage. The gang howled. The cop’s nightstick wiggled as Duffy struggled to free himself from the cop’s grasp. He shook his fist. “You bastard hippie. Lemme at him!”

“I told you, Duffy, enough!” Duffy allowed himself to be wrestled back down by the cop. “Now get on that bench and stay there!”

Duffy sat on the edge of the slats, wet hair disarrayed, fuming. He pointed at me. “I’m gonna get you, motherfucker.”

The cop snapped his fingers. “Pipe down!” He barked at me, “You get home, too! Why’d you come back here and make more trouble for?”

“You ain’t gonna get away with this.” Duffy was still pointing. “No one calls me boy and gets away with it. No one.”

I skipped down a block where Otto was standing. His frustration was palpable. “Why’d you get ’em riled up, Roger? What’re you tryin’ to do, prophesize us into the grave?”

“I wasn’t,” I insisted (though my earlier words about getting into a fight rang through my mind). “Didn’t anyone hear what I said? I said so long, boys. Plural. I was trying to be diplomatic about it. I didn’t mean it as a slur.”

“You love to throw fuel on the fire.”

“Let’s just get out of here, man.”

“I want to, before somethin’ else happens.”

Ten steps further, yet another voice—a girl’s—cut through the night.

The inflection was African-American. “Was those guys bothering you?”

A black girl, four black girls in fact, the first blacks I had noticed in central California, stood before us on the sidewalk. The girl who spoke was the oldest, a round, squirty face with small eyes. “You guys wouldn’t mind walkin’ us home, would you? It’s gettin’ late and I gotta watch over my little sisters.”

Three darling girls with pigtails stared at me with bright, curious eyes.

“I think that would be beneficial for everyone. Otto, what do you think?”

“Just keep walkin’.” Otto stepped backwards, looking in all directions. “I don’t like the elements around here.”

“You met Duffy tonight, I see.” The girl laughed and her sisters giggled. “We was watchin’ you from down the street. That Duffy is always givin’ people the treatment. I go to school with him.”

Otto kept pulling ahead from us, refusing to join in. He glared at me whenever he looked back.

“Hey Otto—be cool. Stay with your flock.”

“Every time I stay cool with you, I almost wind up dead.”

The girl had been to the concert with her sisters and related all about Duffy and his friends. “He got a gang. They act all tough and whatnot. They always talkin’ ’bout what they gonna do, who they gonna push around, and you know what? They never do nothing. I had to laugh when I saw him layin’ the business on you.”

Otto pulled far away, using long, exaggerated strides. I felt like grabbing his shoulder and yanking him.

Two sports coupes—jacked up with big wheels—rumbled to the curb facing the wrong direction. Duffy, white with rage, stuck his head out the window from the back seat of the front car. “I’m gonna beat your fucking asses!” The doors from both cars shot open. Duffy sprang out.

Several of the hoods took off after Otto, one waving a metal pipe. Otto fled across the lawn of a nearby house.

“Don’t run!” The black girl tugged at my shirtsleeve. “You don’t have to run. He knows he shouldn’t fight. He’s better than that.”

Duffy marched up to me, steaming and swearing, his shoulders laced with gnarls. “You goddamned, fuck-faced hippie . . .”

The girl stepped between us. “He won’t hurt you! Will you, Duffy? He don’t mean it. Do you, Duffy? Duffy? Duffy!”

Duffy hemmed her in, leaning left and right. He couldn’t swing his arms around her, so he swatted her to the ground. That left me square in his path.

Pang! My head jolted back. I tasted blood. Pang! Gray stars flashed about my right eye.

From her knees, the girl pulled Duffy’s shirttail, sobbing, pleading, “Duffy . . . stop . . . don’t hurt him . . . please . . . stop . . .”

He wasn’t going to stop. He was snorting like a bull, getting more charged up with every breath, cursing with venom. In a heartbeat of inactivity, I fled.

I fled as fast as my toes could carry me, back down the street, to the police station on the lower level of the civic auditorium. With blood streaming from my lips, my right eye swollen shut, and the dark, silent town quivering, I pumped my legs faster, harder . . .

Duffy’s pursuit faded after a couple of blocks, though I stayed in top gear before chancing back a look. He was bent over in exhaustion. I kept chugging to the police station, nonstop, stumbling down the concrete stairs.

I nearly fell into a brightly lit, pale green room. A middle-aged, tough-guy cop sat behind a desk with a microphone. He glanced up unemotionally. He did not come around to assist me. I felt ready to keel over. My body oozed with sweat and blood. My head was ringing. My eye was sealed off.

“What happened to you, son?”

“Help me.”

I groped for something stable, settling for an iron radiator. A giant clock read 1:40 a.m. This wasn’t the special cop in the park. This guy had oatmeal skin and a bulldog frame. His thinning hair was combed straight back.

“Were you fighting, son?”

I took a wobbly step toward the desk, but, sensing waves, stepped back. I swallowed, “I was beaten up.”

I think I was crying; at this point I’m not sure what was happening. My mouth barely opened. Blood trickled through the hairs of my beard. Spasms of pain pulsated out of my closed right eye. I rubbed my chin against my teeshirt to blot up excess blood.

A policewoman entered the room from a side door and approached me in shock. “My God, what happened?” I clutched the radiator. “Here, can you make it to the couch?”

“He was fighting,” the dispatcher behind the desk said flatly. I lifted my head and tried to stop the room from being so blurry.

“I think we need an ambulance, Rudy.” Her warm, spongy fingers guided me over.

“How bad is he hurt?”

“He has a cut on his mouth and his right eye is swollen closed.”

“Can you hear me, son?” the cop behind the desk asked. “Do you want us to call an ambulance?”

I was shattered. The whole trip was wrecked. I worried about everything—hospital stays, doctor bills, squandered time, wasted money and energy—basically, the trip’s abortion. Mixed in was Betty and Ralph’s reaction (their tolerance and goodwill turning to burden and disgust), and Otto’s inconvenience and increasing hostility. I also was mired in thinking how Duffy could be made to pay, somehow, for what he did. Then came my own disfigurement and disability, my shame. “N-no, I guess n-not.”

“Let me get something for you.” The policewoman dashed into another room.

“I wasn’t fighting. I was beaten up.” I had to talk through my teeth or else there was too much pain. I writhed in sweat. The policewoman came back with a wet towel and wiped my face.

“Who beat you up?”

“Duffy.”

Suddenly he was interested. “Duffy—–—–—?” (He said a last name which I didn’t catch.) “Duffy and yourself were in a fight? What started that? Were you in the park just now?”

A rookie, a guy in his twenties with wavy brown hair, strolled into the office. “Looks like you got socked,” he smiled. “Hope the other guy got it as bad as you.”

“It was Duffy.” The cop behind the desk sounded depressed. The policewoman hit a sensitive area and I twitched.

“Sorry. Maybe the best thing would be to get you over to the sink.”

She assisted me into a second room. The walls were painted the same sickening green. As she patted me down in front of a wash basin, I could hear several cops in the other room talking about the concert. The policewoman shut off the faucets just as the cop behind the desk whispered, “. . . I can’t understand how Duffy could do such a thing.”

The policewoman placed an ice pack to my face. “Who’s your doctor?” Afraid of alienating her, too, I finally answered, “I’m from the East. New Jersey.”

“Let’s get you into the other room, if you can. We need you to make out a report with my sergeant.”
Two cops stared at me as I entered the main room: the tough-guy sergeant, and the special patrolman who had confined Duffy to the park bench. The rookie took off.

“That’s the one,” the older cop said when he saw me. “What’d Duffy do? Hunt you down and knuckle you over?”

“We want to make out a report, all right?” the policewoman said.

The sergeant shuffled papers and began asking who? what? where? why? when? and how? questions. If he was surprised to learn where I was from, one thing I wasn’t telling the enemy was my mode of travel. That bastard wasn’t going to hear anymore than necessary. With his favoritism, it might cancel my complaint, or land me behind bars.

“When you waited at the bench to see them off, Charley, did this one say, ‘So long, boys?’ Or did he say something else?”

“I couldn’t tell with all the confusion. I heard something.” Charley looked at both of us anxiously. “I sat Duffy on that bench and thought the mess was over. Duffy said his ride would be there any minute. Then he jumped up and went after this fella, mad as the dickens.”

“And you were by yourself all evening?” The sergeant resumed writing.

“No, no, I was with my friend. He’s out here with me, with my aunt and uncle. Duffy called us hippies and threatened us.”

The sergeant turned to Charley. “Was he with someone else?”

“That’s right. A tall, herky-jerky fellow, with blond hair way down past his shoulders.”
“Where is he now?” “He ran off when Duffy pulled up. I don’t know where he went to.” Charley chuckled. “I would’ve run, too, if I saw those fellers coming after me.”

“Well, we’ve had trouble with Duffy before, but not for physical contact,” the sergeant said. “He’s gotten a string of traffic violations and just had his license revoked for ninety days. Tell me something, son. Have you been drinking?”

“No!” Saliva squirted through my teeth. I punched the cushions at the expense of searing my body. “I don’t drink! Duffy was the one doing the drinking!”

“You account for your own behavior and let us determine the rest.” The sergeant grinded his feet into the linoleum. “Now. You said you had nothing to drink. If you decide to press charges, are you willing to sign an affidavit to that effect?”

Those were the words I was waiting to hear. Press charges. I lowered the towel and didn’t care that the cut had reopened. “I want to press charges.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“Well, you can sign a complaint,” he said slowly, “but you realize since you’re a minor and from out-of-state, if the other party decides to contest the matter in court, you’ll have to fly your parents out here from New Jersey to appear on your behalf at a preliminary hearing, in two days.”

What kind of gibberish was that? I challenged his emotionless expression with my one good eye. “How about my aunt and uncle? Can’t they appear in court for me?”

“Are they your legal guardians? Do they have written authority over you?” He recited some long state penal code, word-for-word, which I lost in his technical talk.

My parents wouldn’t come out here to bail me out of something like this in a hundred years. As for Betty and Ralph, asking them to defend my case with a lawyer was insane. That was more insane than having Mom and Dad fly out. All insane.

“And let me add,” the sergeant said, “how long do you plan to stay here on your visit? If Duffy or the other party involved decides to meet you in a court of law, the case might not be heard for four to six weeks. They’re extremely backlogged. They’ve got cases from March and April to take care of yet.”

I threw the ice pack against my mouth. Innocent or not, no way could I let this damn fight impede the trip. I couldn’t do that to Otto, to myself, to anyone. “The Trip” had to be kept first at all costs. With my luck, I’d probably lose the case. Duffy’d win it on some technicality. The odds were stacked against me. These cops sure favored the home side. The crusade was lost.

Footsteps click-clanked down the stairs. Calm, sober Duffy strolled through the glass door, escorted by the wavy-haired rookie. He glanced in my direction and acted like he didn’t know me.

“How’re you doing, Duffy?” the sergeant asked. “Pretty good, Mr. Evans.” Damn those two!

“What do you think, Charley, go into the next room and talk this thing out? That’s the best thing to do.”

Everyone adjourned to the next room. Being the injured party, I waited for the policewoman to assist me. I tried not to hobble, though I was a bleepin’ mess. My organs were spilling out in different directions.

The policewoman sat me on a small, wobbly chair at a card table screeching against the concrete floor.

Duffy plopped down across from me, looking everywhere except in my direction. I hated his hard, angular face, clean shaven with no pimples. With his bulging physique, no wonder he beat the crap out of me. His shoulders and chest were massive. Thick neck. Large hands. I tried to sit straight but it was hard.

Sergeant Evans ordered the rookie to work the dispatch desk and closed the door. He propped his foot on a chair. “All right, we’re here to get to the bottom of this. I don’t want any loud, abusive talk. Is that clear? Now. Duffy, this boy came into our office a half hour ago, bleeding in several areas, and said you and he exchanged words after the rock concert tonight, and that you and he had an altercation on the sidewalk across from the Richmond School. I’d like your response to that.”

Duffy sat up a trifle and looked like someone in class who knew the answer to a key question.

DUFFY. Well, me ’n a couple of the guys was standin’ in front of the steps out here after the concert, waitin’ to be picked up, you know? I noticed this hippie. He was with another hippie, and I had never seen neither of them before. They come walkin’ past, high and mighty, and I notice they’re laughin’ and jokin’ at me ’n the guys, like we’re a bunch of clowns. I told them to knock it off, and I guess Charley here saw me and told me to get on the bench and wait for my ride there. I was mad, but since I didn’t want no trouble, I went over to the bench and took a seat. So we’re sittin’, waitin’ on my friend Manny, not doin’ nothin’ wrong, and all of a sudden this guy here comes up to me from out of the blue. ‘So long, boy,’ he says. Just like that. ‘So long, boy.’ I wasn’t gonna forget that. No sir. No one calls me boy. He knew what he had comin’, but Charley made me get back on the bench. Then this guy here walks away, laughin’ again. That got to me, Mr. Evans. I had to get even. How’d you like to stand there and take that shit?

EVANS. Watch your mouth, Duffy.

DUFFY. I was defendin’ my rights. That’s what I was doin’. There ain’t no law against that, is there? He called me ‘boy’ and I was standin’ up for myself.

EVANS. Always have to get even, don’t you Duffy? So then what happened?

DUFFY. Well, by that time I was so mad I couldn’t think about nothin’ except makin’ him pay for what he said. I wanted to see if he’d still mouth off when it was just him ’n me, alone. So I guess I caught up to him halfway down Douty and asked him to call me ‘boy’ again. What does he do? He runs away. That other hippie freakozoid ran off, too. I forgot the whole thing and was almost home. The next thing I know I see Alterton’s flashin’ lights in the mirror and he carts me down here. That’s all I know of it, Mr. Evans. That’s the God’s honest truth, I swear.

ROGER. Damn you. That’s exactly how it didn’t happen.

EVANS. Now son, why did you feel you had to make fun of Duffy and his friends?

ROGER. I didn’t! (Saliva shot again from my mouth, straining my jaw. Tears rolled down my one good eye. The room was a blur and I felt nauseous.)

EVANS. Stay calm, son.

ROGER. My friend and I were referring to the concert, not them. What business did we have with those guys? We wanted to go home, too.

DUFFY. You call laughin’ at us not doin’ nothin’?

ROGER. We didn’t!

EVANS. Now, remember what I said about raising your voice.

ROGER. I hardly noticed those guys. We walked by the bench because that’s the way to my relatives. If we could have avoided your group, we would have.

DUFFY. You knew where the police station was when you ran like a baby.

EVANS. Duffy, what did you have to drink tonight? I’d hate to tell your father you created a disturbance again because of drinking.

DUFFY. Not a thing, Mr. Evans. Honest. I’ve been off drinking a long time. It’s just that when he called me boy, I couldn’t keep it in. I was brought up not to take shit—I mean stuff—like that.

ROGER. I said ‘boys,’ not ‘boy.’

DUFFY. It didn’t sound that way to me.

EVANS. Well, I don’t know if hearing ‘stuff’ as you call it justifies getting into a fight, but that’s beside the point. You tell me one thing and I have someone else saying something else. The more I think about it, the more I think letting it go might be the best course for this thing. Charley, what do you think? You were there.

CHARLEY. That’s probably the thing to do.

POLICEWOMAN. Frankly, Rudy, I hate to see the damage done to this boy’s face without retribution.

I held my face in clear view for inspection. For the first time all night even Evans seemed pained. He wearily sat down between Duffy and me.

“Now I know boys can suddenly get into a tiff over nothing, and you both have different ideas on how the whole thing started. We could hash this out until dawn deciding if it was ‘boy’ or ‘boys,’ how this and that happened, and so forth. I have a suggestion: Why don’t you two shake hands and forget what happened, and then go home to bed? You’re lucky if you can do that. I have to stay here and work until eight o’clock.”

“Never!” I sat up straight in my seat and folded my arms. “Hell if I’m going to agree to that. This guy deserves jail, not a pat on the head.”

But then it hit me—how was I going to make that happen? Neither Duffy nor I were about to change our story. What’s more, the cops believed him. I already agreed not to sign a complaint. I hated to admit it, but my only recourse was to pass through the narrow gate and forget it.

Duffy turned to me with the most fake, most amateurish expression of forgiveness I’d even seen. Looking at Evans, he said, “I’d be willing to do that, sir.”

Evans pressed me. “Will you reconsider?”

The world bore down. The vise tightened. Duffy extended his right arm in my direction, his strapping biceps and hulking fingers still warm, the same appendage that pounded the crap out of me earlier. He held it out and kept it out.

I couldn’t believe my own actions. I reached out and shook Duffy’s hand.

The second hand on the clock passed 3:00 a.m., exactly.

How strange to receive escort service home from the police. I dropped my head in ruefulness from behind the wire mesh in the back seat. What a mess I made of everything. What expression would Ralph and Betty make when they saw their nephew beaten to a pulp? Was Otto hurt? What happened to the black girls?

The streetlights cast an eerie illumination over the bay window and winding brick stairway at 1602 North Douty. All inside lights were off. I padded around to the back, where Betty said she’d leave the door unlocked in case we came back late. I clutched my stomach, trying to quell wild churning.

Who should be sitting on the steps of the back door? Humble servant Otto Brackston George, Jr. At first I thought it was a figment of my imagination—he was so still. Not only didn’t he have a scratch, he looked groomed and showered. He sat with his hands raised to his mouth, meditating. His jaw dropped when he saw me, and rose.

“Good evening,” I said. “Hey Roger, you all right? Your eye and mouth don’t look so good.”

“I’m aware of that.” We looked at each other strangely and sat on the steps.

“Where have you been?”

“I banged on the door of a house, which belonged to some guy watchin’ a film, and he let me in a second before I was gonna get it over the head with a lead pipe. I waited inside until those big guys left, then came back here.”

A long silence.

“Where you been?” Otto ventured.  I told him.

“It looks bad, Roger. Your eye is reddish-purple where it’s puffed out. And that cut on your lip looks deep. Can you see out of that one eye?”

Falling asleep was something else. In the crux of tossing and turning, I kept seeing an instant replay of my combat. Duffy with a clear path to his hapless victim . . . Pow! Right in the kisser. Duffy veering off to the left of his dupe and then . . . Pow! Square in the eye. I could see him boning up for a third punch, calibrating the hurt. That’s when I ran.

I began sweating onto the sheets, and lay without covers. Then chills besieged me, and I pulled the covers back up. I was sweating and freezing at the same time. That awful feeling in my stomach, the out- of-synch churning, got progressively stronger. Suddenly I felt baleful.

I rushed for the bathroom. Two steps short of the toilet I erupted— all over my feet. I groped around in creamy, chunky slop. I erupted again, this time into the bathtub. I knelt down, choking and hyperventilating. A third eruption made the toilet. For a desperate moment I almost cried out for help. Instead, I gripped harder, erupting again. Betty surely heard that one. I was sobbing.

I clamped my mouth and felt the cold ceramic. I couldn’t hear a sound. Feeling dizzy, I stood, cupping my palm over my throbbing eye. The thought occurred to me, “Either back to bed, Winans, or collapse and die.”

Ravaged, I reached bedside and slid my arms across the mattress. I closed my eye. July 17, 1971, ended.