Short Story for the Helluvit

I have a strong disliking for people who wear baseball caps backwards.

Not that I, myself, haven’t at some point turned an otherwise normal cap and spun it backwards, of course. That’d just be silly. No, some drastic situations can call for the brim to be forced in this unnatural directon. For example, wearing a baseball cap the way it was intended while hammering a small nail in the dark would be immensely more difficult than hammering the same nail with the cap flipped around, therefore not blocking your vision anymore than the aforementioned dark you’d be standing in while hammering. Of course, why you’d hammer in the dark I haven’t the foggiest of ideas. But if you had a backwards cap on then, I wouldn’t call you on it.

So, maybe just by chance, the asshole wearing the backwards Philadelphia Phillies cap sitting five people to the left of me at this bar is doing some well trained research into the mysterious lives of night hammerers. Either that, or he was just a regular asshole. Which would actually be a little disappointing now that I’ve established that there’s at least a microscopic chance that the young gentlemen could be establishing the basis for a character for some great movie roll about nailing shit with the lights off.

I’d watch that movie.

It was around this point I realized that I was casting stones regarding somebody’s barroom wardrobe choices, when in fact I was wearing a $550 black, pinstriped tailored suit I’d picked up in Needham that day in the middle of a dreary college bar.

I suppose the asshole with the backwards Philadelphia Phillies hat sticks out like a thumbprint on a doorknob compared to the bigger asshole wearing a suit inside of a bar.

Whatever. The suit was part of the plan. So what if I look like my wedding party forgot me at a dive bar in Worcester for some reason?

The suit was part of the plan.

Here’s what I’d gathered from sitting at the bar inside of a place that called itself “ShamRoks” for the past hour and a half:

1.) Phillies cap asshole’s real name was Mitch. He had a torrid love affair with the words “guy,” “dude,” and “bro.” He smelled like Fritos.
2.) Amongst the four people in their drinking party, two of which were of the female persuasion, Mitch was the only one without a significant other. I know. I was surprised too.
3.) At some point in the foreseeable future, they were going to get “fuckin’ high, bro.” The time-table on that was a little fuzzy, mostly because, as far as I could tell, they were already pretty fucking high.

While it would have been nice to focus on anybody else at ShamRoks for the one and a half hours I’d wasted my life there, I unfortunately had limited other choices. There were literally only three other people in the entire 30x40 closet they called a bar. And one of those was the sleepy eyed, fully bearded bartender who specifically referred to himself as “Blob” and wore an expression that screamed either “I want to go home now” or “I want to go home now and stab myself in the neck with a shrimp fork.”

Conversation pieces, these people were not.

As I contemplated asking Blob the origins of his nickname (perhaps Shakespeare?) a cold burst of air exploded into the building from behind me, sending instant shivers up the spines of anybody unlucky enough to stand it its way. The man left in the doorway was roughly 6’4 and 230 pounds of sirloin steak compacted into a human mold. Clearly balding, he had obviously intentionally cut his hair into a military cut to really hammer home that “I’m Tougher Than You, Want to Compare Cock Sizes?” look that probably consumed at least 30% of his free time. The Human Steak took long strides across the right side of the bar and sat down at a free stool in the corner. Despite the lack of people to impress, The Steak did his best to flex through his two-sizes-too-small white t-shirt when he draped his arms on the bar.

This guy had entered the bar like a sergeant entering the barracks, and nobody had so much as flinched. Either he was a bad mother fucker, or everyone here knew this asshole already.

Then it hit me.

Oh, what the fuck? I didn’t even have to ask. Blob beat me to the punch.

“What’ll it be Andy?” Blob stammered out in the direction of The Steak.

The steak processed the question as if Alex Trebek had just asked him the Daily Double. “Miller for now.” Steak eventually replied.

Of course, the man sitting down the bar from me wasn’t known as Steak. He was known by his real name: Andrew Charles Kilby Jr. Thirty-five years old, native of Shrewsbury, MA, graduate of Providence College class of 1999 with a degree in Sociology and a minor in education. Son of Andrew Charles Kilby Sr., otherwise known as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Clark University in Worcester, MA since 1992, himself a professor of Sociology at Clark since the fall semester of 2005. No wife, no kids. Srong passion for “As Seen on TV” workout equipment and an even bigger hard-on for Ultimate Fighting Championship.

I knew who Andrew Charles Kilby was because I was supposed to be watching him tonight. I knew who he was because he had been harassing a twenty year old Clark junior named Katie Holstein for the better part of three months, and I was supposed to send the message tonight that unwanted groping from a professor did not equal college credits for Katie.

My problem now lied with Katie’s mom. Katie’s mom being the one who had lied to me about who, or more problematically, what Andrew Charles Kilby was. In the photograph Sandra Holstein Macklin gave to me during out last meeting, the man, affectionately known as “Andy” to his buddies, was a short, sawed-off pile of chins and belly weight no younger than forty-five. Either Katie’s mom had lied to me, or Andy Kilby had discovered the greatest fucking diet pill known to man and was keeping it a secret from the rest of the world.

I fumbled to my cell phone in my left pocket and dropped it on the bar in front of me next to the nearly empty glass of Sam Winter Lager. Not one for making a scene, outside of the tailored suit in a bar anyway, I found Sandra Holstein Macklin’s name and text messaged her:

ANDY KILBY. NOT WHO I THOUGHT HE WAS. WTF?

Two minutes later, my phone buzzed back at me:

SRY. DIDNT THINK YOUD TAKE CASE OR BELIEVE KATE.

No point in arguing that. I probably wouldn’t have believed Katie Holstein was against fooling around with a professor if I’d known he looked like an American Gladiator. No offense to Katie Holstein, but she’s a total whore. Everyone knew that. Even me. And I’d never even met the girl.

It was a Thursday night. Katie’s mother had informed me that her daughter spent Thursday evenings at a place called ShamRoks after the sun went down on Worcester. She apparently pieced that information together from drunken pictures Katie had posted on her Facebook page during the previous semester. I wondered out loud at the time why in God’s name a 20 year old girl would be “friends” with her Mom on Facebook, but all I got was The Evil Eye. So I backed off.

Katie had accused Andy Kilby of stalking her and making lewd and unwanted advances during her time in his class. Being a political science major, Katie apparently felt her grades hinged on not upsetting a man who’s father was the overseer of her particular program.

Instead, she went to her mother who in turn came to me.

And now here I am, wearing a suit, standing slightly taller than a cardboard cutout of Betty White, faced with a potential confrontation with a walking oak tree.

Not ten minutes after Kilby entered the bar, Katie and another young female burst in from the cold as well. Both were dressed in what I guess could be called “Club” attire, even though they were just going to a shithole like ShamRoks on a Thursday night. The friend wore a loose fitting purple blouse, diving past her shoulders into a V at her breasts, skin tight black pants, and knee high suede boots. Though not unattractive, Katie would be deemed “The Pretty One” upon viewing the duo. Shorter than her friend, maybe 5’3, Katie Holstein wore a pink and blue striped dressed that barely reached the bottom of her ass. When it ended, it was met by black leggings that covered her the rest of the way. Unnaturally chestnut hair swept over one ear and down to shoulder length. She was most predominately wearing an unsatisfied frown aimed at her blonde better half.

Katie’s friend immediately dragged her across the bar directly to the two seats surrounding Andy Kilby. Katie refused eye contact and the embrace of a hand on her shoulder from Kilby, while the friend giggled and clawed at the man’s left arm. Kilby seemed none to satisfied with the advances of Katie’s friend, as he had his own version of prime rib sitting on his other side.

I sat and watched this Olympic exercise in awkward flirtation as Kilby attempted to converse with Katie, with all the charm and facial expressions of a constipated cobra. The friend laughed loudly at all of his jokes and insights, while Katie monitored her cell phone and the TV airing a college basketball game to her right. As the conversation plowed ahead, I began feeling better about my chances of not being turned into a well tailored hamburger patty by the end of the night. I mean, Andy Kilby wouldn’t be foolish enough to make advances on Katie with her friend right there.

I assumed.

Frustrated by his failure, and his balls clearly a shade of blue that would make Papa Smurf blush, Kilby abruptly stood up and swung his jacket over his shoulders, removing a pack of Marlboro lights from the pocket. His disgustedly announced he was going to go out for a smoke. An effort to rethink his game plan. Before he could hit the door, Katie’s friend smiled at her, whispered something, then took off for the door behind him.

Halfway done with another beer, slightly buzzed, and a trifle unprepared for Kilby’s exit, I had my opportunity to save Katie Holstein from her predicament.

I threw my suit jacket on and walked to Katie’s end of the bar with my beer in hand. She was focused on the TV again, and mentally in another universe far from the rest of us.

“Where’d Captain America head off to?” I asked, taking Kilby’s seat next to her.

I expected her to be startled, but she wasn’t. She turned and locked icy green eyes with mine. They rose a little. I had peaked her interest at least.

She sarcastically grinned and gestured to the door. “Went out for a smoke with my friend. Cigarettes aren’t for me. Plus, it’s fucking freezing outside.”

I shot a glance at the window to the sidewalk. Kilby was already burning down his smoke.

Act fast.

I settled into the seat. “Me neither. Those things will put you in an early grave. Just booze for me. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to remember why.”

She chuckled and gave my suit a once over.

“What’s with the suit? Are you a professor or something?”

I looked down at myself and acted surprised. “Nope, nope, nope. Just coming from a get together with some…uh….friends and felt the urge to drop in for a drink. Not exactly the kind of friends that inspire feelings of sunshine and bunny rabbits, you know?”

She looked out the window at her now friend, who had attached herself to Kilby’s chest.

“Yup.” She paused, “I know. Well, it’s a very nice suit.”

“Thanks. Nice to meet someone who appreciates a nice suit. Even if it’s being worn in a place like this.”

She chuckled again and took a sip of the cocktail in front of her.

“What can I say…I love a man in a suit.”

See. Told you the suit was all part of the plan.

The door kicked open and Kilby entered with Katie’s friend at his side, tucked warmly under his right bicep. At some point in the last three minutes, he’d grown quite fond of the friend was now smiling a resigned “I guess I’ll have sex with you instead” smile. That was, until he saw me sitting on his stool.

Marching over, he loomed over me casting a shadow that I could swear made the room colder. He took off the coat, placed in on the bar, and folded his arms at me. Yes, he was folding them at me, I swear to God.

“Your sitting in my chair, friend.”

I kept my focus on Katie, who’s face had become flush and aggravated.

“Didn’t see a name plate on it, pal. All I saw was this beautiful young lady left alone while her friend left with Jose Canseco to bum a smoke, leaving me with a nice warm, open seat.”

He smiled at me and flexed a bit more.

“Leave.”

I smiled back.

“No.”

I told myself what was going to happen next was also part of the plan, but it didn’t really help when Kilby’s fist actually connected with the side of my face, sending me flying off the stool and through Katie Holstein. Through the ringing in my ear, and the still faint sound of Dick Vitale screaming about the basketball game, I heard Katie plead for Kilby to leave me alone. She said something about the suit too, I think. But that’s only speculation.

He didn’t leave me alone. In fact, he did the opposite. I felt a hand grab the back of my shirt and jacket, lifting me off the dirty linoleum.

Sucking wind and a little unsure about whether or not I was standing or he was holding me, I caught his eyes this time.

“Jeez, Andy. From the sound of it, doesn’t sound like the young lady likes you very much. You give her an F or something?”

Another closed fist, this time to the stomach, sending the wind soaring out of me and a fist shape bruise to appear where pale skin used to be.

I exhaled, just to see if I could. “Maybe you gave her an F because she wouldn’t give you one, eh Hercules?”

“Call me Andy, motherfucker? I don’t fucking know you and you don’t fucking know me. When I say leave, you leave. When I say shut the fuck up, you better close your fucking mouth.”

On the word “mouth” he jackhammered another fist into the exact same spot as the last. Classic bully move…hitting the same spot twice. I swear, my older sister used to do the same thing to me.

However, there was good news: I wasn’t on the ground anymore. The bad news was I was fairly certain now that he was just holding me up like I was a kitten and he was my den mother. In the background there was more pleading from Katie, and now Blob had shuffled over from his perch to see the action. Katie’s friend, meanwhile, seemed mighty pleased by the entire ordeal.

“Fucking guy think’s he’s a fucking comedian.” He laughed, his neck throbbing with every reverberation. “I’ll show you something to fucking laugh about.”

A closed fist reared back from his head and connected square with my jaw half a second later. A pool of blood had started to form in my mouth and my neck suddenly felt like it was being held together by rubber bands and toothpicks.

“That wasn’t that funny.” I managed, spitting blood back up into Kilby’s face. “You must watch a lot of Dane Cook.”

Closed fist number two to the face. This one caught three of five knuckles under the eye, narrowly, and thankfully, missing my nose.

“I guess I see your angle, Andy,” I gummed, trying to get a feel for how many teeth I may have been missing, “I mean, if a twenty year old student of mine didn’t want my dick even when I tried to force her on it, I’d be fairly pissed too, I suppose. Then again…is there even anything left down there, Andy? I’ve seen those steroid commercials with the shrinking balls and stuff. I read that book about Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds. There’s got to be truth to that stuff, right?”

I braced for another fist. This time, nothing came at me.

I peeked out from two closed eyes. By some grace of God, Kilby had let go of me.

Suddenly, I was feeling pretty god damned tough.

…Then I noticed he had left me to make acquaintances with a beat up pool cue from the billiards table under the big TV. He didn’t break it in two like in the movies. He just kind of held it like a lightsaber or something.

Managing to stagger to two feet, thanks in small part to the support of Katie’s shoulder, I raised my hands up to Andy Kilby.

The gentle “Don’t Knock My Face Off” Look.

“Take it outside, Andy” Blob said, I assume to himself because Kilby wasn’t paying much attention. “I don’t need Sully to see this place blood stained in the morning ‘cause some dumb asshole took your fucking stool, dude.”

And then, Andy glanced at Blob and shifted his weight.

Leaving my feet, I dropkicked the inside of Andy Kilby’s right kneecap, bringing him down to ground level and sending a jolt of electric pain through his body. Next, my elbow shot upwards in the area I knew would either be the bridge of Kilby’s nose, or his neck and chin depending on which way his head was pointing. Gauging by the crack and the sharp sting of pain that ran through my arm, I wagered it to be the former.

I jumped to my feet. Kilby still had the pool cue in his hands, supporting him as he grunted and snorted on the floor. There was a small pool of blood collecting around the lower portion of his face. A broken nose and, my guess, a severely sprained right knee.

Looking past Blob and the other horrified patrons, including the stoners and backwards cap kid, I nabbed one of the half empty beer mugs from the bar counter, throwing it down on the floor at Kilby’s hand. The result being an explosion of Miller Lite and microscopic razors digging into flesh. Kilby dropped the pool cue and gagged in pain, quickly jumping to his feet with a new found rush of adrenaline.

“Oh, shit.” Katie’s friend said, taking a half dozen steps back.

Anger, despite what some may tell you, is not a good virtue to bring to a fight unless the other person is equally angry, or completely defenseless. Anger is brought on by emotions, which cloud your judgment, impair your actions, and otherwise leave you a victim of your own mind. When in a fight, like say the one Andy Kilby and I were currently engaged in, a rapid change from Bruce Banner to The Hulk doesn’t mean you turn green and wear surprisingly still in tact pants. In fact, it does the opposite. It makes you uncoordinated, jumpy, an inaccurate. Andy Kilby had just allowed his emotions to turn him into nothing more than an adrenaline blinded cartoon character.

Screaming through the blood, he lunged at me…forgetting his right leg had been incapacitated just moments earlier.

A stumble. A quick look of searing pain.

His knee buckled to the left, just a touch.

A dodge to my left, his fist missed easily. I lifted up my leg and drove it as hard as possible into the bone of his left knee.

A pop.

A scream.

Andy Kilby: down for the count. He’s lucky nobody dropped an ACME brand anvil on his head for good measure.

Katie grabbed her friend by the arm and attempted to rush past me to the door, only to be stopped by a six foot five pile of mashed potatoes that vaguely looked like a human being.

XXL Boston Red Sox jersey, head shaved to Lex Luthor proportions, and a neatly trimmed Amish beard.

I put a foot on Kilby’s head and looked up at the doorway.

“Nice to see you, Murph.” I said.

“Likewise, Lee.”

“You can let the blonde go. She’s seen enough to know it’s easier to just cheat off the kid next to you than suck a teacher off to pass a college class.”

“Damn. And all those wasted years giving up my body when I was at Amherst.”

Katie wiggled and contorted to escape the bear hug she was in, but that was about as likely as Blob moving from the stool to the exit in under three and a half hours.

“Katie,” I said, keeping an eye on Kilby, “I’m a friend. So is Rulon Gardner here. So if you’d please…”

Ten minutes later, I was standing outside explaining to Katie Holstein that we were the potential answers to her little stalking problem, and Murph was dragging the sort-of-conscious body of Andy Kilby from the bar and into the street.

“How did you know he was bothering me, and why do you care?” Katie asked.

“I know,” I started, “because I protect people. That’s my job. I care because Andrew Kilby is a bad person who was doing bad things and deserved to be punished. I’m just not the kind of person who puts people in ‘time-out, though’”

Handsome stare. A nod of the head.

I could feel Murph staring a hole through me.

“Asshole,” he was thinking.

“My associate, Mr. Hamilton here, is going to be doing a little more persuasion on the beloved professor to leave you alone. I can guarantee you that he will not be bothering you in the slightest from now on, and you can also expect to get…what grade is it you want in this class?”

“At least a C+. I mean, it’s just a gen-ed.”

I smiled. “Make it a B+ or higher, Murph.”

Murph, had already strapped Kilby’s hands together with leather cord.

“Can do boss.” He said, loudly. “Shine your shoes for yah?” He also said, slightly less loudly.

Katie pouted her thick red lips, slightly chapped from the cold air. She bundled herself into her hood.

“You’re not going to kill him or anything, are you?”

We both looked at Murph, squatting over Kilby’s body.

“No, Katie. Nobody’s getting killed tonight. We’re just going to teach Mr. Kilby a lesson in manners and maybe school him in how to treat a beautiful young lady, like yourself.”

She smirked. Why not? I was wearing the coat.

“Well…thank you. You’re a regular hero….”

She let it hang there, waiting for me to say my name.

I lied.

“Eric. Eric Betancourt. Can I offer you a ride home?”

The wind whistled through the empty street. Neon lights from a dozen fast food joints lit up the nearest major roadway, three blocks away from Clark University. Just myself, Murph, Andy Kilby, and Katie Holstein standing amongst run down three deckers and a shitty hole in the wall pub.

“Yes. If you’d give me a lift that’d be awesome. I live on Oak Grove Ave a few blocks from here. Just an apartment across from campus. Not too far away.”

I smiled and offered my arm to show her to my car. Looking over my shoulder, I made eye contact with Kilby…just before Murph grabbed him by his legs and dragged him down the ice filled corridor running between ShamRoks and the neighboring pizzeria. Then, I saw nothing.

“G’night, gentlemen.” I said, waving a hand.

“You know,” Katie said, looking up at me with hazy emerald eyes, “I love this coat. I love a guy who knows how to dress nice.”

“I know, Katie.” I said, grinning to myself, “I know.”