Tilting at windmills - with a light sabre.

“Listen asshole…”

I punched him in the mouth. 

Never met him before:  just didn’t like his tone of voice.  I don’t remember if he was talking to a lady or starting to pick on some dude smaller than he, but I’d like to think it was probably one or the other.  Truth is, I really don’t remember the surrounding circumstances all that well. 

He didn’t go down like they do in the movies:  he needed help to get on his back.  The knuckle sandwich set him back a bit and, I suppose, put him off balance.  I shoved him hard in the chest, just as his eyes were beginning to widen, and kicked him in the shin of the leg that wasn’t planted.  In retrospect, I think I got lucky, as he was a lot bigger than me and I wasn’t really aiming for anything in particular.  His feet tangled up and his back hit the floor a second later.  To my eyes, this all happened very slowly.

I was on him as soon as he hit the deck.  I grabbed his adam’s apple with my left hand, squeezed like I was going to pull out his trachea – I think I was actually trying to – and slammed the heel of my right hand into his forehead a couple of times.  The back of his head hit the wood floor each time I did so.  Again, luck was on my side:  I think if the floor had been concrete I would have done some real damage.

Ha.  “Real damage.”  The guy was in the ICU when I woke up in the jail cell.  Turns out he was a cop.  In a small town.  The town where it happened.  How I ended up in the state police holding cell, I have no idea.  Just lucky, I guess. 

I was pretty banged up myself.  This blood on my shirt?  Yeah, I don’t know if it’s mine or someone else’s.  My side hurts real bad when I breathe – in or out – and I don’t even want to know what my face looks like.  I can feel holes in my mouth that my teeth occupied only hours ago.  I had a hard time getting together the manual dexterity to zip my fly after I pissed blood all over the toilet and the floor of the cell.

Don’t ask me why they let me go:  I don’t know. 

All I know is that the state bear who shoved me out the cruiser door onto this here stretch of highway told me that the cop’s buddies were already looking for me, and that the state police would start doing the same in the morning.

I really don’t remember much else.  Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.  I promise I won’t give you any trouble – I don’t think I could, even if I wanted to. 

Please, just let me ride with you until we get out of state. 

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