then threw a punch back, but it landed on the side of Andrew’s head. Andrew couldn’t believe that his son-in-law struck him, so he punched back and hit Hartwell square in the nose as the scrum of men tightened and intensified. The melee spilled out the front door like a swarm of bees, only the two sections of bees were attacking each other.
The fight would have lasted a lot longer than the four minutes it took to extinguish the hate, but the group was on non-battle time and was once again fighting only with the strength of mortals. So, they mini-battle was contained to an exchange of trash in the form of words.
“When I get up I’m going to do something to you that won’t be pleasant,” Daniel said to Andrew.
“You and what army?” Drew replied.
As the grade school battle of the words hit a deafening crescendo outside, Thaddeus and Garrison woke up and staggered into the main room of the house to see what all of the commotion was about.
“Did you hear something?” Thad asked Gary.
“Yes, I heard a bang and then some yelling,” Garrison stated.
Just as they were about to walk back into their rooms and go to sleep, the front door opened and the group of brawlers staggered back inside.
“There they are!” Aaron yelled as Thad and Gary barely knew whether to turn and run or look behind them in hopes that the gang was looking for some other people that deserved to be found.
“Why did you kill me?” a tiny voice could barely be heard above the din.
Cal realized that Kayla was trying to confront Garrison, so he put himself out there.
“Whoa! Settle down! The little lady wants to speak!”
In actuality, Kayla was almost as tall as Cal and could dwarf him if she wore heels of any significant height. But in real terms, she was still a relative neophyte and had yet to earn her real stripes within this veteran group.
Kayla smiled at Cal, “Thank you, Uncle Cal,’ and then she turned on the anger when she approached Garrison. Under normal circumstances, she would have clasped her husband Maxwell’s hand and they would have presented a united front in the face of their persecutors, Thad and Gary. However, this was the ultimate chaos and the members of the house were the primary chaotic players.
“Why in the name of all that is insane and unholy, would you chop off my head before I even had a chance to defend myself?” she asked Gary as she stood a good six feet away from him.
Thaddeus and Garrison were so in sync that it appeared that Gary’s response exited from Thad’s mouth.
“Because you were there!”
Gary looked at Thad and started chuckling, “Good one.”
Gary then looked at Maxwell and said, “If you two show up at the field again tonight, we will do exactly the same thing because we have no time to waist babysitting children. We have more important things to do,” he finished as he turned and bumped fists with Thaddeus.
“True that…” Thad said to Gary.
While it appeared that the rest of the House of Hartwell was being controlled and limited by the control of Claire Vinson, it had become all-too-obvious that the elder statesmen, Thaddeus and Garrison, were in sort of a time warp and flipped back to high school and their obsession of cars and girls.
“Let’s go work on the Stanger,” Thad said as he rolled up a pack of cigarettes in the sleeve of his t-shirt.
“Let’s…” Gary concurred as the two men walked past the group and brushed a few shoulders on the way out of the house and a short walk back to the outer entrance of the garage to work on the 1964 ½ Mustang.
“Those guys are either really weird or really cool,” Agent Blake stated.
The group as a collective thought long and hard about where Thad and Gary landed, but before anyone could offer their opinion Hartwell chimed in, “I don’t like it. Those guys are infringing on our turf,” hinting as if the men were part of a gang war.
“Come tonight, we make them eat dirt!” Hartwell raged as the rest of the group rallied around him as Claire Vinson smiled and then rolled over in obvious contentment and went back to sleep.
TWELVE
The women slept through most of the day and really didn’t care what the men were up to. Hartwell had organized a group of his boys to track the whereabouts of Thaddeus and Garrison, who had barely left the garage area the entire day.
“We see you!” Gary yelled as he reattached the oil cap after Thad just topped off with a fresh quart of high-performance oil.
“What a bunch of tools,” Thad said to Gary as Hartwell, Agent Blake and Aaron dove behind a few smaller bushes.
“These guys are the worst secret agents I have ever seen. Let’s go teach them a lesson,” Gary stated.
Gary and Thad put down their tools and walked over to the bushes, Thad grabbing Hartwell by his belt and Gary using both hands to grab Blake and Aaron by their belts.
Thad said, “It’s wedgie time!”
Gary nodded as both men transitioned from the belt to the band of each man’s underwear, suspending them in the air and propelling them into excruciating pain.
They dropped the men on the ground as Gary said, “If you go anywhere near is, next time we’ll hang you from that tree!”
The fight that night took on a decidedly masculine turn after the wedgie incident, leaving the women happily on the outside looking in. Hartwell got the rest of the men that weren’t Thaddeus and Garrison together, to discuss possible strategy for the evening.
“I want to get those guys tonight.”
Blake was confused, “Are you going by yourself to the field, because I wouldn’t recommend facing those guys alone.
Hartwell looked around the group with a little hint of fear in his eyes, “Would you guys go there by yourself?”
The other six men replied with a chorus of “No way!” and “Not if my life depended on it!”
“Why don’t we all go together? “Daniel suggested.
Aaron was a little slow to the take and used his right index finger to count the group’s numbers.
“That’s seven against two.”
Cal had moved back a few steps on the evolutionary chain in his mind but he was still as feisty as ever.
“Are you sure about that? I could fetch a calculator for you if you needed it.”
Aaron thought about it and then replied after he rechecked his detailed calculation.
“No, I’m good.”
Cal shook his head in disbelief and then offered his own feeble strategy, “We could run really fast through the field and then knock them down.”
“And then what?” Daniel inquired.
Cal wasn’t expecting a follow-up question and looked as inept as his counting-challenged friend Aaron.
“Oh… we could keep running right out the park?”
“What if they chase us?” Andrew asked his uncle.
“Then we should run faster,” Cal replied.
It was about that time when some of the ladies overheard the men’s conversation.
“Something tells me we should just stay home tonight,” Belinda said to Nicole and Maggie.
Carla was trailing them and she said, “Sounds good to me,” as the hatred they had for each other became neutralized in a single moment.
The first two nights of the battle featured the classic matchup of vampires and protectors versus hunters, only to transition to a third-night fight that would be called “Greasers vs. Dweebs.” Thaddeus and Garrison happened to be walking through Beach Haven Park at midnight on their way to another double date with their new girlfriends. Normally, they would have driven to the apartment complex just outside of the park, but the Stanger was about a day or so away from running “just right.”
They strolled through the park with their black leather jackets, jeans and black Converse All-Star high-tops.
“Do you think those morons will try anything tonight?” Thad asked Gary.
Gary looked around and used his full powe
rs of detecting people that were following him, and replied, “I was going to say ‘no’ before I spotted them scurrying behind that big tree on the left about 200 yards from us.
Thad squinted as he looked to his left for confirmation. He barely saw the group until they moved closer and came into range.
“How can you see so far away? All I saw was a bunch of trees and some grass before they jogged into range.”
“Did you bring your blade?”Gary asked.
Thad removed a black switchblade from his back pocket with his right hand and then put it up near his face before calmly clicking open the apparatus to reveal a black comb, which he used to further secure his slicked-back hair.
“I think if I just show them this without opening it, they will probably run home.”
The men laughed with a level of confidence befitting a couple of bullies that felt completely indestructible.
“They have our backs to us. I say we ambush them,” Maxwell said.
“Is that before or after we hit them over the heads with these baseball bats?” Hartwell asked.
Aaron once again stepped up to bring the group a little clarity but, as usual, it took him a few seconds to assess the situation. He envisioned the group running up to Thad and Gary with the baseball bats and doing nothing, which made it easy for the two men to thwart the lame ambush. And then he imagined the group running up and delivering a few key blows to the head of Thad and Gary as they crumpled to the ground.
“I think we should hit them prior to the ambush.”
“But, isn’t that the ambush in itself?” Blake asked.
“Yeah, what part is the ambush anyway? Is it the hitting or the