of mind that would have never been questioned by a woman. He felt down to his pants.
He had pissed himself.
His left leg was near entirely soaked through. He gurgled a laugh with blood trickling over his lips and between his teeth. He stood and balanced. “I can still stand!” he boasted to his shadowy father standing off and over to the left. “I can still stand!”
Alice stood hunched over with her hands on her knees, panting. “Great,” she said. “A real hero. A real man. Did you? Did you piss yourself?” she asked with legitimate curiosity.
Benny felt the warm urine on his pant leg and the blood on his mouth as his stomach cramped for no discernable reason. He hunched down as low to the ground as he could without dragging his hands over the dirt and snarled out in singsong notes, “Pre—cious,”—name-calling, still instinctual from the playground—still all that he knew—“Precious. Such a precious little girl.”
She dropped down into forward guard. “You’re crazy?” she said through a squint. “I ruined another one.”
“I’m—I’m going to fin—finish it,” Benny quavered and gasped as the rain hit him. “And—and—and get the—the prize,” he lied, huffing through near hyperventilation. The male brain is, after all—by hundredfold generations of breeding—characteristically idiotic on the subject of violence. He wanted to hurt her—badly, at least as much as she had hurt him—but did not believe he could. After a humiliating beating like that, the only thing worse than more of her punishment was giving up halfway through and living with it.
Benny stood up taller as he neared and raised his hands as menacingly as he could. Sort of more like a kid at Halloween than a prizefighter. Alice saw her opportunity. She whipped her hips around and threw a roundhouse. Benny ducked his head a couple inches down and forward.
Her planted heel skidded off balance over the rain-slickening ground just before connecting the kick, “whu—uuh—?”
The hard crown of his skull collided with the knotty protuberance of the side of her ankle with a crack.
Had his skull fractured? He wobbled around dizzily away from the girl, expecting at any moment to be pummeled. But… He was still standing. She was squirming away on hands and knees with a hand around her ankle, yelping out in childish, teeth-clenching utterances. It was she who had broken her bone.
“Eh—eh—ah!” she said, slithering. A panicked, pale look flashed over her face like she had never broken a bone before, never stopped to consider that one of her bones could, in fact, break, leaving her in a very bad spot.
“S—sorry,” Benny gasped, then quickly covered his mouth as if the word had escaped. He looked at the blood smudged onto his hand from his mouth. “What did we do?” he asked.
“Asshole—eeh,” she squeaked out and crawled. She wouldn’t fight with a broken leg and from the ground. There were plays in the playbook for that, sure. But she didn’t want to. What was the point? This was where the referee came out and blew his whistle and the mom’s rushed down. There was only the quickening rain now, splashing hard into the packed dirt in softening brown puddles. Now, at the very least, she would know it with certainty: men didn’t really care. The ultimate unspoken, unwhisperable fear: no man had ever really cared. “Boy’s aren’t fair!” She looked up at him plaintively.
“W—what?” Benny gasped. “Y—you batty, little—I’m—I’m sorry.”
She sobbed, and glanced down at a mud puddle near her face, then smiled a sick little smile. In the dirty filth that had gotten between and under her fingernails, into her hair, under her shorts, the dirty despicable filth worsening each moment with the pounding cold rain, the distant murky shadow of her father seemed to step forward and merge with the boy now looming above her like a monster, a monster that was somehow so aloof to her pain—a hilarious thought pushed to the surface and she chuckled at herself, wondering if she had completely lost it in the despicable filth and pain before she satisfied the urge to blurt it out: “BOBBY RAN IN THE HALLS WITH MUDDY SOCKS!” She clenched her swelling, red ankle and laughed manically as raindrops beat over her pale skin. Her voice went hoarse: “Do you understand?” she begged him.
There was no answer.
“BOBBY RAN IN THE HALLS WITH MUDDY SOCKS, DADDY!” She laughed with clucking rooster-like flourishes and gurgling sighs. “YOU DIDN’T WATCH ME PLAY!” She looked up plaintively. “Just listen,” she said, “Listen to it, just listen to it, listen, listen—please! Understand?”
“Ah?” Benny looked around in confusion, panting exasperatingly, as the big, wet rain beat down harder. “L—look, maybe we—”
“BOBBY RAN IN THE HALLS WITH MUDDY SOCKS, DADDY!” She laughed and snorted. “I always wanted to say it out loud. But I was afraid my voice would come out weak. I was afraid I’d get in trouble.” The rain rushed away her tears. “I knew that I could. I knew that I could say it. Oh,” she looked at the ground in confusion and smiled through her grimace. “It feels good: BOBBY RAN IN THE HALLS WITH MUDDY SOCKS! I WAS GOOD! I took my socks off first.” She panted and winced and grabbed her ankle and smiled. “I didn’t make that stupid mess. I was clean. I was good, Daddy. I was so clean.”
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Benny said and covered his mouth again, “damnit!” his muffled cry escaped through his fingers as his bloody nose throbbed and his head rang out. He couldn’t understand what she was talking about. He was dizzy and weak and his lungs were huffing in air at odd intervals that he couldn’t seem to control. His hands felt numb and tingly. As he watched her struggling and babbling on the muddy ground, he felt relieved that it was all over, that he had made it through. Only now that she had been inexplicably defeated did the insanity of his prideful brain calm down and allow him to see just how outmatched he had been. It was very curious. She was very…capable. He felt good and a strange gratitude toward her for pushing him through this bizarre test and it struck him how deprived a life without danger, risk and anger had been. He stepped forward and everything in his body rang with pain. His eyes welled with tears as a panic surfaced. This wasn’t the movies. She had kicked the crap out of him. He felt nauseous and weak and not right. There was a good chance that she might have kicked something loose inside of him and as he had this thought he began to look on her a little differently. Almost reverently. He might need someone to take care of him now and he couldn’t tell anyone else what had happened. Something was rushing forward from the back of his mind and weighing down on him at the same time—his ancestors were angry, he had broken an ancient pact, he had willfully hurt a female of the species, he had fought a girl. It was just a slap but he would have punched her senseless after that kick to the face if he could have gotten past those legs. They had reverted to animals in the mud and it seemed like a long, lonely journey back to humanity, back to the place where picture books were written and read to children and husbands kissed wives on the cheek before hopping in the car for work.
She looked over at the railroad ties in the distance. She was hysterical. The old pain was loosening and getting ready to unpack itself and she knew it, knew what it was going to feel like, like a dusty, old, knotted rope being pulled up out of her stomach and out her gagging throat. She didn’t cry well. It was embarrassing. This was the wrong time for it. She didn’t want anyone to see her cry this cry, not here in the dirty, wet mud with a broken ankle. She looked up to the skinny twerp in the nice, embroidered shirt whose nose she’d broke. He didn’t look so puny now. He looked almost heroic in the rain, huffing with near hyperventilation but still standing there, still standing straight and fast in the thickening rain.
“We—we gotta get out of this rain,” Benny said. “And—and get you to a hospital.”
“No!” Alice said, pretending to crawl away from him. “Stay away from me.”
“Hey,” Benny said. “You’ve—you’ve got no—no cell phone. I could call somebody but I—I don’t think I can admit to this,”—it was like the honesty that slips out after great sex, Benny thought—“I’ve got a car parked nea
rby. I’ll drive you to the ER.”
“You did this to me!” she cried out.
Benny panted. His numb fingers started to curl up a little. Was he hyperventilating? Was he having a heart attack? “Please,” he asked. “Just—just let me help you. I—I want to get out of here. Something’s wrong with my breathing.”
“You’re fine,” Alice reassured. “You’re just trying to decide whether or not to hyperventilate. I see it at tournaments all the time.”
“Oh,” Benny said. “Is—is that all?” His breathing slowed a little. “I’ve never been like this before. Let me help you up.” He walked closer to her.
“You did this to me!” she repeated.
“Yeah,” Benny said. “With my head! It—it was an accident, anyways.” He walked closer. “An accident,” he mumbled to himself, “Jesus, it—it sounds like I knocked you up or something. Here,” he said, holding out his hand.
“No!” she said.
“I’m not—not going to hurt you,” he said. “Truce.”
“Well,” she said, taking his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you, either.”
He pulled her up slowly onto one leg in the slick mud and pulled her arm around his shoulders.
She felt his chest rising, sharp and quickly.
“We’ll have to be