Page 36 of Dirty

The punch landed square on his mouth.

I felt his teeth loosen beneath my knuckles.

The crowd cheered.

His eyes went glassy. I had him right where I wanted.

“You can get Uncle Sam to fix those teeth,” I said as he stumbled to catch his footing. “Oh wait. You can’t. They kicked you out for being a dip-shit.”

I swung a wide right hook. The punch crashed into his temple, and spun him halfway around. As the left side of his face became fully exposed, I swung a left hook into his ribs, and then another hard right into his open jaw.

The second punch caused his knees to buckle. He stood before me, wavering, one punch away from his first loss.

Technically, he was out on his feet – standing, but in an unconscious state. I could have stepped aside and let the referee make note of it, or simply waited for him to recover.

Following the Beaner comment, I planned on giving him what I felt he deserved.

I planted my feet firm on the concrete floor, lowered my chin, and took my mind to the day that I found Alexandra in the back room of the dope house. I thought of her standing there, scared and shaking, trying to protect the other girls from harm.

I thought of what they’d done to her, and what they’d taken from her mentally, physically, and emotionally.

My hands reacted in accordance with my thoughts, plastering punch after punch into his thick skull.

My fists pounded into the sides of his face, opening up the cut on his upper cheek. As he slowly melted into a pile on the floor at my feet, my hands followed, pummeling him until he was in a pile of his own blood at my feet.

Two red sweatshirts stepped between us.

“It’s over!” one shouted.

I raised my swollen fists into the air and glanced around the crowd

People were cheering and waving their fists. As they tried to raise Butcher to his feet, the crowd began to cheer.

“Downey! Downey! Downey!”

And, for that short moment, I wasn’t a half-breed, I wasn’t a Mexican, and I wasn’t Irish.

I was simply the man I was supposed to be.

I was me.

TEN

Lex

I totaled the receipts, figured what I owed the restaurant from my cash payments, and then counted what remained. Shocked, I carefully recounted. While Sandy got her things together and grabbed her purse, I looked up.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I’ve done this twice.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s uhhm. Well. I put cash receipts over here, and credit card receipts over here. I’m just trying to get my cash straight. So, after totaling my cash receipts, this is left over.”

I slid the pile of money to the side.

She counted it. “$325.00? That’s about what I made. In cash, I mean.”