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Walter stood in the cold with his gloved hands over his ears as Rick tried to pull Mickey away from the fracas. The kid hooked a fist into Rick's ear and knocked him against the car. Mickey tackled the kid and smacked him against the pavement. Dry snow fluffed up and blew. Rick covered his sore ear and Mickey tried to pin the kid's arms with his knees, but the other boys were out of the Ford by then and urging their friend to give Mickey a shellacking. And at once it was obvious to Rick that the boys weren't aware they were dealing with three strapping men in the prime of their lives, men who had played rugby at Notre Dame when it was just a maiden sport.
Rick and Walter managed to untangle Mickey and grapple him inside the car. Rick spun his wheels on the ice as he gunned the Oldsmobile out of the parking lot. One of the kids kicked his bumper, and another pitched a snowball that whumped into the trunk.
Rick said, “I don't believe you, Mickey.”
Mickey was just getting his wind back. “You don't believe what?” Mickey said.
“You're thirty-five years old, Mick! You don't go banging high-school kids around.”
Walter wiped the rear window with his glove. “Oh, no,” he groaned.
Mickey turned around. “Are they following us?”
“Maybe their home's in the same direction,” said Rick.
Mickey jerked open the door. Cold air flapped through the catalogs of Doctor's Service Supply Company, Indianapolis. “Let me out,” Mickey said.
“Are you kidding?” Rick gave him a look that spoke of his resolute position on the question while communicating his willingness to compromise on issues of lesser gravity.
And yet Mickey repeated, “Let me out.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Shut up and let me out of this car.”
Walter said, “I think those are Catholic kids, Michael.”
Rick made a right-hand turn, and so did the souped-up Ford. They were on a potholed residential street of ivied brick homes and one-car garages.
Mickey pushed the door open and scraped off the top of a snow pile. He leaned out toward the curb like a sick drunk about to lose it until Rick skidded slantwise on the ice pack and stopped. Then Mickey hopped out and slipped on the ice and sprawled against the right front door of the Ford.
The boy who'd called Rick a son of a bitch cracked his skull on the door frame trying to get out, and he sat back down pretty hard, with pain in his eyes and both hands rubbing his stocking cap.
“All right, you bastard,” the driver, a big bruiser, said, and lurched out, tearing off his letterman's jacket. The kid in the backseat squeezed out through the passenger door as if they were only stopping for gas. He stripped a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth, then put his hands in his jeans pockets. Rick walked over to him and the kid's eyes slid. “Bob's going to make mincemeat out of your friend, man.”
Mickey and the kid named Bob stepped over a yard hedge and Mickey was hanging his coat on a clothesline pole. Walter was on the sidewalk, stamping snow off his wing tips, apparently hoping he couldn't be seen.
Rick sought a pacifying conversational gambit. “How about this weather?” Rick asked the kid. “My nose is like an ice cube.”
The kid smiled. “Colder than a witch's tit, ain't it?”
The kid was in Rick's pocket. Rick still had the goods, all right; spells he hadn't tapped yet.
Mickey and the boy named Bob were closing together in the night-blue snow, like boxers about to touch gloves, when Mickey swung his right fist into the kid's stomach and the kid collapsed like a folding chair. “Ow! Ow!” he yelled. “Oh, man, where'd you hit me? Jeez, that hurts!”
A light went on in an upstairs bedroom.
The passenger got out of the souped-up car, still holding his stocking cap, and the kid next to Rick tripped through deep snow to help Bob limp back to the Ford. “Get me to a hospital quick!”
One of them said, “Oh, you're okay, Bob.”
“You don't know, man! I think the dude might've burst my appendix or something! I think he was wearing a ring!”
Mickey carefully put on his coat and sucked the knuckles of his right hand when he sat down inside the Oldsmobile. As Rick drove to Mickey's condominium, Mickey pressed a bump on his forehead and put on his gloves again.
“What made you want to do that, Mick?”
Mickey was red-eyed. “Are you going to let some punk call you a son of a bitch?”
