2. Ronson's, have some

To be kicked, physically and brutally and nearly expertly, if the kicker hadn't been half-drunk on bourbon and lulled from having his dick freshly sucked on by her, but to be kicked by that big polished black shitstomping combat boot out onto the flimsy 2 by 4 by 2 by 6 side porch of her trailer which he'd by the way built himself this past summer gone; to be kicked by those boots and those feet, one, two, whump, fuck you, and punch. Fuck this, he said to himself as the sergeant's punch landed and and crashed over the crude stair's railing. Fuck this and you can have her if you want her so bad but not before this. What came to hand then was a cinderblock half buried in loose dirt and gravel at the side of the trailer. He picked it up with two hands and hurled himself back up the two rough steps threw himself through the screen door and smashed at the sergeant's crewcut head face and low creased forebrow, smashing right through the top half of the nylon screen, which crumpled like newsprint, hurling the big brick forward and himself with it. To his amazement, he hit his aim, hammering and tearing the sergeant's stubble face. The man fell backwards miraculously cracking the back of his head against the low heavy thick dark oak coffee table (also procured by Joe this past summer gone). And then lay stunned, the harsh red and blocklike hand dark and bloodsmeared from the welling face, the trained but fallen hand now kibbeying for the sidearm but nothing doing. The thought came to Joe later on sitting in the woods by the riverside that he might have at that moment gone for that cold black and brutal weapon, he could have used a gun, anyone could have, it was a cold country now where all consequences had been but long reversed, in many ways it was every brute for him or herself, it really was, it really really was, but instead he went for the Louisville bat, the poor man's enforcer, for the bat sat where'd he'd always kept it, which was just inside and behind the particleboard interior door, next to the futon's frame. And with the Louisville he hit the sergeant 3 times, hard but precise, lingering over the final one, across the top of the head, until the man moved no more and Joe thought, Oh fuck I've killed him. And then she was screaming and clawing at his, Joe's, face and he thought about hitting her, but no, he just shoved her down, and there she knelt sobbing over the fallen sergeant, Oh God, you've killed him, but Joe could see the man still stirred and breathed. Joe then lurched briefly off into the galley of the kitchen looking for anything, anything to take, and what he took was a pack of her cigarettes (Camel Lights) and a lighter and his folding knife and a yellow can of lighter fluid. And a half bottle of bourbon and a plastic sack to carry it all in. And his wallet with identification and his last few dollars. And she was screaming something about I'll kill you I hate you but to his ears it sounded merely like the refrain to the great song of the age, which was fuck this and fuck you, we are all fucked, nah nah nah nah. A deuce and a half towing a backhoe with a stump grinder attachment rumbled by on the gravel track of the road out front and Joe's senses finally came to him. Fuck this he thought, it's going to be a long cold winter. Maybe I'll just enlist and GTFO of here once and for all. Funny, now that he'd whupped the sergeant's ass he wasn't afraid of the man anymore; he realized he wasn't afraid of much at all, just then, short of who he knew he was becoming. Fuckin' 23 years old, he thought, am I a late bloomer or just a baby, man? Fuck, I ought to burn this fucker down with them in it, he thought, looking at her there screaming over her dazed and bruised lover, the county's sergeant, but then he thought, nah. I'm just tired. Not crazy and evil yet. He crashed off into the woods toward the river which he knew was just a few miles distant. I should've took that man's gun, he thought. Coulda shot me something for supper maybe. Harhar. But next time I gotta keep my cool. He felt sure just then that he would.


But, walking through the woods, he swigged on the bourbon, and as the brown sweet liquor burned into his veins and the sound and the smell and finally the view of the shining, half-dead river came upon him, brown birds whirling over it beneath the dead brown sky, he thought he might yet feel warranted to reverse his earlier precepts.