Brute

Brutes. They had no consciences that I could tell. We shared no sensibility. Why was I there? I was, and I watched in rapt amazement. But many things happened when I wasn't there.

Judson was thick and mean. How he began to show up, I'm not sure. At sixteen, he got a job as a bouncer in a bowling alley bar in a rough part of town. He could walk into any liquor store and make a purchase without getting carded. He looked thirty-five and was addicted to violence.

It was spring break. I wasn't there, but Donny was and he reported the incident a hundred times without contradiction. Donny and Judson and some other fellows had gone over to see the college girls and had gone to The Texan, a hotel renowned for partying. It was the place where you could dive from a few of the rooms' balconies directly into the pool. If you were lucky. Donny had parked his car on the beach side of the hotel and they were all sitting on the trunk watching the cars drive by on the great white sandy beach that had once served as a stretch of track for a stock car race that later became the Daytona 500. According to Donny, Judson was in a good mood, drinking beer and chatting with everyone who came by in what passed, for him, as an amiable manner, and everyone was just beginning to relax thinking this might be a fun day. But then a carload of boys with New York tags drove by and Judson, meaning no harm, yelled out, "Hey New Yorkers." The driver hit the breaks and brought the car to a dead halt, then leaned out the window and spat, "What did you say monkey-face?" In truth, Judson did look like apish, and the near truth of the statement may have added the extra juice that set him off. Judson, Donny said, jumped off the trunk of the car, still smiling that big smile he had been wearing all day, and walked over to the driver's side.

"What did you say?"

"Fuck you, monkey boy," the driver said in his New York accent.

And with that Judson stepped away from the car as if to let the driver get out. And just as the fellow opened the door and swung his legs to the ground, Judson leaped putting his full weight and strength against the car door so that it closed sickeningly on the fellow's shins. The fellow from New York let out a terrible scream, Donny said, and Judson opened the door and did it again. Donny said you could hear the crunching of the bones. Then leaning against the door, Judson hit the boy in the face and broke his nose, then stepped back and looked at the other's in the car.

"Jesus, what happened to him,? he queried with an innocent look on his face. "You'd better get him to a hospital." The fellow lay unconscious on the seat. And according to Donny, the fellows just pulled him in and one of them got behind the wheel and drove away.

And that was Judson at spring break.

I was there on another night when things went haywire. Tommy had made friends with a young man who had a pretty wife and a baby. He had moved down from the north and was working at the Lays Potato Chip factory. He had only been in town a couple of months and was living in the smallest of trailers right next to the train tracks that ran next to the highway. He was older than us, though, so he liked to tell stories about his youth in the north, tell us of all the heroic things he had done, cool things that would impress us. The stories got tiresome, especially for his wife, and so he took to coming over to the trailer where we all drank on the weekends to hang out with us.

One night, Judson showed up. He hadn't met the man from the north yet, and as he told his great Northern tales, Judson just listened, watching the teller all the time.

Everyone had gotten drunk and things were getting rowdy, and Donny had done something that the man from the north felt best to chastise him for in a loud and superior way, an action, I think, that Judson had been waiting for. I watched Judson, for I knew something was coming, watched him as he began to sway from side to side, taking breathes in deep, audible draughts. The man from the north was sitting on the couch in the small living room of the trailer and Judson was standing by the door. It was crowded already, but when Judson crossed the three feet between them, everything seemed to shrink.

"You're a tough guy, aren't you?" Judson asked.

"No, no, I'm not tough," he said suddenly realizing the situation.

"Yes you are. All night long I've listened to you tell stories about how tough you are." Judson was in another place now, the swaying becoming more and more exaggerated. And then--Boom!--without warning, Judson crashed his big, meaty fist into the side of the fellow's nose. It was sickening. You could hear the bone snap and see the blood fly from the nostrils. Suddenly everyone was calling his name. "Judson, Judson, c'mon man, c'mon, let's go outside," but Judson just stood over the man on the couch who had drawn himself into a little, protective ball, quivering, waiting for the next blow. Judson said nothing, then turned and walked outside.

Tommy got a towel from the bathroom and handed it to the man with the broken nose who suddenly looked small, tiny almost, his eyes lost as if taking in an alien landscape for the first time. I looked at Tommy. We knew then that everything he had told us was a lie.

Suddenly the door flew open and Judson walked back in with the other guys gently whining his name. "Judson," they whispered, "hey, Judson." But Judson walked back to where he stood when he delivered the mighty blow. The man from the north, the impostor, covered his head, quivering, sobbing.

"What happened to you, man?" Judson whispered in an almost loving voice. "Hey, what happened to you? Who hit you?"

I thought that Judson would hit him again and steeled myself against seeing it, but he merely turned to the kitchen and poured another drink, then went back outside with the others.

I never saw the fellow from the north after that. Tommy said he moved the next week. He was going home.