The Stomping

More people began to show up at the trailer park, fellows I had heard of but had never been around before, mostly older than I.  Russell was the fellow who had saved me from a beating one night when he told my antagonist that my father was a karate instructor, and that I would show him his heart before he died.  He was stocky and had a contagious smile, and he started seeing Tommy's little sister.  Russell was more mischievous than evil, but he was still disturbed by the death of his older brother in Vietnam, and sometimes his brooding character made him dangerous.  But he liked Tommy's sister who was only fifteen, and so he was nice to Tommy and by extension, me.  

Donny had gotten wild after his sister got pregnant.  She had always protected him in a way.  Guys were nice to him because of Adair.  But with her gone, he was on his own.  

Donny began dealing drugs on a small scale to people who came to the park.  First it was pot and speed, but then it was acid.  I was convinced already that people as mean and ignorant as many of the people hanging about with him should not be given acid.  It was bound to get ugly.  But hits were cheap and Donny was a promoter, and things got progressively worse.  

There was a middle-aged couple who lived in the park that Tommy used to visit with because the man was a musician.  He gave clarinet lessons and played part time in a jazz band and had a wickedly subtle sense of humor.  One day, Tommy and I were talking to him in the small yard outside his trailer, and in the middle of a sentence he stopped and pointed to a pile of shit in the dirt and said, "Look!" and suddenly started to laugh.  We all laughed with vigor, though I couldn't understand why.  Obviously, the absurdity of it stayed with me.  

The couple had a son who came home from Vietnam and was staying with them for awhile while he got his feet under him.  He was a big guy, huge, really, tall and strong and handsome in a way that made you think of Elvis.  And he started hanging around.  All he talked about was Vietnam, about the prostitutes and about death, every story somehow grim no matter what mirth he tried to inject.  All the stories were bragging, but they were something else, too.  He had been subjected and we had not, and that was the unspoken point of it all.  He drank as he talked, and that, as for so many others who had been to war, was his therapy.  

It was Friday night and Donny had a bunch of acid and he had given some to Big Elvis.  There was a big group of us drinking with some girls up by the railroad tracks, some of them new to the scene.  Only Donny and Big Elvis were tripping, and everyone was keeping one wary eye on them all night.  

Then something happened.  I'm not sure what exactly, but Big Elvis had done something that made one of the girls cry.  And that is when Bear stepped in.  Bear was a big, good natured guy who liked fixing up cars.  He was bigger than the rest of us, but he looked about three quarters the size of Big Elvis.  Bear said something to him and suddenly they were standing eyeball to eyeball.  Bear looked nervous, but there was a big circle around them now.  There was only one direction this thing could head.  Then unexpectedly Bear said, "OK," and began taking off his pants.  He was stripping down to his boxers to fight.  I didn't know if he thought that is what they were named for or what, but in the tense horror of what was about to happen, even then, the craziness of it wouldn't leave me.  I looked at Tommy and we both began to laugh.  But Bear had already started bouncing up and down on his toes and stepped in to throw a jab.  He didn't connect with anything, but it was encouraging.  Huffing and puffing, he did it again and then again.  Nothing.  Then Big Elvis stepped in and caught him with a punch that made everybody wince, and with it, he had broken one of Bear's front teeth. "Shit," Bear cried out, and suddenly his friend came running in and tackled Big Elvis around the waist.  We all knew if he got up, there would be no stopping him, and suddenly, without a word, everyone was on top of him kicking and punching and yelling at him to stay down.  In truth, most of the blows were not landing in the cluster of punches, but then Bear rushed in and gave Elvis a might kick to the ribs in the manner of a football punt, and you could see his foot make the ribs go concave for a second like a comma.  Big Elvis, though, was not staying down, and when he got up, he just stood looking at the crowd.  He looked at everyone individually taking in each face.  "I know you," he said, pointing his finger at each and every person.  "I know who you are and I will get you, each of you.  You will pay for this. . . . "  Now Tommy and I had slithered into the background and were certain we out of the light, invisible, maybe.  What had happened here was hideous and we were certain there would be a reckoning we wanted no part of.  

And just then, as Big Elvis stood pointing at the gathered crowd, a police car pulled up.  "What's going on here," said the first of two policemen jumping from the squad car.  Nobody said anything.  And then the girl who had been crying stepped up and said, "He tried to molest me," gesturing to Big Elvis.  And that was it.  Before anything else could happen, they had handcuffed him and put him in the back of the car.  

As usual, Tommy and I took the opportunity to slither off into the darkness, passing between some trailers and around the park until we could stand at a distance on the opposite side looking like two fellows who had just stepped out to see what was going on.  We could see but could not hear which was fine with us.  When everything had ended, the squad car pulled past us with Big Elvis inside.  Wanting to be away from it all, we got into my car and slid off to the Big Boy. 

The next day, Donny came over and said we needed to go bail Big Elvis out of jail.  His father had given Donny the money and would come with us to sign.  And so we did.  Elvis looked rough and tired when he got into the car, and he was placid on the ride back to his parent's trailer.  

"You're good guys," he said.  "You're my friends.  Shit, I'm glad to be out of there."  

I tried to imagine what his night was like, locked up in a cell with other criminals, he tripping his brains out, visions of feet and elbows and fists filling his brain.  

He only stayed with his parents in the park a little longer, then he was gone.  I had avoided seeing him again which was easy for me since I didn't live there.  When he left, I was glad.  But we still had Donny who thought the whole affair something spectacular.  He told the story over and over again, but it was impossible to exaggerate what had happened.  A group stomping is just too horrible a thing, but he was set on making anyone who had not been there feel they had missed something special.  Donny was happy.  He had enjoyed it.  That is just how he was.