My friends and I call this place A-Town because we know “Atascadero” in Spanish means mudhole, means a place where generations go on and on getting sucked under. In a tiny town such as mine, we spend our young adulthood looking for a lot of things: a fishing hole, a future, a cheap burrito, a ledge to grind on our skateboards, or a way to get even. We look for something worthy of our belief. We don’t go looking for violence. We half-believe maybe violence is out there looking for us, even now. To be blunt: where we are is not enough. We want somewhere else.
Tonight, though, it’s much simpler. My friends and I are just looking for a party, and if you don’t know the way, then you don’t belong. That’s the greatest thing about getting loaded out at Boswell’s property: the location. It’s a secret. It’s undeveloped land on the outskirts of A-Town. No neighbors. No man-made markers. Just to get headed in the right direction, you’ve got to know the secret hairpin turn off the Southbound 101. Fiddle with radio, and it’s gone. Then, you’ve got to bump down dirt roads for a few dark miles just to get to the green gate out front, a gate, mind you, which is always chained closed. The first time I ever went out, a few years before tonight, I found myself standing there before it, asking what kinds of mysteries or brutalities or ancient burial grounds I might unearth when I crossed over.
From this point on, at the gate I mean, everybody who has come here looking for something has to walk to find it.
It’s a warm April evening. There are no cops, and my friends and I have arrived.
“Damn,” I say, driving through the long hallway of parked cars, “There’s a lot of heads here already.” Toby and Bat Reilly and I spend many Friday nights in 1999 just like this, booze-cruising around in my hand-me-down minivan, searching for some good land without adults upon which to get drunk.
“Looks like Jenny’s here,” Toby says, as I slide my Plymouth into a spot beside Jenny’s Jetta. “Good thing I brought my vodka water bottle.”
“You’re not gonna fuck with all that tonight, are you Tobes?” Bat asks.
I kill the engine.
Toby cracks a Keystone Light and slides open the side door. “I got the beer too,” he says.
“Yeah, dude,” I say. “Her brother’s a fucking dick.” I double check the manual door locks. “Fuckin’ Benjamin, fuckin’ cockhole.” (Go easy on me. I’m seventeen.)
The three of us hop the green gate and wander up the unpaved driveway, geeked on the heat of a new night. At the top of the first hill, a cement foundation just sits there like an empty dinner plate with no house on top, just a flat empty space and a view of the night sky. Toby stops to piss, his white hoodie shining in the moonlight.
“Meet us down there,” Bat says. Me and Bat make for the bonfire in the valley below.
Fifty or so silhouettes mill about, and we disperse amongst them. Bat disappears in ten seconds, like always. “Be careful of poison oak,” is all I say to him, like some kind of babysitter.
I lean against the rusted fender of a Cutlass Supreme on cinderblocks, abandoned to the weeds, wondering if it’s worth opening the one beer I’ve brought with me now or later. I don’t really want to be here, but it’s my night to drive. All I can think about is the box of nineteen Bud Lite bottles back at Case-Dogg’s house, and how I won’t be able to drink them until my two drunk friends are ready to bail. I’m thinking about Case-Dogg’s hot tub.
I survey the scene and swallow hard. Tom Johnson tosses a pallet onto the fire and takes the spot right beside me. His massive head is newly shaved and nearly bald. I need to tell you that there is no human being in all of A-Town that I am more afraid of than Tom Johnson. Each of his hands is the size of a ten-pound tri-tip, his shoulders wider than a wheel barrow. I’ve seen him fight a million different dudes at a million different venues: In N’ Out Burger, the creek bed, the Rivers’ Property, and the skatepark. He always wins brutally, of course, but it has to be that time I saw him kick a stray dog in the face in the high school parking lot that most clearly defines him in my mind.
“Shroomin’ so hard,” Tom says, voice like a concrete worker, forearms swollen. He’s got at least eleven inches on me.
“Really?”
“Fire looks so wobbly, dude.” He laughs with one of those massive hands weaving in the air a few inches from my face. The pallet has caught, casting a new spotlight on the crowd. I can see more than one girl I have a crush on, tonight, faces turned orange by firelight. The track star who will barely miss the Olympics in six years rips a hit from a pink bong. The softball standout’s strappy shoes dangle above her as she is lifted upside down for a keg stand.
Some couple argues loudly behind a briar bush about who’s driving home. Jenny’s brother, Benjamin, throws a cigarette in the fire and walks back up the hill. He always rocks those short-sleeved, collared polo shirts like the fucking rich kid golfer that he is.
“Whoa, look at that,” Tom says, pointing at the smoke which is retreating into the branches of the Live Oaks above us. A piece of wet wood whines a high note and sizzles out.
“Yeah, cool,” I say. “Want a beer?” I hand him my first and only. He receives it in the same way an elephant might pick up a paint brush. I’m already thinking of what excuse I’m going to tell him in the next minute, so I can ghost him. Maybe that I’m going to go bum a grit (an A-Town cigarette). Maybe that I need to talk to Bat about snowboarding tomorrow. Maybe that I need to grab another beer from the car. Maybe that Toby’s too fucked up, and I need to check on him. Or maybe that I have to piss.
Yes. That’s it.
I decide on that, but in between the moment I decide and the moment before the words come out of my mouth, Tom has been sucker punched in his newly shaved head, like really punched, like punched really really fucking atrociously hard. I know he’s been hit with a fist, of course, but the blow has so much torque behind it that the impact sounds something like a baseball bat against a slab of raw beef. It’s that force that has Tom slumping down to one knee, now, his beer (my beer) having exploded all over my Vans.
It takes me another second or two to realize that the who or what that’s just clubbed Tom is Big Red’s bare fist. Big Red, AKA Randy Hafler. AKA Big fucking dude. AKA Stays mostly to himself. AKA has been holding onto some kind of major grudge for a very long time and has finally decided to climb down from the dark oaks and plant that grudge into Tom’s skull. I’ve never even seen Big Red at a party before.
He and Tom are just four feet away now.
This fight is silent. A real fight is never as loud as it is on pay-per-view with two loud suits barking through the combat. And a real punch casts a much lower volume than it does on The Matrix or The Boondock Saints. Tonight, there’s something so beautiful about that. This is the small-town secret. Come closer, and I’ll show you. The rest of the world doesn’t know what it’s like to stand this close to a fight and to really fathom the nuance in the song of breath and knuckle and footwork and flesh. I imagine myself as some poor kid in ancient Rome who has snuck down onto the floor of the coliseum and is watching two soldiers go body against body for survival. There’s no king here, though, just a town’s worth of country kids at a party.
The new pallet keeps throwing more light onto the swelling melee. The silhouettes of the crowd remain stuck where they are, as if in a photograph. Even at this age, I am already taking vivid pictures in my mind for a book I’ll put together later. I’m already trying to make a monument of every brutal moment. Big Red’s combat boots keep on kicking and kicking Tom in the face, then the chest, then the ribs and back again. Tom Johnson. Tom fucking Johnson is down on all fours now, actually crawling. A few soft grunts escape his lips. No one cheers. Nobody jumps in. This would be like trying to attack America during the Civil War. Even to cheer for one or the other and then to lose could mean getting your own ass kicked.
One more boot to Tom’s ribs, and the fire of the initial attack has faded. Tom is made of mostly muscle and concrete, and it’s become clear that Big Red who’s made of a little more chub and beach sand has kicked himself out of breath. He’s sucking in air in his black Descendants t-shirt, two continents of red on his cheeks. He can’t seem to draw in enough wind to keep the engine gassed up, so he rests his massive paws on the knees of his jeans. It’s at this moment, the stopgap in the action, that Tom staggers to his feet.
“Holy shit,” someone says.
I skulk far enough away to put the Cutlass between me and the violence, resting my elbows on its roof. Standing up straight for the first time, belly to belly, they look like a pro linebacker (Tom) in cargo shorts and a pro-offensive lineman (Red) in the moments right before Steve Young of the 49ers yells, “Hike!” The second quarter is about to begin, and my money is on Tom. I know what I’ve said about choosing a side, but who knows if I’ll ever see Big Red again? People in the crowd, also, start betting but from the safety of darkness.
“Get him, Tom,” a voice says.
“Come on, Red,” another one shouts. I pound the roof of the Cutlass and wish for a bag of popcorn and a hot dog. This kind of shit happens every Friday night in A-Town. I’m seventeen, and I still can’t get enough. Big Red and Tom mean-mug each other for a long thirty seconds, neither moving, just three feet apart.
Now, it’s really about to go down. Even the trees can feel it.
But rather than crushing his opponent in the name of revenge, Tom surprises everyone and takes off sprinting back up the hill toward the gate. He keeps on sprinting … off of Boswell’s property all together. No shit.
This confuses all of us. We’re cranky, dissatisfied. We can’t believe our biggest gladiator has just disappeared. We’re hoping he’ll return with a vengeance if we just wait him out, but he never does. I will hear later that he’ll keep sprinting home the entire six miles to his parents’ house. Maybe getting your ass beat with a head full of shrooms is enough to take down Tom Johnson. Who knows? Maybe the shrooms were telling him to get the fuck out of this town and never come back.
We kick the dirt. Most of us are stewing in the letdown of a war without an ending, unsure now of which way our night will turn. We have to keep looking. We chug and crush our empty beer cans. We, who have lost so often, love a fight for the way it suspends us in the moments just before someone must win. In those moments, we are floating closest to being the most alive. We’ve grown up watching Hulk Hogan body-slam Andre the Giant. We’ve watched Mike Tyson chew the ear off of Evander Holyfield. In just six years, Chuck Liddell, fighting out of our home county, will knock out Randy Couture in the first round to become the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion of the World.
A fight is like the path to small-town justice. A debt must be paid in flesh.
But not tonight, apparently. And that’s pretty fucking disappointing, isn’t it?
Someone yells, “Boo!” Someone else cranks Sublime on a boombox. After a few more beers, the party continues as if nothing has happened, as if some wide mouth of water opened for a moment on an island. Two men elbowed and bit and crawled for that brief moment before that same island flooded over again and was forgotten. Being forgotten, sometimes, that’s what living in a town as small as mine feels like.
A few minutes is all it takes before Big Red, too, with nothing else to do, whispers back into the trees. How sad is it that everyone is just an extra in the movie of somebody else’s life?
The fire softens, and I’m wondering how drunk Toby might be and where Toby might be. He’d been guzzling from a plastic water bottle full of Popov in the van on the way over, and it’d been three quarters gone by the time we parked. The mystery of where Bat is also continues, so I walk up the hill alone, looking again, not wanting to be as sober as I am.
A few girls in a group pass a weed pipe around on the cement foundation of what will in two more years be Boswell’s dad’s house.
“You guys seen Toby?” I ask.
“Think I saw him and Jenny over there.” Someone points toward the back of the property, behind the foundation. Jenny and Toby together at night has always been bad fucking news. Argue. Breakup. Hook up. Get back together. On repeat. I walk to the edge of the cement, squinting, the girls laughing behind me. At this point, I can see two people out in the field about fifty yards away. They seem to be on the ground, I assume making out in some kind of way but still mostly clothed. One of them has to be Toby because I can just define the bright white sleeves of his hoodie. There are also two dudes with their backs to me, standing halfway between Toby and me. I’m certain one of them is Benjamin.
“Jenny,” Benjamin yells. “Cut that shit and come here.”
Toby and Jenny seem startled and start to re-zip and re-clothe themselves. There is some fumbling around.
“Just leave me alone, Benjamin!” Jenny yells, her voice filled with rasp. “God, you’re such a nosy dick.” The two not-so-secret lovers stand up and separate, Jenny walking towards her brother and Toby zagging toward the top of the hill. The mystery of whether or not he’s loaded has been solved. He can barely stand.
“What up, Tobes, you OK?” I jog over to grab him. Just as I reach him and wrap his arm over my shoulder, I can hear Benjamin screaming at his sister in the distance. Just bits and pieces.
“That fucker…take advantage…you’re too drunk…you better not…bullshit…tell dad…you don’t think about,” and then his voice disappears.
“I’m not drunk!” Jenny screams loudly. “You asshole! We’re getting back together!”
“Let’s get back to the van,” I say to Toby. We’ve reached the top of the hill and are walking down toward the gate. Toby is mumbling. He’s sloppy, too, and he’s got about thirty pounds on me. The gate is in sight, and I’m wondering how I’m going to get him over it.
Then, out of nowhere…you fucking guessed it…somebody cold-cocks Toby in the back of the head. He stumbles a few feet in front of me.
The coward behind us throwing punches is Rick Inman, not Benjamin, and I’ll wonder after this why Benjamin hasn’t tried to hit Toby himself. Maybe because Benjamin is a legal adult and doesn’t want to go to jail. Maybe he is a pussy in a polo shirt (as many other people who are seventeen will say, including me). Maybe he’s just somehow gotten his drunk friend, Rick, to throw his punches for him by telling Rick a story about Toby taking advantage of his sister, a story which, even she keeps shouting, isn’t true. That’s the power of a good story in a small town.
And look, though I absolutely love to watch a fight, I’ve never been a fighter myself. I respect those of my good buddies who are more than I can ever say in writing, but I’m just not rugged enough to wager my whole body like that. I’m also just not strong enough. Before tonight, I’ve only ever punched one person in the face and that was Danny Neil in the seventh grade because he kept slapping the sore spot on my arm where I’d had my hepatitis vaccine. I’m not a rough dude, but I am smart enough to recognize the irony here: what kind of idiot stands this close to fist fights their whole life and doesn’t think they will finally end up in one?
Answer: me.
When Toby stumbles a few feet ahead of me after that first punch, I try to shove him further down the hill to create distance, keeping my back to Rick. Then, I try to box out Rick like I’ve done countless times before for Coach Robinson in the gym at A-Town High. But there are no referees, so Rick punches me in the back of the head, which hurts, of course, but which also, I’m certain, probably really fucks up his hand. Rick is a little bigger than Toby, meaning much much bigger than me.
“What the fuck, Rick,” I keep saying. “He’s shitfaced…what are you even doing?”
Rick keeps angling to get at Toby, but I run just enough interference for Toby to get far enough in front of me to disappear among the cars. I can’t see all of this of course because it is super dark down the hill, and I am trying to protect my head as Rick wrestles to get by me. I’m tearing at his white t-shirt like he’s some oversized center, and I’m some measly point guard trying to bang with a big man.
Finally, for some reason, after about a minute, Toby is just too far away. Rick, thankfully, gives up and walks backwards towards the concrete foundation, screaming threats into the night with both arms in the air. As he does, I’m more than a little surprised he doesn’t try to punch me in the face. The disappointed crowd who has gathered to watch us needs a win. And I’m smart enough to recognize this irony too: we always want a knockout until the person on the ground getting kicked while everyone celebrates victory … is us.
Toby and I scuttle into the van. I crank it, and we aim the Plymouth down the dirt road. Bat appears in my headlights as if by voodoo, stringy blonde hair in a mess on his head and somebody else’s makeup smudged all over his face. I muscle down the passenger window.
“Somebody jumped Toby,” I say.
Bat peels off his shirt and rams open the sliding door. “Who hit you?” He says. “Tobes, who hit you?”
“I don’t know,” Toby says. “It hurts, Bat.” He cradles his head in his hands in the back seat. The crowd, drunk and blood hungry, is starting to come down the hill toward their cars and towards us. I can’t see if Benjamin and his lackeys are among them. Truck engines are coming to life, the eyes of headlights yawning open.
“It was fucking Rick Inman,” I answer. “Just get in. Let’s roll back to Case-Dogg’s.” A car behind us honks, and I yell, “Just get in, Bat.”
I spend the fifteen-minute ride explaining to Bat what’s happened, even the part about Tom and Big Red. Bat’s gassed up and ready to rumble. He says some drunk things about true friendship to Toby and slaps his own bare chest. This is made more hilarious by the fact that he’s got purple lipstick all over his mouth from kissing someone.
We get back to Case Dogg’s house in the length of two songs by Wu-Tang. Some girl dresses Toby’s wounds in the bathroom. After the blood is wiped away, the two of them crouch into the hot tub on the back patio. She tucks his brown hair behind his ear and keeps whispering sweet reassurances to him. A few feet away at a plastic patio table, I tell Case-Dogg what’s happened and guzzle a couple of Bud Lites, rubbing the sore spot on the back of my own head.
Some time with beers and conversation passes here. I’m still not sure how much.
When I come back into the kitchen to grab a bottle from the fridge, Toby’s older brother has somehow appeared, leaning against the counter. He’s in college a few towns away, so this is surprising. He’s tan with perfect teeth, like a boardshorts model. Joining him are about eight dudes, all older than us, a few older brothers, a couple older skate crew dudes who’ve always had our backs. I’ve no idea how they’ve all gotten word of what’s happened so quickly and are ready to respond. I see a few rolls of pennies for fist packs. One of them has his wrist taped. Most are in sweatshirts with their hoods pulled up, a few others in dark-colored beanies.
I’m A-Town enough to know that this is a beatdown crew.
“You were there, right, Ephraim?” Toby’s brother asks.
“I didn’t even see it coming,” I say, nervous and fumbling in front of this audience. “He’s really wasted…I just tried to jump in between them…they got me in the back of the head too.”
“It’s all good, just tell me what happened.” Toby’s brother is trying to be calm, but his pupils are dilated. I can tell he’s on my side, so I take a deep breath. Standing there, looking at Toby’s older brother, though, I can’t help but feel a bit responsible for not fucking up Rick Inman myself, but remember, ten years after this night, I’ll be a poet, not a prize fighter.
I re-tell the night in detail for the third time, ending with “I’m pretty sure Benjamin somehow got Rick to cheap shot Toby for him or something weird like that…like something to do with Jenny or something, ya know, Toby’s ex.” Now I’m the one telling a story which, I know, will likely drive those around me to violence.
“We’ll take care of it,” Toby’s brother says, and just as they’ve appeared, poof, they are gone. Bat, still shirtless floats out of the house with them, but it’s mostly a crew of OGs. I watch through the front window of the house as all ten of them load into a black truck with a camper and accelerate down the road.
Toby and the girl from the hot tub disappear into some room together. Case-Dogg and I get loaded in the hot tub on Bud-Lite bottles and laugh about the Tom Johnson fight.
And what happens next?
Now, I suspect, you, too, might be looking for something.
You’re hungry for some A-Town justice, or you’re just here to see what it looks like when it’s served, aren’t you? Either way, you, too, are involved.
We’re looking at the past together. You’ve stuck with me. You want to know what happened next, so I will tell you.
What happened next after that black truck filled with angry young mercenaries disappeared would go down in A-Town lore for decades. I would hear this sequence of events from several different people who were there, none of whom I will ever name, even though the statute of limitations for such acts has long passed. I’ve changed the names of nearly everyone involved this night.
All I can give you is a brief montage without many details.
They made their way over to Benjamin’s house where Rick and Benjamin (who’d already graduated) were staying. One of them knocked on the door. Benjamin opened it, nonchalantly dipping his spoon into a bowl of cereal. One of them punched Benjamin, and the wet and milky Cheerios went flying all over the living room. Two of them chased Rick up the stairs to where he’d locked himself in the bathroom. Those same two beat on the door over and over, but it wouldn’t come open. They never got in.
Downstairs, one of them snatched a golf club out of Benjamin’s bag and said, “Don’t you ever fuck with this crew,” as he brought the club down repeatedly on Benjamin’s back. “You hear me mother fucker? You hear me?” While he brought it down, others in the room began wrecking the place. Glasses and plates were thrown on the floor. Frames were torn from the wall. One of them began grabbing five-gallon water jugs and lobbing them through living room windows.
Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they left, leaving Benjamin with more than a few broken ribs and two black eyes. Rick Inman never did get his, but back at school on Monday, we all accepted Benjamin’s beat down as a debt paid in full.
Listen: even at seventeen, I know that violence is wrong. I know that it is its own language, and I know some people speak it better than others, especially those who grow up in small towns. I also know I appreciate it when someone who’s dished it out, receives it back ten-fold, and I’m not sure I’ll ever feel otherwise.
Can you imagine what it might be like if every time a politician made a bad law, we all got the chance to give them one good punch in the face? Wouldn’t that make you feel a little bit better? I’m not talking about killing someone. I’m talking about reminding certain kinds of people (shady fucks) that actions can have physical consequences. In the coming age of the internet bully and the shitty politician, don’t you think a good, hard slap to the side of the head, or a heavy knuckle to the bridge of the nose might just get somebody to change their behavior? I’m not ashamed to admit I do. I know nobody really wants to get hit. I know it’s easy to screw someone over when you don’t have your actual body in the game, and I know it’s not so easy to fuck someone over in a small town and get away with it when everyone else knows where you live.
I also know you’ve listened to me awhile, but now we’re searching for the end of this together, and there’s still one more point to make about the kind of justice people like us need to find. In A-Town, a few years after the night in question, Benjamin and Jenny’s dad, Jay Miller (that’s his real name) threw some sucker punches from behind the safety of a company called Hurst Financial (also the real name).
Every town has those fast-talker, finance types. You know who I mean. Jay and a shithead named Kelly Gearhart (that’s his real name) were those kinds of people, throwing up cookie-cutter housing projects on undeveloped lands, chopping down live oaks in the name of progress, tossing a little money to the local schools for athletic equipment, or coaching youth football teams to build a rapport with the local working-class families. You could see their names on the outfield fences of baseball fields or on Colony Days Parade banners. They were constantly adding more and more investors with the promise of “local development” and “big gains” on their golden tongues. You know what happens. It’s been in the news.
Their American Dream was all a Ponzi scheme. No surprise. They kept jacking more and more dough off of their investors. Nobody was safe. They even sweet-talked four million dollars off the hometown UFC hero, Chuck Liddell. The FBI got involved. Jay got six years and rolled on Kelly Gearhart who got fourteen. Failed Indian Casino deals, arson for insurance money, private jets to sitting Congressman’s houses, city council member payoffs: you can read all about the crazy and shady dealings of these two bastards on the FBI website or with an easy Google search, and I suggest you do. Jay went to jail, of course.
But here’s what you won’t find in any newspaper. Here’s the small-town juice: before receiving his sentence and after the whole town was hip to what Jay Miller and Kelly Gearhart had done, Kelly left in the middle of the night like a jewel thief to some random farm town out in Ohio. He had the money to afford the privilege of escape.
But just like their sons had done in 1999, a beatdown crew of small-town fathers gathered in a kitchen in A-Town somewhere to figure out their next move. Unlike their sons, though, they had the internet. I’m not sure how they did it. I’m not even sure who was there or how they got all the way out there, but a crew of men my father’s age, who’d lost their money to Jay and Kelly, found Kelly at his hideout in Ohio. They showed up in the middle of the night for some analog justice, the good, old-fashioned kind.
They planted their grudge in his teeth and his cheeks and bones.
And it’s OK. You can find joy in that. I do.
Fuck Kelly Gearhart and Jay Miller. They survived. Fuck the bosses. Fuck the banks. Fuck the insurance companies. Fuck the business types.
How often in a small town does the rich guy lose, go to jail, and get his ass beat?
These kinds of outcomes, the punches thrown against the faces of the Millers and Gearharts of the world in the name of justice, they bring me great comfort. People who traffic in bending people over from behind a desk and a pen and a mountain of paperwork need to receive a punishment outside of the law, in my opinion. I need to believe this is just, and I probably always will. It’s OK, too, if you don’t agree with me. I’m imagining by now you understand that you and I were probably raised in a very different set of circumstances, but we all know small towns.
You probably believe that the law will work it out for us. As I get older, I sometimes believe that too. I’m OK with that. I hope that happens too, of course, but I also hope you can at least agree that maybe another form of payment for misdeeds is also acceptable.
That’s it. That’s what I’ve been looking for all of this time: the ability to accept some violence, unashamed. Every great fight, even Tom and Big Red’s, requires an audience, a story, and we who wish to be entertained or protected by these champions must honor their sacrifice. It is A-Town, after all. We will always be from A-Town. We are never wholly innocent. We are never not involved.
And this is what I’ve been trying to tell you: I need to believe for the rest of my life that if some shady dude punches me in the back of the head or schemes me out of my savings, a crew of my best friends from A-Town will gather together with me in the night, knock on the dude’s door, rumble our way inside, and kick the living shit out of him.