Jake and Scott are laughing as we walk back to our tent, but I don’t feel so great. I wish we did not make that little kid cry. I know the Giants fan was stupid to wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game, and it is really his own fault that his son was made to cry, but I also know that what we did was unkind, and this is the sort of behavior Nikki hates, what I am trying—
I feel his hands explode through my back, and I stumble forward and almost fall down. When I turn around, I see the big Giants fan. He is no longer wearing his hard hat; his son is not with him.
“You like making little kids cry?” he says to me.
I’m too shocked to speak. There were at least fifty men chanting, but he has singled out me. Why? I wasn’t even chanting. I wasn’t even pointing. I want to tell him this, but my mouth won’t work, so I just stand there shaking my head.
“If you don’t want a problem, don’t wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game,” Scott says.
“It’s just bad parenting to bring your son down here dressed like that,” Jake adds.
The mob quickly forms again. A circle of green uniforms surrounds us now, and I think this Giants fan must be crazy. One of his friends has come to talk him down. The friend’s a small man with long hair and a mustache—and he’s wearing an Eagles shirt. “Come on, Steve. Let’s go. They didn’t mean anything. It was just a joke.”
“What the f**k is your problem?” Steve says, and then shoves me again, his hands exploding through my chest.
At this point the Eagles fans begin chanting, “Ass—hole! Ass—hole! Ass—hole!”
Steve is staring into my eyes, gritting his teeth so the tendons in his neck bulge like ropes. He also lifts weights. His arms look even bigger than mine, and he is taller than me by an inch or two.
I look to Jake for help, and I can see that he looks a little worried himself.
Jake steps in front of me, puts his hands up to suggest that he means no harm, but before he can say anything, the Giants fan grabs my brother’s Jerome Brown memorial jersey and throws Jake to the ground.
I see him hit the concrete—my brother’s hands skidding along the blacktop—and then blood is dripping from his fingers and Jake’s eyes look dazed and scared.
My brother is hurt.
My brother is hurt.
MY BROTHER IS HURT.
I explode.
The bad feeling in my stomach rockets up through my chest and into my hands—and before I can stop myself, I’m moving forward like a Mack truck. I catch Steve’s cheek with a left, and then my right connects with the south side of his chin, lifting him off the ground. I watch him float through the air as if he were allowing his body to fall backward into a pool. His back hits the concrete, his feet and hands twitch once, and then he’s not moving, the crowd is silent, and I begin to feel so awful—so guilty.
Someone yells, “Call an ambulance!”
Another yells, “Tell ’em to bring a blue-and-red body bag!”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because I find it hard to speak. “I’m so sorry.”
And then I am running again.
I weave through the crowds of people, across streets, around cars, and through horns blaring and cursing drivers screaming at me. I feel a bubbly feeling in my midsection, and then I am puking my guts out onto the sidewalk—eggs, sausage, beer—and so many people are yelling at me, calling me a drunk, saying that I’m an ass**le; and then I’m running again as fast as I can, down the street away from the stadiums.
When I feel as though I am going to throw up again, I stop and realize I’m alone—no more Eagles fans anywhere. A chain-link fence, beyond it a warehouse that looks abandoned.
I vomit again.
On the sidewalk, outside of the puddle I am making, pieces of broken glass glint and sparkle in the sun.
I cry.
I feel awful.
I realize that I have once again failed to be kind; that I lost control in a big way; that I seriously injured another person, and therefore I’m never going to get Nikki back now. Apart time is going to last forever because my wife is a pacifist who would never want me to hit anyone under any circumstance, and both God and Jesus were obviously rooting for me to turn the other cheek, so I know I really shouldn’t have hit that Giants fan, and now I’m crying again because I’m such a f**king waste—such a f**king non-person.
I walk another half block, my chest heaving wildly, and then I stop.
“Dear God,” I pray. “Please don’t send me back to the bad place. Please!”
I look up at the sky.
I see a cloud passing just under the sun.
The top is all electric white.
I remind myself.
Don’t give up, I think. Not just yet.
“Pat! Pat! Wait up!”
I look back toward the stadiums, and my brother is running toward me. Over the next minute or so, Jake gets bigger and bigger, and then he is right in front of me, bent over, huffing and puffing.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m so, so sorry.”
“For what?” Jake laughs, pulls out his cell phone, dials a number, and holds the small phone up to his ear.
“I found him,” Jake says into the phone. “Yeah, tell him.”
Jake hands me the phone. I put it up to my ear.
“Is this Rocky Balboa?”
I recognize the voice as Scott’s.
“Listen, the ass**le you knocked out—well, he woke up and is super pissed. Better not come back to the tent.”
“Is he okay?” I ask.
“You should be more worried about yourself.”
“Why?”