The Last Adventurer

Ruthlessly, Square-Jaw’s right fist hurtled out of the darkness and smashed into my face, shocking me sober. Before I had even realized what had happened, the ground smacked my temple with a brutal follow-up. I didn’t have time to be indignant that Square-Jaw hadn’t given me any more warning than the inflection of “so”. I was too busy rolling to the side to save my ribs from his slow and predictable kicks that thrashed through the space I had just vacated. White sparkling flashes obscured my vision of the ground as I turned about, and instinctively leapt to my feet.

The sudden movement was a mistake. The world swayed in and out of focus. The stars fell from the sky and streaked into my vision. I doggedly shook my head to see him advancing toward my position. Blood pooled in my mouth from where my teeth had ground into my gum. I spat ferociously and wiped the remnants of the reddish muck across my now muddy pants.

“Now…that…was…a mistake.” I forced out. I had meant it to sound cavalier, daring even, as if I was nonplussed by his action. I didn’t want him to know that that one punch had almost laid me completely out. Instead the words wheezed out feebly at first, and only gained some coherence at the end. He grinned at me nastily, knowing that I was only bluffing. Behind me, someone tugged at my shirt. I didn’t turn around. I knew that another sucker punch would place me back on the ground, the last place I wanted to be. “Let go – I got this.” I hissed at the invisible party with more conviction than I felt, and felt the pressure subside.

At this point he was close enough to me. My right arm darted out and impacted his face, but my quick left merely bounced off his meaty arm. Nonplussed, I checked him one soundly in his stomach, only to feel his left fist carom off the back of my head. I slid to the right – as much as I could, only to find my movement blocked by the chain link fence. I sidled left, and upon finding my foot entangled in the aforementioned bushes, lashed out with another quick series of blows which seemed to have no visible effect. While I took an off-balance shot to the ribs, I realized that my unconscious plan was not going to work. It was an unconscious plan because, while I had realized that we were probably going to brawl at a moment or two before he hit me, I hadn’t really formulated any set strategy.

In the absence of such a rigid and well-thought out plan, my body was trying to adapt by using what natural advantages it had. Square-Jaw was much bulkier than me, but I was taller, so in theory, I should have been able to dart around him Mohammed Ali style and pepper him with blows from a distance, while avoiding too many more crushing blows. It was a really good idea. It was an even more impressive idea because I hadn’t consciously thought it over. However, if I had consciously thought it over, I probably would have noticed the flaw. We were in an area where such movement was virtually impossible. We were hemmed in by bushes on the left, and the fence on the right in a three foot wide zone. This short gap was a perfect place for someone to stand to urinate, or for Square-Jaw to molest his prey unnoticed, but awful for dodging and evading.

I briefly considered my options. Heading toward the fence was nothing short of stupid as it would completely eliminate my movement choices. Heading toward the bushes was dangerous, as I could slip and fall on an errant branch and be in a bad place in a moments notice. I considered taking him down with a classic leg whip; but realized that any sort of struggle on the ground would only amplify his attributes at my expense. I had no choices. The only real viable option was finishing the fight in brutal hand to hand boxing style. The only question was whether I would be able to stay conscious enough to follow through with my decision.

I ignored Square-Jaw’s face purpling nastily in the halogen lights as it wrinkled up like a prune. Dimly, my mind finally registered the cacophony of warning sirens from my senses. Something other than the odor of stale urine wasn’t right about this situation. Belatedly, I forced my intoxicated neurons to consider what exactly had been going on behind the screen of bushes. I had just left a raging party where people had been trying to get to know each other on the dance floor and every other empty place they could find. Moreover, I knew there had been at least three other identical parties occurring simultaneously in a two hundred foot radius that had been obtaining similar results.

Viewed in this light, it was understandable that good ol’ Square-Jaw was merely trying to find a place to do what everyone else was trying to do. He had just happened to find a more private spot than everyone else locking lips and twisting tongues in public. And since I wasn’t a prude and hadn’t objected to any of the other random couples that I had passed, real hard logic demanded that I similarly ignore him as well and admit my mistake. But there was a problem.

In the few classics classes I had attended, we had been discussing Plato’s dialogues, which featured Socrates prominently. In the dialogues, Socrates mentioned his “daemon”; an object that caused him to know when he was doing something appropriate or inappropriate; and in some ways acted as his muse – or inner voice. Like Socrates, I had my own daemon. Usually my daemon was very unhelpful, providing reckless advice, rather than a steady ethical course. I also found that when I was sober, it was much more difficult to hear its proposals. In my half-drunk state, however, it was very easy to hear its strident voice. And this time, like Socrates’ daemon, it was concerned about whether it was right and or just to leave a defenseless person at the mercy of another.

Upon its urging, I considered the situation with a fresh perspective. It was a little strange that two people would choose to get busy directly next to a clump of bushes that were commonly used as a latrine. It was also a little off that the girl who was with Square-Jaw had been making sounds of terror; and it was more than passing strange that she hadn’t said anything reassuring since we had arrived. And, it was suspicious that Square-Jaw would chose to be confrontational towards us rather than sheepish, embarrassed or annoyed. All of these transparent clues made me realize why my muscles had tensed from the start of the conversation, why my senses had panicked, and why my internal daemon had actually provided helpful advice.

“I told you it’s none of your business.” Square-Jaw said, abandoning his earlier slouching form. He was big. He wasn’t tall. He was just massively built with gym honed muscles that bulged beneath his wrinkled khakis and mass produced T-shirt. “So bug off!”

I sighed. I had chosen to ignore his earlier meaningless phrases because I had still been getting my bearings. But now there was nothing to do but banter back a similarly pointless response to determine what was really going on.

“I’m making it my business.” I said, also pulling myself up to full height. After all, I might not have been in his weight class, but I was taller by at least three inches. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He growled back, stepping closer to me. “I told you, that you should just leave.”

“Perhaps.” I said, staring down at him, while ignoring the whispers of my friends behind me that were wondering if we should leave. “I’m more interested in how she’s doing. If she tells me to leave, I’ll be on my way.” At this point, everyone fell completely silent and stared. Only then, did we notice that the girl we had seen on arriving was shaking horribly, and that the noises we had heard were her crying. She refused to make eye contact with anyone and simply stared at the ground. “Alright, friend.” I said sarcastically. “You’re right. We’re leaving. Only she’s coming with us.”

“This doesn’t concern you.” The square-jawed hulk muttered at me. “Why don’t you just bug off and mind your own business.”

I considered what he said for a second. It was the small hours of the morning. It was past two, but not quite three. Many hours before, the streetlights had all switched to flashing red. The sidewalk lamps were tiredly waiting for dawn with their dim, bug occluded casings. And it was after two. Somewhere, at some time and place, someone had told me that nothing good ever happened at two in the morning. If the statement I had heard was true, my staggering group of friends and I were in deep trouble. It was trouble because if there was an absence of good at two, there was probably negative good at every moment beyond that point.

Fortunately, I wasn’t sure if the statement was true, so I didn’t have to mentally figure out when exactly, good started to trickle back into the world. I really didn’t think that good ever left the world on a daily basis, but if I was to assume that it did disappear, I would further hypothesize that it probably returned around sunrise. Just as my brain was about to continue to chase the preceding reasoning down whatever rabbit hole it had come from, I stopped and took a slow, deep breath and steadied myself. Such incomplete, fuzzy logic was a direct result of consuming too many warm cans of basement beer from whatever fraternity house we had just left. I realized that hazy or not, I had to focus on the problem.

Overdrinking wasn’t the problem. Since we were walking home, the only threat to society that existed was potential public urination, which for tonight, was something that appeared highly unlikely. It seemed much more probable that someone would fall over as they staggered along, and begin to rant against the earth’s quick rotation, or that someone else would begin some sort of rambling diatribe that would surely end with something to do with something being “the greatest”. Walking might be a problem for some people, but that was what friends were for – to support other friends, because at times like these, four legs were better than two. I wondered why I was so unconcerned about people peeing, because more often then not, that was what happened, despite the walk only taking ten minutes at a slow stagger.

Abruptly, the pieces came together. We had been drinking and had decided to leave, because it was after two and the music had stopped. We had passed the bushes where SC almost always pulled his pants off when we had heard the noises. At first we had thought the noises were made by SC because he couldn’t get his pants off to pee, even though whimpering seemed a little odd, even for him. Once we had looked back at him, and saw that he wasn’t making the noises, we had converged in a huddle to whisper about what we thought had been going on. The huddle had nominated me to investigate. I had gone through the bushes, and found a young woman partially dressed making the noises next to the hulking gentleman who immediately stood up once he realized that they had an audience.

Whatever we had stumbled upon, that was the problem. That, the phrase I had just heard, and the whole situation. I also had a small problem. Square-jaw was looking at me like I was an idiot, because I hadn’t responded to his statement.

“Yeah? Says who?” I replied lamely, instead of just turning around and writing off the whole incident as a drunken mistake.

Ironically, it was this step backward that placed me in the most danger I had been in throughout the whole incident. Whoever was driving the car suddenly had their “Holy Crap, I just hit a pedestrian” moment. Or maybe the moment was triggered by the passengers who were probably having their own collective panic attacks. It didn’t matter. Someone’s foot slammed down on the gas and the six cylinders of bloodthirsty death again roared forth, dragging the rest of the chassis along at me once again. I jumped backward to avoid the dented fender headed directly at my right knee. Off balance, I tottered back and forth for a second before collapsing onto my butt on the sloping grassy hill that had cushioned my fall a moment before. Stupefied, I stared at the streaking red headlights disappearing over the slight rise ahead.

I considered leaping to my feet, placing all of my remaining energy into my legs, and running down the car at the next stoplight, pulling the driver out of the window, and pummeling him ruthlessly in retribution for nearly killing me. Becoming a vigilante of justice seemed like a good idea for a second. I thought the idea might not be totally crazy and have some merit. I knew that the next stoplight was less than a tenth of a mile away, just beyond my field of vision. I knew that it was always inevitably red. I also knew that the light always stubbornly stayed red for at least six minutes before reluctantly switching over to green. And, I knew that I could easily cross the distance, catch the car at the light, and give the driver a handsome beat-down because I was that angry.

My heart was still thumping in staccato rib-cracking “glad to be alive” beats. The air around me was crackling with the rage that was bleeding out of my soul. Absently, I waived my gritty left hand over my right arm and felt the blast furnace heat of my anger. It was unquestionable. Everything that was good and decent in my mind was being consumed by hatred. I was going to get up any second, and head up the street, and consummate all sorts of unspeakable deeds. And just as that thought crossed my mind, somewhere off to my left, a finger reached out and poked me in the arm.

“Hey….guy.” The voice that was attached to the finger said. “Are you ok? I – we saw the whole thing – and – do you need help? You’ve just kind of been sitting here for ten minutes after it all happened.”

I looked down. The scrapes had mildly clotted. There was a persistent pounding in my head. And the damndest thing was that while I was frustrated about everything, the dormant anger had disappeared light years away without doing any harm.

“Hello?” The voice said, prodding me again. “You there? You seemed to go all catatonic for a second. Someone went to call for help, so…”

“Stop poking me.” I said instantly. I stood up and looked around. There was a small gaggle of people surveying me from the relative safety of the sidewalk. The prodder was a prematurely balding guy. “No, don’t call the police. I’m just going to go home. I’m fine.” That, I thought, was all the conversation that was really needed.

“Wait!” He said, following me, unsure. “Should you even be walking? What about broken bones? What about brain trauma? What about a police report?”

“What about it?” I growled, now tired of his Good Samaritan vibe. “I was too busy to get a license plate number because I was a little preoccupied. I don’t have any broken bones. And my brain is as good as it gets, because I’m talking to you.”

“Oh.” He said, crestfallen. “I didn’t get the plate either. But you got hit by a car! And survived! That should count for something! I mean, that’s tough…”

At this point my concussion tuned him out. Somehow, we exchanged phone numbers. A week later, I received a call from him. I didn’t remember him, or his name, until he related almost all of the conversation. I then grudgingly acknowledged that I had some loose memory fragments about our meeting, and asked bluntly why he had called. At first, he gave me the run-around, but eventually, he admitted that he was the Captain of the school lacrosse team and that he needed “tough hombres” like me for his team. I thought about telling him where he and his team could go, but because of the lingering head trauma, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. A week later, I attended my first practice; and a week after that, I was buying used equipment out of a van, despite never having played lacrosse ever in my life. It was a decision that did what the accident could not do: destroy my routine.

Technically, the first thing that rattled my skull was the knobby pavement of the dorm driveway. The second thing that hit my brain slightly before the internal warning sirens was the indignant feeling that I had been cheated of my five minutes of route, undisturbed, unobstructed time. In fact, I was again vertical and moving before I had even assessed whether I was actually hurt. I think that some part of my body and mind actually thought that if I started walking up the street, I could still have three to four of those remaining minutes. I probably even took a step up the street to try and capture those minutes. But that was probably just my body acting under the aftereffects of shock. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t thinking clearly because I had just been hit by a car. Now that really was the first thing I should have realized. The words rattled at memories and spanged around the fortunately intact confines of my skull. Somewhere, my internal narrator spun out those simple one syllable words in slow, echoing, quadraphonic sound like this: “Hiiiiiit byyyyy aaaaaaaa carrrrrr”.

Instantaneously, the memories flooded my body with the accompanying pain and rage. The mundane soporific haze disappeared in a flash of recollection. I had been one step into the intersection when the grimy bumper attached to the battered American car flew over the last broken speed bump, careened up the hill, and roared up at my legs. My eyes didn’t have time to traverse the distance to the driver’s or passengers stunned eyes. Instead, they were locked on the splattered metal grill with the ludicrous hood ornament that was targeting my abdomen. My life wasn’t flashing through my head. I was thinking about the last step I had taken before the rusted chrome-covered monstrosity had come to devour my life. Like everything else, it had been automatic. Like every day, I had checked the pitted and potholed driveway with my eyes before not-breaking stride. And, as always, my foot had fallen midway across its desolate space, exactly on the largest center crack, roughly three feet from the safe sidewalk.

It was three feet – maybe two and one half feet – maybe even less between my life and certain traumatic death. The exact distance was an immaterial, invisible expanse. There was a similar expanse in front, and a similar expanse behind. One half of my body was mid-air and mid-stride. The accelerating car perfectly bisected my body; everything was halfway and in limbo. Then the half-second ended. Hand hit hood and whipped past the pointless ornament, which tore skin hungrily, drawing first blood. Irresistible momentum passed through hand into arm, lifting my torso. My now airborne hip whacked off the top of the dirty grill, pushing my flying body even further from the earth’s surface. My back bounced across the dusty hood, dragging my protesting legs along. My head braced for the next skip which would surely propel hands, feet, and eyes into the jagged broken windshield teeth. Instead, my body was mid-air with no man-made objects around it. Then, instant impact, gravel burrowing and furrowing itself into every exposed area, air exhaled through brute force and complete mental confusion.

One foot away from where I had landed, I slowly shook my head at the jumble of memories and finally realized that I should check to see if I was injured. I pointlessly wiggled my toes and moved my legs. My fingers and arms rested at their normal angles. I could breathe and think and recollect. I had bounced across the hood and hit the ground. I laughed nervously. Aside from the blood seeping from a half-dozen places on my body, I appeared to be fine. It was crazy. I was fine because my unconscious routine had placed me in the exact spot I had needed to be in to survive. I paused and tried to understand just how and why it could have happened, but couldn’t even begin to formulate a theory. I took a breath and looked up. The stopped headlights of the car stared back at me. The mechanics of how I had survived fled from my brain and the laughter vanished from my throat. I cracked my neck, and took a step back towards the car.