The Fancy Dancer

night was now a “roaring and ravening lion.”
    Why? I asked myself.
    The three men weren’t doing any fancy Kung Fu stuff. They weren’t even fighting like James Bond in the movies. They were just kicking the shit out of each other in the good old American way, the kind of gutter slugging that’s as much a part of the Bicentennial as Betsy Ross.
    Vidal took a punch in the gut and reeled back
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    against the dank old brick wall. As one of the Smiths rushed to pin him against the wall, Vidal recovered and doubled him up with a chop of his own into the gut. Then he kneed the Smith neatly in the groin, making him yell hoarsely, and shattered him with a right to the jaw. The Smith crashed down among the already dented and spilled garbage cans, and his head came to rest between a gallon milk carton saying Meadowbrook Dairy and a pile of greasy potato peelings.
    The other Smith was thrown off balance by his brother falling against him, but he recovered and tried to rush Vidal too. Vidal slammed him with a right, then a left, then a right, chopping him pitilessly to pieces like an Indian Muhammad Ali and the other Smith went crashing down in the garbage too, across some clattering soda bottles.
    “I’m calling the police,” the woman shrieked from above. She must be one of the few guests in the Rainbow Hotel—her window was the only one lit in the whole dank wall.
    Vidal leaned panting and gasping with pain against the cold blackened bricks. His nose and mouth were bleeding and he rubbed them with his hand.
    “Vidal,” I said, going toward him.
    He looked up dully, panting like a wounded animal. After a moment, his eyes softened just a little with recognition.
    “Get the hell out of here before Winter comes,” I said.
    Moving stiffly with pain, Vidal looked for his precious high-crowned black hat, and found it lying in a dry dusty curled-up mud puddle. The Smiths were stirring among the garbage cans, moaning and grunting. Bottles and cans rolled everywhere.
    I grabbed Vidal by the sleeve and pulled him out of the alley. He reeked of garbage too—his jacket was all grainy with coffee grounds.
    “Where’s your bike?” I said.
    “Up by Brown’s.”
    “My car’s here. Get in.”
    Vidal leaned back heavily against the car seat, still
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    panting raspily. I drove quickly on down Placer Street, then turned left at the next corner, around the back of City Hall.
    It occurred to me that, in a trivial kind of way, I was aiding and abetting a flight from justice. But it thrilled me too. Vidal’s presence there in the car became something overwhelming in a curiously physical kind of way. Jesus had said that if you did something for the least of His children, you did it for Him. For almost the first time in my life, I had a frighteningly real sense of His existence right there in the car beside me.
    Vidal’s nose was bleeding down onto his shirt and his silver necklaces. So, at the next comer, I stopped the car again and wordlessly gave him my handkerchief.
    Vidal mopped his nose with it and winced.
    “Broken?” I asked, feeling as if I had touched the Holy Grail.
    “Dunno.” He wiggled it. “Don’t think so.” He grinned. “A nose as gorgeous as mine shouldn’t get broken.”
    Like last night, he reeked of sweat, beer, leather and pot, only worse. But somehow it didn’t offend me. A half ounce of the stuff was even sticking out of his jacket pocket in a worn Baggie. It must have come out in the fight.
    "For Chrissake, hide your dope.” I said, pushing it back in his pocket. “Are you asking for trouble?”
    He sat staring ahead as we stopped at the second red light on Main Street, by the corner of the Cottonwood Bank and Trust. He was still holding the handkerchief to his nose. The handkerchief was soaked bright red, and for some reason the sight of his blood horrified me.
    Then he said softly, “No, I’m not really asking for it.”
    “You shouldn’t smoke that crap,” I said. “One reason, plain and simple. It takes away your motivation. And you already told me motivation is your big problem.”
    The light changed to green, and we turned out onto Main Street. The marquee of the Rialto Theater was still lit—there was only one show on Sunday evenings now. The cosmetics and boxes of candy in the drugstore window were lit with a gruesome fluorescent clarity of pink, blue and yellow. Main Street was just as deserted as before—except that Winter s squad car was now shooting down it with the red