The staked Goat

waitress, and zigzagged into another room to check my overcoat. I came back to the dance room. I stood and watched and listened as the Stones turned to the Temptations, then to the Beach Boys, then back, as my screwdriver arrived, to I think Glenn Miller and Harry James for one each.
    As nearly as I could tell, the generation gaps in the place were more apparent than real, and everybody was having a ball. I saw my waitress again, and ordered two more drinks to save her a trip. A thirtyish woman maybe five-nine came up and said I looked like I wanted to dance. I told her she was clairvoyant. We danced three rock tunes when a slow one came on. I told her thank you and turned away. I found my waitress and got the screwdrivers.
    I danced three or four more times and touched up my waitress maybe twice more for two-handers. I know I grew only dimly aware that the crowd was thinning out and that I was no longer being asked to dance. I also know I had a little trouble finding the men’s room, a little more retrieving my coat, and still a little more finding the front door as the house lights came up to ”the-party’s-over” level of brightness. I remember the bouncer asking me if I wanted a cab, but the cold air felt good again, and I waved him off, not quite completing whatever sentence I was saying. Within a few blocks, my eyes grew a little big for their sockets, the sidewalk a tad slippery from the absence of snow or ice. That struck me funny. That’s why I was having trouble walking. In Boston, there was so much ice and snow on our never-shoveled sidewalks that I was so used to allowing for it that I just couldn’t make the adjustment back to good old unadulterated concrete...
    I bounced my head off the concrete before I realized I had been hit. I remember only two of them, but later I was told there were three. I was lying on my left side. The first one I saw was the guy who bent down and sent the left jab at my right eye. I twisted my face left and back and took a glancing shot off my right cheekbone. I sent my right hand cupped, fingers stiff, up into his throat, and he pulled away, gagging and coughing.
    I levered up on my left elbow and got a wicked kick from behind, just to the left of my spinal column and barely missing my left kidney. The pain approached the paralyzing level. I reached my right hand back and got kicked in my forearm. I forced myself to roll away from the kicker and got my forearms crossed in front of my face just as he delivered his third shot with his right foot. The crotch formed by my forearms absorbed most of the force, but the toe area of his boot caught me just under the chin. I locked my hands around his calf and put my head just outside his right knee. Then I lunged up onto my knees and forward, driving my shoulder below his knee and pulling his foot into my body to dislocate the knee joint. I slipped a little, though, and as he and I went down, I felt his ankle and knee just twist funny. He yelled in pain. I took a couple of kicks to my left thigh from somebody else, which didn’t help the cause. Somebody, maybe the new kicker, put an amateurish forearm lock around my throat from behind. I got back onto my knees, and the first kicker rolled and crawled away from me. I whipped my left fist up into the forearm’s groin area but missed the target, him just releasing and running. I realized a car was pulling up, high beams on and horn honking loud and long. I also realized that I was alone on the sidewalk with my wallet intact but my clothes and me less so.
     
    ”Y’know, ya coulda been dead by now.”
    I pulled the handkerchief away, and inspected the bloodstain. I licked a reasonably clean corner of the cloth and began dabbing.
    ”I appreciate your stopping.”
    The cabbie, beefy, bald, and fiftyish, glanced up at me in his inside rear mirror. ”You’re just lucky those three wasn’t good at this yet. No knives. If they’d had knives, they woulda used ‘em, and a fuckin’ medical convention couldn’t a helped you then.”
    ”You’re probably right,” I said, looking down at the holes in the knees of my pants.
    ”You bet I am. I spotted those kids. Maybe an hour ago. They was hangin’ around the edge of the retail strip. I knew they was lookin’ for a mark, but the fuckin’ cops can’t do nothing. Used to be the cops would arrest the fuckers or at least roust them. Now, not only won’t the arrest hold up, but the fuckin’ Soo-preem Court’ll let the kids sue