The staked Goat

the cops. For civil rights violations. You figure it out.”
    ”I can’t help you there,” I said. My cheek hurt, my chin and knees burned, and my lower back and thigh ached. Worst of all, the adrenaline had sobered me up.
    ”Ya sure ya don’t wanna go to the hospital?” asked the cabbie.
    ”I’m sure, but thanks.”
    ”Hey, citizens gotta stick together. Ya know, lotsa guys, cabbies I mean, woulda seen you get jumped and turned right around. Mebbe two or three I know woulda radioed the dispatcher to send the cops, but that’s it. Me, I think you gotta help. It’s no good to complain about things if you don’t, y’know. Then we’re like animals.” He pulled into the Marriott Key Bridge’s drop-off area and a doorman, just inside the door, reluctantly put down a magazine and started out toward us.
    ”Animals,” continued the cabbie. ”Just like those fuckin’ kids that jumped you.”
    I handed him a twenty. ”Thanks, my friend.”
    ”Thanks, buddy,” replied the cabbie.
    I turned, waved off the blinking doorman, and limped into the hotel lobby.
     

Fifteen
     
     
     
    I N THE MOVIES OR ON TV , YOU ALWAYS SEE THE HERO leap up after a brawl and be unmarked and unrestricted the next time he appears. In real life, it doesn’t work that way. Where I grew up in Southie, a lot of the kids went into amateur and then club boxing. Not as many as in the white sections of Dorchester, or almost-all-black Roxbury, but a lot. I remember the kid who lived next door. He was only eighteen years old, but after a particularly tough three-rounder, he would walk, sit, eat, and talk funny for three or four days. You take it easy, use ice, and chew carefully. You rarely call Gidget to go surfing.
    I had put ice on my cheek and thigh when I got in the night before. When I woke up, though, my right rib cage hurt like hell. I couldn’t remember getting hit there, but I showed a fist-sized bruise to match the two on my left thigh. My back ached just enough to tell me there was substantial, but not serious, damage. I did not try to touch my toes. I moved slowly to the bathroom. No blood in the urine. I turned to the sink. My right cheek, reversed as my left in the mirror, was dull red and purple, not the brighter, almost glossy red and purple you get when you don’t ice it. My chin was scraped and scabby like that of a nine-year-old who had fallen while running during recess. I realized that the ribs must have been the first hit, the one that put me down, because I had only a little swelling on the left side of my head from the bounce off the sidewalk. I thought about the cabbie’s remark on knives, and I suddenly had to use the toilet again.
    I took a long, hot bath and shaved very delicately. I ordered breakfast via room service, no orange juice. The bellboy bringing in the tray did not indicate by word or look that he thought I had been hit by a car. I tipped him a princely sum.
    I chewed breakfast on the left side of my mouth and reached for the telephone.
    Amazingly, I got J.T. right after Ms. Lost-In-Space. ”Colonel Kivens speaking, sir.”
    ”Sir?” I said. ”How often do people above colonel call you?”
    ”Who is this, please?”
    ”Christ, J.T., you sound a lot more—” I stopped. Cold. Al and I had had such a similar conversation when he called me.
    ”Who is this?” said J.T., a bit more aggressively. ”J.T., it’s John Cuddy. I’m sorry to--”
    ”John, how are you? Wait a minute, where are you?”
    ”I’m here. In D.C., I mean. I just came in from Pittsburgh. J.T., Al—”
    ”I know,” he said quietly. ”There was a blurb about it in the Post. I’m really sorry.”
    ”Yeah,” I said. ”Listen, I need some information. I need to know some things about what Al was doing in Vietnam. I’m convinced he wasn’t killed by any—”
    ”Listen,” he said knowingly. ”Everybody goes there. If I were you though, the one thing I wouldn’t miss is the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I think it’s the best.”
    ”If I meet you there, can we talk in the clear?”
    ”That’s right,” he said cheerfully.
    ”Twelve noon today?”
    ”That’s fine. Be sure to see the Spirit of St. Louis. Enjoy your stay now.”
    ”I’ll be the one with the red carnation.”
    He gave a forced chuckle and rang off.
    Terrific. Either J.T. was worried about somebody overhearing what I would say to him about Al or what he would say to me about Al. Or what he would say to anyone about anything. Just