(Jerry Rodeen, my great lifelong friend from childhood through adulthood, helped me live a full and entertaining life.  Here's one of several pieces I hope to write about Rodie and me.  All non-fiction.  All true. The "fighter" in the story here is real, though his name has been changed.  Paxton-ites might recognize him but I doubt it.  I mean him no harm for youth's foolish moments. I had a good share of them myself, as this story also reveals.)

“Stand up Frump so I can beat the shit out of you.”

Through beer be-goggled eyes, I looked up from the lawn of a farmhouse outside Paxton, Illinois. The kegger had been going on for awhile and I had tanked out two beers ago. I figured we had been drinking for four hours and it was around 11 at night.  The clover smelled pretty darned good and I had been attending to it for awhile.   

“Wut?” I said. 

“You think you’re smarter than everybody else and I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

I could see this was Jed Edwards talking.  

Sober, he always seemed to have a little burn of anger about him.  

Tonight he was on fire. I was sixteen and he was a year younger, but taller than me and ten pounds heavier.  Jed was in the quasi-hood demographic at Paxton High and I was the smart kid.  

Generally we all got a long and I had a lot of semi-hood friends. Jed’s cousin was one of them. We could work this out.  I knew I could reason with him.  This was sort of like one of those tough "story problems."  I would help Jed with his homework.  That's how smart kids got along with semi-hoods.

“Well, is Denny Short here?” I asked. 

“No, he ain’t here,” Jed said. “Short don’t come to these things. You know that.”

“Well, there you go!,” I said.  “You definitely are right!  I am pretty much smarter than anybody else here tonight.”

“Fuck you, that’s what I’m talking about.  You act like you’re smarter than everyone else!”

“No, no man,” I said.  “You don’t understand.  I don’t think that.  I know that.  When we did teacher turn around day, I was the student guidance counselor and I checked the IQ files. I’m slightly smarter than Alexa Noble and Denny is smarter than us all!”

I thought the point was clear and he’d understand. Any reasonable person would concede I was right.  Or, logically, he could go find Denny Short to fight. 

Jed’s jaw hung open for a moment.  Processing, processing.  Then he kicked at me as I crab walked away from him. He had steel-toed engineer boots. 

“That does it, goddammit, I’m gonna stomp your ass if you don’t get up.  Get up off the ground so I can beat the shit out of you.”

“Well, okay,” I said.  “But it’s not going to be much of a challenge.”

Physical contact sports came naturally to me.  Football, even rugby, always have given me great joy.  My pain tolerance is very high, and I could never remember ever being hurt in  a painful way by even the roughest tackle or block. 

Fighting I’ve never ever quite understood.  

Most of my experience with it was bigger guys who were bullies knocking me down and wailing on me.  It just didn’t hurt.  Every few swings or so, I’d ask questions like, “You getting tired?”  Or: “That’s all you got?”  It was interesting in an anthropologic sense, but what was the point?  Eventually, their arms would wear out.  

This drunk, it wouldn’t even be that hard on me. 

So I stood up and Jed pushed me hard and was about to punch me.   I looked at my watch to see how long this would take before I could get another beer.  Then Rodie grabbed Jed by his upper arm and pushed him to the side. 

“Fuck you Rodeen!” Jed said. “You think you scare me?  I’ll beat your ass and then I’ll beat his ass.”

Rodie was about my size. Which is to say, Jed was taller and heavier.  Rodie knew if we were really in trouble, he could holler over to Pig, our good friend and protector who was the size of a lawn tractor . 

But now, Rodie just stood there and said, 

“Jed why do you want to fight anybody?  Just go get a beer and let’s call it a night. Frumpy didn’t do anything to you.”

“Well, he thinks he’s smarter than everybody,” Jed said. 

Rodeen shrugged. 

“Well...he is.  That’s not his fault.  He can't help that."

“Fuck you Rodeen, let’s fight.”

Rodie gave Jed a measured look.  More of a scan really. 

I had seen it before.  It went top to bottom and back, toes to nose, and nose to toes.  

Then he smiled a smile I had seen before. It was a mixture of amusement, confidence and happiness.  I had seen this process and expression when Jerry was chatting up a particularly attractive and friendly young woman.  Also, I had seen the same expression as he sized up a rib roast.  In all cases, it meant that he was confident he could fully consume what he was looking at -- and to do so joyfully.

“One thing,” Jerry said. 

“What?”

“Have you got a buck?”

“Of course I got a buck,” Jed said. 

“Well, if you want to fight me, you’ve got to pay me a buck.”

“Fuck you Rodeen, I’m not going to pay you a buck.  I’m going to beat your ass right now.”

“Nope.  I don’t want to fight.  You want to fight.  You got to pay me a buck if you want me to whip your ass.  You pay me a buck to fight me.  Or you’ve got to fight him.”

Rodie nodded his head toward me.  Jed looked at me and I gave him a pathetic shrug of my shoulders. 

Jed went for his wallet instead. 

“Oh fuck, you Rodeen, here’s your buck.”

Jed reached forward with the dollar to give it to Rodeen and Jerry grabbed the dollar.  He also grabbed Jed's  hand in a firm grip, pulled Jed forward and off balance.  

Then he whacked Jed hard -- two quick left jabs to the  jaw joint.  Both connected and Jed’s head snapped sidewards and back like a punching bag.

Rodie drove forward then, hoisting Jed up on his shoulder, jumped six inches off the ground as if doing a diving tackle, and landed hard on top of Jed who slammed into the ground with all 120 pounds of Rodie on top of him. 

They wrestled for ten seconds, Rodie pinned him and poured it on until you could hear Jed grunt, “Give.”

“Are you done, motherfucker?” Rodeen said. 

“Done...” Jed said in a muffled tone, the fight all out of him. 

“Let me hear it, are you DONE?”

“Done!”

“If I let you up are you done tonight. No fighting with Frumpy or anybody.”

Done, Jed said.  All done. 

Rodie got up and backed off.  Jed stayed down.  After a couple of minutes, he stood to one knee and mumbled. 

“Fuck you Rodeen, you cheated.  I could beat you in a fair fight.”

Rodeen, who had sinus problems his whole life, snorted up a huge lugie, and spit it past Jed’s right shoulder. 

“That costs five bucks,” he said. “Come back when you get smart enough to fight somebody.”