men ran over then, and one of them told Repperton to drop the jackhandle and fight fair. Repperton threw it away and waded in.
'Darnell never tried to put a stop to it? I asked Arnie.
'He wasn't there, Dennis. He disappeared fifteen minutes or half an hour before it started. It's like he knew it was going to happen.'
Arnie said that Repperton had done most of the damage right away. The black eye was first; the scrape on his face (made by the class ring Repperton had purchased during one of his many sophomore years) came directly afterward. 'Plus assorted other bruises,' he said.
'What other bruises?'
We were sitting in one of the back booths. Arnie glanced round to make sure no one was looking at us and then raised his T-shirt. I hissed in breath at what I saw. A terrific sunset of bruises - yellow, red, purple, brown - covered Arnie's chest and stomach. They were just starting to fade. How he had been able to come to work after getting mashed around like that I couldn't begin to understand.
'Man, are you sure he didn't spring any of your ribs?' I asked. I was really horrified. The shiner and the scrape looked tame next to this shit. I had seen high school scuffles, of course, had even been in a few, but I was looking at the results of a serious beating for the first time in my life.
'Pretty sure,' he said levelly. 'I was lucky.'
'I guess you were.'
Arnie didn't say a lot more, but a kid I knew named Randy Turner was there, and he filled me in on what had happened in more detail after school had started again. He said that Arnie might have gotten hurt a lot worse, but he came back at Buddy a lot harder and a lot madder than Buddy had expected.
In fact, Randy said, Arnie went after Buddy Repperton as if the devil had blown a charge of red pepper up his ass. His arms were windmilling, his fists were everywhere; He was yelling, cursing, Spraying spittle. I tried to imagine it and couldn't - the picture I kept coming up with instead was Arnie slamming his fists down on my dashboard hard enough to make dents, screaming that he would make them eat it.
He drove Repperton halfway across the garage, bloodied his nose (more by good luck than good aim), and got one to Repperton's throat that made him start to cough and gag and generally lose interest in busting Arnie Cunningham's ass.
Buddy turned away, holding his throat and trying to puke ' and Arnie drove one of his steel-toed workboots into Repperton's jeans-clad butt, knocking him flat on his belly and forearms. Repperton was still gagging and holding his throat with one hand, his nose was bleeding like mad, and (again, according to Randy Turner) Arnie was apparently gearing up to kick the son of a bitch to death when Will Darnell magically reappeared, hollering in his wheezy voice to cut the shit over there, cut the shit, cut the shit.
'Arnie thought that fight was going to happen,' I told Randy. 'He thought it was a put-up job.'
Randy shrugged. 'Maybe. Could be. It sure was funny, the way Darnell showed up when Repperton really started to lose.'
About seven guys grabbed Arnie and dragged him away. At first he fought them like a wildman, screaming for them to let him go, screaming that if Repperton didn't pay for the broken headlight he'd kill him. Then he subsided, bewildered and hardly aware how it had happened that Repperton was down and he was still on his feet.
Repperton finally got up, his white T-shirt smeared with dirt and grease, his nose still bubbling blood. He made a lunge for Arnie. Randy said it looked like a pretty halfhearted lunge, mostly for form's sake. Some of the other guys got hold of him and led him away. Darnell came over to Arnie and told him to hand in his toolbox key and get out.
'Jesus, Arnie! Why didn't you call me Saturday afternoon?'
He sighed. 'I was too depressed.'
We finisned our pizza, and I bought Arnie a third Pepsi. That stuff's murder on your complexion, but it's great for depression.
'I don't know whether he meant get out just for Saturday or from then on,' Arnie said to me on our way home. 'What do you think, Dennis? You think he kicked me out for good?'