that my intellect was about to be eclipsed by an invisible something that I had never suspected might be in me. It was terrifying—but at the same time I welcomed it, desired it, lusted for it. In that last instant of coherent thought it seemed that my body had become a stone pyramid or a cyclone that could sweep everything in front of it like colored pick-up sticks. The trucker seemed small, puny, insignificant. I laughed at him. I laughed, and the sound was as black and as bleak as that moonstruck sky overhead.
He came at me swinging his fists. I batted down his right, took his left on the side of my face without feeling it, and then kicked him in the guts. The air barfed out of him in a white cloud. He tried to back away, holding himself and coughing.
I ran around in back of him, still laughing like some farmer’s dog barking at the moon, and I had pounded him three times before he could make even a quarter turn—the neck, the shoulder, one red ear.
He made a yowling noise, and one of his flailing hands brushed my nose. The fury that had taken me over mushroomed and I kicked him again, bringing my foot up high and hard, like a punter. He screamed into the night and I heard a rib snap. He folded up and I jumped him.
At the trial one of the other truck drivers testified I was like a wild animal. And I was. I can’t remember much of it, but I can remember that, snarling and growling at him like a wild dog.
I straddled him, grabbed double handfuls of his greasy hair, and began to rub his face into the gravel. In the flat glare of the sodium light his blood seemed black, like beetle’s blood.
“Jesus, stop it!” somebody yelled.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me off. I saw whirling faces and I struck at them.
The trucker was trying to creep away. His face was a staring mask of blood from which his dazed eyes peered. I began to kick him, dodging away from the others, grunting with satisfaction each time I connected on him.
He was beyond fighting back. All he knew was to try to get away. Each time I kicked him his eyes would squeeze closed, like the eyes of a tortoise, and he would halt. Then he would start to crawl again. He looked stupid. I decided I was going to kill him. I was going to kick him to death. Then I would kill the rest of them—all but Nona.
I kicked him again and he flopped over on his back and looked up at me dazedly.
“Uncle,” he croaked. “I cry Uncle. Please. Please—”
I knelt down beside him, feeling the gravel bite into my knees through my thin jeans.
“Here you are, handsome,” I whispered. “Here’s your uncle.”
I hooked my hands onto his throat.
Three of them jumped me all at once and knocked me off him. I got up, still grinning, and started toward them. They backed away, three big men, all of them scared green.
And it clicked off.
Just like that it clicked off and it was just me, standing in the parking lot of Joe’s Good Eats, breathing hard and feeling sick and horrified.
I turned and looked back toward the diner. The girl was there; her beautiful features were lit with triumph. She raised one fist to shoulder height in salute like the one those black guys gave at the Olympics that time.
I turned back to the man on the ground. He was still trying to crawl away, and when I approached him his eyeballs rolled fearfully.
“Don’t you touch him!” one of his friends cried.
I looked at them, confused. “I’m sorry ... I didn’t mean to ... to hurt him so bad. Let me help—”
“You get out of here, that’s what you do,” the short-order cook said. He was standing in front of Nona at the foot of the steps, clutching a greasy spatula in one hand. “I’m calling the cops.”
“Hey, man, he was the guy who started it! He—”
“Don’t give me any of your lip, you lousy queer,” he said, backing up. “All I know is you just about killed that guy. I’m calling the cops!” He dashed back inside.
“Okay,” I said to nobody in particular. “Okay, that’s good, okay.”
I had left my rawhide gloves inside, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to go back in and get them. I put my hands in my