Chaper 1.B

The smarter young men of the football team knew then and there that this wasn’t a fight they could win. They were able to snap out of the spell woven upon them by the hateful words of Eugene and their inner-cavemen telling them to protect their women. They were about to see this situation for what it was: They had come here to beat an innocent man and the plan was failing horribly. They couldn’t beat Hank two on one, Hank knew it, Jerome knew it, and Eugene knew it.

“Everyone dogpile him!” Shouted Eugene, and they sure tried. About six of them came forward, the ones that had been drinking before coming here and the ones that had the most testosterone boosted false bravado. If Hank thought they were playing for keeps before, now he knew it down to the marrow in his bones. He could see the hatred in Eugene’s eyes. Suzie Q. watched the madness unfold with an elevated view since she was standing in the back of Hank’s truck bed still. She saw something that even Hank couldn’t see: Eugene grabbed an empty bottle of beer and broke it over the corner of a brush-guard on one of the trucks. He was aiming to stab Hank! Suzie wasn’t sure if Hank would be able to fight off seven attackers plus Eugene trying to stab him. She knew she had to help.

Back at the Fray, Hank was breaking arms and wrists left and right while backpedaling ever closer to the lake. If he let the angry young men surround him he knew it would be over for him. He had to keep this fight at a range. Finally he felt the ground behind him begin slope down as he retreated while throwing straight kicks and the occasional jab. He knew the lake was close behind him and dark thoughts swirled through his head of the possibility of Jerome holding his head under the water while the other young men kicked him to death. He hadn’t felt fear like that since he was a child. This fear came to a dark swirling mass in his core where something new was born… Righteous anger.

Who were these men to try to attack Hank on one of the best nights of his life, and for what? Having too much fun? Hank grabbed the closest football player by the belt and tucked his chin into his chest knowing he was going to take some punches to the face to pull this move off. He yanked the man forward via his grip on the man’s belt. As the man came forward he threw all kinds of jabs at Hank’s chiseled face. Hank sprang up and threw his knee straight into the man's sternum, he felt it crack, one less in the fight. From that point he tried to shift the fight so that they were moving horizontally to the shore instead of back towards the lake, the thought of being held under the water still worried him. Two came at him at once, angry at what he had just done to their friend. Hank straight kicked one as hard as he could directly above the man’s knee and the man went down crying, another one out of the fight.

The second one fell back on his football training and tried to lean his body low and tackle Hank, but again Hank the Rock Breaker was just too dense. The tackle only staggered Hank ever slightly, and he did not go down. He roared like a wild bear and brought both of his fists down onto the man’s back who was still trying to push him over. The man let out a very undignified yelp of pain and fell down, another one down. Hank decided to pick on someone who was in a much lower weight class than him for the first time in his life. He grabbed the smallest one in the bunch, planted a fist deep in the man’s stomach and then lobbed him into the lake using the back of the man’s belt as a grip.

Suzie was jogging to catch up to the mad-melee now. She could see the dark look in Eugene’s eyes, she knew she didn’t have long. She heard bones breaking in the middle of the crowd where she also knew that Hank was fighting for all he was worth. She saw Eugene trying to circle the crowd to try and sneak in and stab Hank like an opportunistic predator. She caught up to the group and managed to sneak up behind Eugene, her plan was to yank the bottle out of his hand, that’s it. She didn’t want trouble, she just didn’t want anyone to die tonight. She lunged for the bottle and locked her hands around Eugene’s wrist, on the arm he was carrying the bottle with. Eugene spun on her, anger flashed through him and he threw his arm outward hard. The broken bottle sliced across Suzie’s face and her scream was sent out through the night.

The remaining men that were attacking Hank stopped and spun around, curious to what the noise was. They saw Eugene standing there with a bloodied bottle in his hand, and the town beauty queen at his feet clutching her face trying to staunch the blood flow. All of the fight went out of them, all of the anger they had for Hank transferred onto Eugene. The giant Jerome was the first to speak “WHAT DID YOU DO!” he shouted. Hank barreled through the men that were standing around to get to Suzie. He picked her up and cradled her in his arms. He didn’t know much about first aid, but men got hurt around the gravel yard and he knew enough to keep pressure on the wound and to wrap it. He took off his shirt and started biting strips off of it. He used the strips to wrap her face and keep pressure on the wound. Her hands slipped at one point and he saw the cut ran straight from her forehead, over one of her eyes, and finally terminated around her chin, it was bad. He prayed to whatever god was up there that she wouldn’t lose the eye.

That’s when he sensed motion moving behind him, it was Eugene. He was trying to sneak off of the scene. Hank lifted Suzie up cradling her like a small child against his large frame. He looked at Jerome and spoke with the authority that can only come with grief and shock.

“GET OVER HERE, TAKE HER TO THE HOSPITAL NOW!” He shouted, and he gently handed Suzie off. Then he started slowly walking towards Eugene. Eugene who was trying to hide among the trees and other onlookers. Eugene who had instigated this whole mess.

“Where do you think you are going!” Hank shouted for all to hear. Eugene looked around knowing he was being judged by his peers. If he didn’t take Hank’s challenge, if he ran, he would always be thought of as the town coward. He knew Hank was much bigger than him, he knew Hank would probably beat him in a fight… well maybe not, what if he cheated?

Eugene slowly shifted the broken bottle he was still carrying until it was behind his back. He tried to make the gesture seem non-obvious so he could lure Hank into a false sense of confidence.

“Oh you actually want to fight now, you were so busy running and crying before. I thought you had learned your lesson,” said Eugene. Hank didn’t say anything, he just kept resolutely marching forward. Eugene waited until Hank was right in front of him and then slashed out at Hank, cutting an angry red line across Hank’s chest. Hank didn’t even acknowledge the wound. He grabbed the hand Eugene had the bottle in and then squeezed until he felt his hand start to break. Hank was nice enough to let him drop the shards of glass from the bottle before he continued to squeeze. Eugene futilely beat on Hank’s chest with his hand that Hank wasn’t crushing. Hank didn’t care though. All Hank could see was red and the image of Suzie holding her beautiful face as blood pooled around her hands.

Hank roughly threw Eugene on the ground like so much trash. Eugene knew then that all of his plans had gone terribly wrong. Hank began to systematically punch every inch of Eugene. He only took one break to say something that Eugene would remember for the rest of his life.

“If you ever hurt a woman again. I’ll come to you, wherever you are, and I’ll kill you.” Then he began to beat Eugene again. Relentlessly the blows never stopped, some of the onlookers gasped in horror at the horrific beating. One of Eugene’s sycophants rushed in and tried to help him, Hank effortlessly punched the man in the stomach so hard that it would cause internal bleeding. The man fell off to the side and then Hank calmly resumed his beating until Eugene stopped crying out. Only then did he stop, when he knew Eugene was completely unconscious and wouldn’t be awake to feel the pain. Eugene had needed to be punished, he had needed this beating.

Eugene’s friends hesitantly approached Hank who was standing over Eugene now with his fists dripping in blood. One of the women who Hank had been on a few dates with was the only one brave enough to approach Hank.

“Hank, we have to take Eugene to the hospital now, okay?” Hank didn’t respond to her he just quietly walked away and got into his truck. He drove straight to the hospital where they were keeping Suzie Q. He ran straight through the ER shouting her name. The nurses on staff tried to chase the shirtless man with the seeping chest wound, Hank noticed them but he had no care for himself at this point, he had to find her. He saw Jerome standing confused covered in mud from their scuffle and blood from Suzie.

“Where is she?!” He shouted. Jerome just pointed to a curtained off section down the hall he was in. Hank kept running with the nurses still chasing him, and in his haste he almost barreled over a man of small stature, a very serious looking man. The man grabbed his arm and never let go.

“Stop right there young man.”

“Excuse me sir, let me go please. My friend is hurt I’m trying to get to her.”

“That friend you are talking about is my daughter. Look at me,” Hank did stop to assess the man. He could see some of the same features he loved in Suzie on this man, high cheekbones, a pert nose, the hazelnut hair, etc. Before Hank could ask him where Suzie was the man began to speak.

“Hank, listen to me. You are going to stay far away from my daughter. I do not give you permission to see her. If I hear about you coming anywhere near her I will call the police. Leave this hospital right now, or I will personally see you in handcuffs before the end of the night.”

Hank wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to run to Suzie to check on her and offer any support he could, but this was her father. For a split second something rushed through him, the thought of pushing Suzie’s father to the floor and finding Suzie anyway, but he threw that thought away. That’s not who he was, Hank Sr. had taught him better than that. Hank tried to plead with the man instead.

“Sir I--”

“LEAVE!” Shouted Suzie’s father with his finger pointed towards the exit.

“Yes sir.” Said Hank, resigned, for now…

As he walked back through the halls of the hospital the frantic nurses caught up to him and began expertly addressing his chest wounds.

The next day the police came and arrested Hank. The night before he had spilled his heart out to his father and told him everything. His father had sat quiet for a while and simply said:

“You did what you had to do junior.” After that his father had told him, warned him really, that he might be arrested. Hank sat quietly in his cell for two days. He did push ups and sit ups occasionally, but mostly he just sat perfectly still. Sometimes he sat so still he scared the guards. After the second day they released him. The investigative team that checked out the lake had ruled what Hank had done self-defense. This decision wasn’t made lightly by the investigators. A few investigators had even been bribed by Eugene’s well-to-do parents to “find” more evidence against Hank, but so many of the onlookers from that night had come forward and stated so clearly thank Hank had been the victim. When you have over 30 witnesses saying the only reason Eugene and the football team went to the lake was to beat Hank senselessly there really isn’t much you can do.

Eugene escaped prosecution with more payoffs from his parents and had to finish the school year in the next county over as part of whatever plea deal his parents had made. Though he couldn’t leave a hospital bed for a month after the beating Hank had given him. Hank tried to visit Suzie a couple of times at her house, but each time her father ran him off. She was in and out of reconstructive surgeries the rest of that school year, and the doctors did end up saving her eye. Hank graduated and went off for a short stint in the military, never having resolved things with Suzie. When he got back from his time in the military he actually ran into Suzie at the bank in the small town they lived in, she was working there as a teller. Suzie had treated him cordially, but coldly.

A few weeks later he got a letter in the mail from the courts, it was a restraining order stating that he had to stay away from Suzie. Hank was confused and hurt at the news of the restraining order. He didn’t know why Suzie would do something like that to him. He could never figure out why she had burned him so badly, broken his heart really. He had thought about her often when he was away in the military, she was kind of “the one that got away.” It was then that Hank decided he would never really settle down. He wasn’t a one-woman man. People were fickle, women included, he couldn’t expect people to live up the same standards he lived by, so he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t get emotionally invested, he wouldn’t give people a chance to hurt him anymore. He would become even more like the rocks he spent so much time around.

After that time seemed to slip by. Hank worked with his father in the family business. Hank built his body. Hank bedded beautiful women from all around. His life was good, if predictable. Until now of course, now Eugene was back. Eugene had finally forgotten the lesson that Hank has beaten into him. You don’t bully people, and you especially don’t bully Hank. Eugene would need another lesson...

“Eugene again! I’ll find him and rip him in half!” Hank shouted at his lawyer Saul.

“You can’t do that Hank. He has half the cops in town on his payroll and he has heard about your… less than reputable past. The man isn’t dumb he has off duty cops protecting him, if you attacked him now it would be even easier for him to steal your land and business. The media would paint you as a criminal and him as a martyr. Take the money the town is offering and get a fresh start somewhere else, besides your life doesn’t look so bad from where I am sitting,” said Saul who was openly staring at the woman who was making them coffee, still wearing nothing except a thin sheet.