I was mad at him, but there was still a lot between us, and I didn’t really want to hurt him too much. He came at me again, and I tried to just hold him off. Paul wasn’t weak. You just didn’t hold him off with no one hand. He was swinging with everything he had, like whatever it was that was messing with him he was going to get off on me. I tried to go light on him, but he was kicking my rump. I didn’t know he could fight that hard. He came at me again, and I could tell what he was going to do, but I hadn’t recovered from the last time he hit me, so all I could do was to try to get my hand up a little to block the blow. It didn’t do no good, and I felt myself going down. I didn’t even feel where he hit me at all. All I could feel was me going down. It seemed like I was taking my time about it, and I kind of remember trying to look up and see what he was doing as I went down.

I couldn’t get my head together for a while. Then I realized I wasn’t being hit. I tried shaking my head to get the cobwebs out, but that hurt. It was like in a flick. Me sitting on the floor, kind of watching things happen around me. I figured I’d better get up pretty quick before he came again, but then I heard the sound of crying. It was Paul, he was leaning against the wall, kind of holding on to it, and crying real hard. If I had been mad I stopped, and just wondered what was going on.

I went through my pockets and found some change and went out into the hall to get some sodas. There was a little kid in the hall. He looked at my face and asked me if I had been fighting.

“No,” I said, taking the second soda from the machine.

“You always look like that?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure ugly,” the kid said.

I went back into the office and closed the door. Paul was still sitting on the floor, and I went over and sat next to him. He looked at me and the Coke I offered him. He took it, and we sat for a long while just drinking the Cokes. Ox knocked on the door, and I opened it and told him to split. He asked me what happened, and I told him to split again.

“You and Paul have a fight?”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, still standing in the doorway.

“What happened?” He was trying to look over my shoulder.

“Ain’t you got no cool, man?”

“No,” he said. He didn’t either. I finally got him to split by promising him I’d tell him what happened later.

I sat down next to Paul again, and then I asked him if he wanted to talk about it.