
my right arm stays real white. Anyway, I don't really remember what she was wearing—I was mostly
looking at her face. And… and…
DB: Are you all right?
RH: It's just this part's hard, is all. I mean, this gal was maybe five or six years older than my daughter,
but I—well, let's say I wanted her the way a man wants his wife on a Saturday night, if you know what I
mean. And I'd never been one to horndog after kids young enough to bemy kid, and never mind that my
wife's been dead for six years. So it was kind of embarrassing, too, that even though those awful screams
were still sort of echoing in the air, here's me all of a sudden thinking with my dick.
DB: Well, sometimes, under stress, a person—
RH: Wasn't stress. I just wanted her, is all. Like I never wanted anybody. Anyways, I stared at her but
she didn't pay me no notice. Gal like her, she probably gets old coots like me staring at her twenty times
a day. She didn't say nothing to me, just marched back toward the alley. So I followed her. There was a
couple of street lights back there, so I was finally startin' to be able to see stuff. Made me feel a lot
better, I can tell you.
And just like that, before we could even get there, the screams stop. It was like someone had shut off a
radio, that's how sudden it was. So the gal, she starts to ran. Which was funny to see, because she was
wearing these teetery high heels. Purple, with bows on the backs. She had teeny feet, and these pretty
little shoes. It was kind of funny to see that.
DB: And then?
RH: Well, she could sure move in them shoes, and that was a fact. She musta been a real track star or
something. And I was right behind her. And we get to the alley, and right away I seen it was a dead end,
and I didn't want to go too far in. It's funny, I never think about the Nam no more, but that night it was
like I'd just gotten back home. Man, I was noticingeverything . I was really wired.
DB: Could you see anyone in the alley?
RH: Not at first. But then the gal says, real loud but firm, you know, like a teacher, "Let him go." And
then I seen there were two guys and they weren't standing ten feet away! Don't know how I missed them
before. One of them was this little short squirt, but he was hoisting a guy bigger than me, holding him up
off the ground! He was slamming the guy into the brick wall real hard, and the big guy's head was sort of
lolling all over the place, and he was out cold.
But then, when the gal talked, the little guy let go, and the guy who'd been doing all the screaming hit the
bricks like a sack of sand—I mean, he wasout . And the little guy marches up to us, and all of a sudden I
was just scared shitless.
DB: Did you see a weapon, or—
RH: Nothin' like that. He was just… bad, I guess. He was about a head shorter than me and he had
kind of gray skin. And one of those little black mustaches, real thin. Me, I think a man should grow a real
soup strainer or nothing at all.
Anyway, he looked like a little punk, but there was somethin' about him—I just wanted to get away
from him. It was like somethin' inside me knew he was bad, even if I couldn't see for myself exactly what