A young couple, pretty enough. They looked like they didn't get outside much, and they looked like they had money. They didn't belong here, that much was certain. Whatever their accent was, it wasn't local.
They were in the shop about five minutes. They picked up a few things, she made a small purchase, and they left. I immediately came out of the office and motioned to Butch and Wade to follow me as I headed for the back door to the alley.We have a way of showing our dislike of strangers. Maybe you've heard of us, if you ever knew anyone who passed this way. Lure you into a dim alley and gang-beat you, hold your arms back and slug you in the belly 20 times or so, and if your wife or girlfriend is with you, she gets to watch your stomach swallow every hot fist and your mouth sob out every bellyache. It doesn't do any lasting harm, it doesn't leave any blood, but it makes a point: Deep and unshakeable humiliation.
What if they go to the authorities? I guess you haven't noticed; I'm the sheriff in this county. I am the authorities.
Lorraine behind the counter is a good country girl, and she frowned at us. "It shouldn't take three of you to beat up that pot-bellied wimp. Are you afraid of the girl?"
I replied, as we passed toward the door, "No, sweetheart, these thugs are going to hold poor Belly-Boy upright so I can get my fist-range on his stomach while I beat him up. A pot-bellied oaf like him will melt to a puddle the first time he feels my fist pin his belly-button to his spine. Close up the shop and come watch."
She said nothing, but she locked the register and went with me. Lorraine's reliable. She loves to watch a good belly-beating. Plus she might be handy if there was trouble with Belly-Boy's girlfriend or wife. Whatever she was, I knew Lorraine could take all the breath out of that softbellied bitch, with a discrete judo-chop to her stomach.
Why was this hapless wimp about to get his belly raped by my fist? I couldn't tell you exactly. I might blame it on this or that they said while in the store, the way Lorraine flirted with him, but it wasn't that. It was something about him, his total unawareness of his own unmasculinity.
Guy with a belly like his ought to hide it in shame. But he seemed to think nothing of it. He had a belly that looked like it belonged on some sensual bellydancer, not on a man. And yet he acted like the world was not supposed to notice that he could be brought down in the dust so damned easily, through his utter vulnerability. He looked like the kind of boy that grows up never raising a fist, either in sport or self-defense, in his life.
Well, his introduction to sadistic, personal violence was going to be one to remember. I kept flexing my left wrist, hungry with anticipation of my clenched fist poled into his belly, blasting through his belly-bulge like a cannonball through a cloud. A ram-punch up under his ribcage; his breath is mine to take. I hungered, too, for the satisfaction I'd feel when I watched his face melt into bellypunch ache-agony -- my gift to him -- and Belly Boy's eyes register the horrifying realization that a stranger just walked up to him and plunged knuckles into his belly and brashly stole his breath right out of his body.
And I wanted to watch that girl as she watched her man fold and grovel and blubber and suffer in the dust at my feet.
The shop rear door opened into the alley we always used for this. They wandered innocently down it, following the directions they got in the shop. When they saw it was a dead-end, they turned back, but we blocked the way, far from the street. No one but us could see or hear what went on.
"You know this is private property," I said to put them off guard, as we approached them. They both started talking at once, explaining.
I gave him no warning. A pot-belly oaf like him doesn't deserve warning. I tensed up and plowed my fist into his stomach. Hit him right in the sweet spot, too. Plunked my fist plumb into his belly, and I felt his gut part like the Red Sea.
He heaved up an "OOF!" that echoed off the brick walls, and we all stood and watched him stagger backward maybe 10 steps, then collapse in the middle of the alley and suffer there, fine and clean, down on the filthy pavement. He was nothing but a twitching, oooooo-ing, writhing mess of bellyache.
The thugs hauled him up roughly to his feet. Poor Belly-Boy's hands never left his gut until Wade and Butch gripped him firmly by the elbows and pulled his arms back. In manhandling him they had bunched up his shirt, so his once-punched stomach stuck out bare. Wade kept one big hand gripped in the hair at the back of Belly-Boy's head and held him forward so he had to look down at his own stomach served up for my fists. He was upright and belly-out; just the way I like my victims.
I glanced at the girl. Lorraine hovered near, but the wife seemed stunned and rooted to the spot with her knees unsteady and her hands up to her mouth and her face frozen in a mask of shock. But she also seemed to be blushing.
Potbelly Boy finally had enough breath in his soft stomach to croak out, "Please, no more." What a pussy.
It came out his mouth as "no mo-OOFF! I had changed his tune with a swift uppercut in his belly.