‘Look, I’m sorry I flipped you the bird,’ Sanderson says. ‘Heat of the moment. But you changed lanes without—’

‘Look what you did to my truck!’ Tat Man says. ‘I ain’t had it but three months!’

‘We need to exchange insurance information.’ They also need a cop. Sanderson looks around for one and sees only rubberneckers, slowing down to assess the damage and then speeding up again.

‘You think I got insurance when I can barely make the payments on that bitch?’

You have to have insurance, Sanderson thinks, it’s the law. Only a guy like this doesn’t think he has to have anything. The rubber testicles hanging under his license plate are the final proof.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you let me in, asshole?’

‘There was no time,’ Sanderson said. ‘You cut across, you never blinked—’

‘I blinked!’

‘Then how come it isn’t on?’ Sanderson points.

‘Because you knocked out my fucking taillight, nummy! How am I supposed to tell my girlfriend about this? She fronted the fucking down payment! And get that fucking shit out of my face.’

He strikes the insurance card and registration, which Sanderson is still holding out, from Sanderson’s hand. Sanderson looks down at them, stunned. His papers are lying on the road.

‘I’m going,’ Tat Man says. ‘I’ll fix my damage, you fix yours. That’s how it’s going to work.’

The damage to the Subaru is far worse than the damage to the absurdly oversize pickup, probably fifteen hundred or two thousand more, but that isn’t what makes Sanderson speak up. It isn’t being afraid the lug will get away clean, either – all Sanderson has to do is write down the number of the plate above those hanging rubber testes. It isn’t even the heat, which is whopping. It’s the thought of his gorked-out father sitting there in the passenger seat, not knowing what’s happening, needing a nap. They should be halfway back to Crackerjack Manor by now, but no. No. Because this happy asshole had to cut across traffic. Just had to scoot under that green arrow before it went out, or the world would grow dark and the winds of judgment would blow.

‘That’s not how it’s going to work,’ Sanderson says. ‘It was your fault. You cut in front of me without signaling. I didn’t have time to stop. I want to see your registration, and I want to see your driver’s license.’

‘Fuck your mother,’ the big man says, and punches Sanderson in the stomach. Sanderson bends over, expelling all the air in his lungs in a great whoosh. He should have known better than to provoke the driver of the pickup truck, he did know better, one look at those amateur tats and anyone would have known better, but he still went ahead because he didn’t believe this would happen in broad daylight, at the intersection of Commerce Way and Airline Road. He belongs to the Jaycees. He hasn’t been punched since the third grade, when the argument was over baseball cards.

‘That there’s my registration,’ Tat Man says. Big streams of sweat are running down the sides of his face. ‘I hope you like it. As for my driver’s license, I don’t have one, okay? Fuckin don’t. I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble, and it’s all your fuckin fault because you were jerkin off instead of looking where you were goin. Fuckin ringmeat!’

Then Tat Man loses it completely. Maybe it’s the accident, maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s Sanderson’s insistence on looking at documents Tat Man doesn’t have. It might even be the sound of his own voice. Sanderson has heard the phrase he lost it many times, but realizes he has never taken in its full meaning until now. Tat Man is his teacher, and he’s a good teacher. He laces both of his hands together, making a double fist. Sanderson has just time enough to see there are blue eyes on Tat Man’s knuckles before he’s hit in the side of the face with a sledgehammer that drives him back against the newly distressed right side of his car. He slides along it, feeling a prong of metal tear his shirt and the skin beneath. Blood spills down his side, hot as fever. Then his knees buckle and he lands on the road. He stares down at his hands, not believing they are his hands. His right cheek is hot and seems to be rising like bread dough. His right eye is watering.

Next comes a kick to his wounded side, just above the beltline. Sanderson’s head hits the right front hubcap of his Subaru and bounces off. He tries to crawl out from under Tat Man’s shadow. Tat Man is yelling at him, but Sanderson can’t make out any words; it’s just wah-wah-wah, the sound adults make when they’re talking to the kids in the animated Peanuts cartoons. He wants to tell Tat Man okay, okay, you say tomato and I say tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off. He wants to say no harm and no foul (although he feels he has been fouled quite badly), you go your way and I’ll go mine, happy trails to you, see you tomorrow, Mouseketeers. Only he can’t catch his breath. He thinks he’s going to have a heart attack, may be having one already. He wants to raise his head – if he’s going to die he would like to do it looking at something more interesting than the surface of Commerce Way and the front of his own wounded car – but he can’t seem to do it. His neck has become a noodle.

There’s another kick, this time in the high meat of his left thigh. Then Tat Man gives a guttural cry, and red drops begin to splash the composition surface of the roadway. Sanderson at first thinks it’s his nose – or maybe his lips, from the double-handed blow to his face – but then more warmth splashes the back of his neck. It’s like a tropical rain shower. He crawls a little farther, past the hood of his car, then manages to turn over and sit. He looks up, squinting against the dazzle of the sky, and sees Pop standing beside Tat Man. Tat Man is bent over like a man suffering serious stomach cramps. He is also groping at the side of his neck, which has sprouted a piece of wood.

At first Sanderson can’t understand what has happened, but then he gets it. The piece of wood is the handle of a knife, one he’s seen before. He sees it almost every week. You don’t need a steak knife to cut the kind of chopped meat Pop always has at their Sunday lunches, a fork does the trick very nicely, but they bring you a knife, anyway. It’s all part of Applebee’s service. Pop may no longer remember which son comes to visit him, or that his wife is dead, he probably no longer even remembers his middle name, but it seems he hasn’t lost all the clever ruthlessness that enabled him to rise from a no-college oilfields roughneck to an upper-middle-class jewelry merchant in San Antonio.

He got me to look at the birds, Sanderson thinks. The crows on the Dumpster. That’s when he took the knife.

Tat Man has lost interest in the man sitting in the road, and never casts a single glance at the older man standing beside him. Tat Man has begun coughing. A fine red spray comes from his mouth each time he does it. One hand is on the knife in his neck, trying to pull it out. Blood pours down the side of his tee-shirt and splatters his jeans. He begins walking toward the intersection of Commerce and Airline (where all traffic has stopped), still bent over and still coughing. With his free hand he gives a jaunty little wave: Hi, Ma!

Sanderson gets to his feet. His legs are trembling, but they hold him. He can hear sirens approaching. Sure, now the cops come. Now that it’s all over.

Sanderson puts an arm around his father’s shoulders. ‘You all right, Pop?’

‘That man was beating on you,’ Pop says matter-of-factly. ‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tears are coursing down Sanderson’s cheeks. He wipes them away.

Tat Man falls on his knees. He has stopped coughing. Now he’s making a low growling sound. Most people hang back, but a couple of brave souls go to him, wanting to help. Sanderson thinks Tat Man is probably beyond it, but more power to them.