uphill battle

Dean felt things before he knew them, like the bathroom tile pressing against his forehead and the prominences of his cheek. He was cold. It radiated from the inside out, pushing back against the chill of the tiles, inhabiting some amorphous space beyond the limits of his body.The first thing Dean knew was that he was awake and hadn’t been. That bit kind of slid in sideways and took a long time to think. Someone was saying words at him, but he couldn’t really hear them, not while he was still blending out at the edges into the air. He didn’t really hear it until he condensed back down, and then, Dean could hear John shouting.

John’s yelling was coming in as were his big, brutal hands sitting Dean up against the wall. Dean wanted some water, maybe some Gatorade, maybe a bed, or to cry for no reason, but John was just yelling in his face. Dean was still tingly and cold when he shifted on the floor to puke in the toilet again. Everything contracted down around him as he dry heaved until he felt tiny and scared. He’d felt it enough times before to know there was no reason to panic, that his body would come under his control again, but he still felt an acuteness of singularity and fear. He still reached one arm out, vaguely toward John, knowing he didn’t need help and knowing asking would cause problems. Dean leaned his forehead against his forearm on the toilet seat. He could still feel the ghost pressure of the floor against his forehead. It wasn’t the same as getting hit, even later when the spot bruised. It was the slow pressure of gravity, of settling into his place, of being pulled slowly and gently, but inexorably, downward despite the ground and his bones. The tile and his skin had just gotten in the way.

John was talking again. “You done yet?” Manhandling him, holding his eyelids open, and looking at his pupils: assessing. “You’re fine” slapping Dean gently on the cheek the way someone else would pat him on the shoulder because he was OK. “Doesn’t even look like a concussion.”

John stood up at the door frame and disappeared out toward the sound of the TV. Dean just sat for awhile in cold discomfort but not ready to be in charge of moving himself yet. He sat blankly, feeling sorry for himself until he was.

Dean moved out to the nearest bed and half under the shit wool blanket. John was watching a fight on TV. That’s what they were in Minnesota for, a fight, which Dean had won the evening before. Ganking monsters wasn’t real lucrative so cage matches in strip club parking lots were one way to diversify their usual cash flow from forged credit cards and pool sharking.

   He’d won easily, trained all his life to be faster and smarter than screaming death and still capable of control. When other people would be panicked and desperate, Dean could draw calm from a lifetime of being worthless, expendable, and up against the wall to protect other people. Dean felt bad sometimes for the kids he fought, 22 year old gas station attendants or farm hands or mall security guards, who wanted fighting to be their way out, up, on to different, or better when they got stuck fighting either a cold blooded professional or a half rabid animal depending on the kind of week Dean had had.

He’d won this last card clean so he hadn’t gotten this fucked up in the ring, and he’d won enough cash to last he and his father through the next job so John didn’t have even fucked up cause to get hammered and knock Dean around. Strong, trained, and twenty years younger, Dean shouldn’t have let it happen, but with his dad nothing was that simple, nothing was reasonable, nothing went in straight lines.

A few hours later the Super 8 motel was gone and Minnesota was nearly gone too. Dean rested his arms and face on the open window frame of his Dad’s truck. They’d left Dean’s Impala back at their temporary home base in South Dakota. That right there should have been a red flag for Dean. It either meant John had so little faith in his son’s fighting ability that he’d assumed Dean would be too messed up to drive her back, or, more likely, John had had half a mind before they’d even left to beat the shit out of Dean no matter what the outcome of his matches.