Americans Always Win

The sun shone like mad on the bleached concrete, a flawless sheen of brilliant white squinting the eyes and spotting the shirt-backs of the sparse afternoon crowd. It was still very early in the spring, but the heat from the spotlessly clear sky was unexpectedly intense, and the still winter-weary pedestrians had been caught off guard. We turned the sweeping bend beside the trolley tracks and entered the shade of the once worn, now overly restored in an absurdly shiny white, marquee, and, opening the dark green door, chipped and worn from a combination of abuse and neglect, rough hands handling roughly, joined the early crowd already assembled loosely about the rectangular bar. They were working men exclusively, as were we in a sense, paint-spattered and sun-scarred, and the sporadic bursts of too loud conversation were of the Phils continuing mediocrity, the travails of work, and, mostly, how it was hot as shit and what the fuck.

The stools creaked and moaned as we took our seats somewhat timidly, mildly self-conscious of the obvious age disparity between ourselves and the assembled mass. Though underaged, we were able to skirt this problem in a way, as bored suburban kids often do, by spending many nights painstakingly bent over ID cards with pen, eraser, and hairspray until nines became rough sixes, as long as they weren't too carefully scrutinized, and we became of age, and were admitted into the forbidden confines of the local dive bars. Several incidents of questioning and careful examination had instilled in us a sense of careful trepidation, though, so that, though things usually went smoothly, we were always aware of the ever-looming possibility of having to quickly snatch and run. Underage drinking was a major offense of which we had all been convicted on different occasions, and the two of us were at the point at which further transgressions would now bring significantly harsh penalties. But the bartender couldn't care less and everything went fine, we had Guinness and Bushmill's whisky, a poor choice in hot weather but we didn't care, and settled back with our pints to enjoy the scene around us.

It was wondrous, the boisterous wail of Clancy Brothers mixed with the small-talk and shouted greetings of the newly-arrived creating a pleasant din with the sound of clinking glasses, the soft thump of the taps as they continued endlessly back and forth back and forth, and the loud, satisfied click of empty glasses demanding replenishment. The faint smell of urine mixed with those of sweat, liquor, sawdust, and an entire ark's worth of various fried animal parts wafted over the softly shining pine of the bar and the faux Irish decorations vomited haphazardly about the place. The men drank and yelled, pool balls clacked and thudded, the bartenders heels click-click-clicked about the hardwood floors, and we basked in contented silence, until we saw heads turning en-masse toward the massive television in the corner, the picture barely visible from our skewed angle.

It was a mass of staticky black and white, the only identifiable thing a sharply defined crosshairs, bracketed in a neat rectangle, in the center of the screen. Complete silence all around as the rough blackness gradually began to reveal shapes, rectangles assembled in neat rows growing rapidly larger and larger untilnothing. Static. Wild cheers all around. High fives and hell yeahs. We were mystified but added to the cheers anyway, it seemed the appropriate thing to do. Someone told us the deal- we were bombing Baghdad, and those motherfuckers were fucked now. Great. Shots were bought all around, and the entire place assumed the flavor of a raucous wedding party, people dancing, smiling, celebrating wildly. This was truly a great occasion. Not particularly caring one way or another, we eagerly joined the celebration, drinking and yelling with the throng for hours and enjoying the glory of mighty America bombing the shit out of those dumb fucking A-rabs.

We had been drinking for hours and hours, as had most, and the mellow, potentially-ugly stage of drunkenness had set in, that time following the initial euphoria when things get a little slower, blurred, and more personal. Arguing passionately over the jukebox, we were immediately distracted by raised voices and the all too familiar screech of stools pulled hastily and heavily backward. Through the forming crowd was visible a young man of roughly Middle-Eastern appearance, looking perplexed and a bit frightened, opposite two young, very drunk men. Someone had touched someone's girlfriend, or bumped someone's something, or angered someone in some way. No one seemed quite sure what exactly had taken place, not even the drunk men who it was that had been offended, but something certainly had, that was for damn sure. The mandatory muffled threats passed back and forth, and the scene seemed certain to end in some sort of violence until, just at the point where words were exhausted and something had to happen, the large, bald-headed owner thumped angrily down the back steps and set everyone straight with a few carefully-directed words. People returned slowly to their seats and conversations, and we resumed our argument at the juke box, which, after some time, I won, and the first soft tones of Captain Jack emerged from the speakers.

After some time we became bored, bloated, and lethargic, as well as very drunk, and, the celebrations mostly over at this late point in the night, decided it was best to get out of there and go smoke a bowl down by the tracks. Leaving the stale remains of our drinks sitting in dripping puddles on the bar, we staggered roughly back through the door and into the intense quiet that is the suburbs at two a.m. on a Tuesday. No noise at all, butsomething. Around the corner. We ran the fifty paces or so, mad with the promise of some kind of action, and, as we rounded the corner separating our bar with the one next to it, we saw them.

That same Middle-Eastern looking guy, with his girlfriend, a pretty young white girl, standing face-to-face with those same two drunk guys, this time accompanied by a very drunk and obnoxious woman, shouting something very dramatically and loudly, tears of rage in her eyes. We listened from about five paces away but could not discern what exactly was going on; it was something about something, and the girl was evidently very mad, as were her companions, while the Middle-Eastern looking man and his girlfriend seemed confused and terrified, gesticulating with upturned open palms, exasperation showing through on their gaping eyes. This went on for several incoherent minutes until it finally happened, as it inevitably had to. One of them grabbed the Middle-Eastern looking man around the back of his neck, and, pulling his head down and forward, began to repeatedly knee him in the face, while his companion circled around throwing kicks and punches to alternately vulnerable areas, gradually beating him down lower and lower. The drunk and obnoxious woman jumped around and screamed things we couldn't understand, but she evidently was quite happy and excited at the proceedings. The men finally pounded him down to the ground with vicious blows to the back of his head and face, and, finishing him off with a few well-placed kicks, raised their arms triumphantly, high-fiving repeatedly, and yelled some words we couldn't understand.

The Middle-Eastern looking man lay on the sidewalk barely moving, blood coming out from his battered face, struggling with his wrists to raise himself from the pavement. But he could not, and his girlfriend bent over him, crying hysterically and shielding his body with her own. But the men were done, the fight was over, they had won, and the celebration was on. As I said, we had watched the scene from but a few paces away, and, as we stood stupidly, the exhilaration of a vicarious fight blasting through our drunken heads, one of the men suddenly turned, and, seeming to notice us for the first time, smiled broadly and genuinely, and, with great enthusiasm, grabbed me by my shoulders and screamed into my face, "Americans always win, buddy! Americans always win!"

I looked down at the man, sitting now on the sidewalk, blood streaming from his broken face as he attempted to stem the flow with his hands. His shirt was soaked in his own blood, and as the girl, terrified and bewildered, embraced him, her pale skin became stained in streaks and spots with the dark maroon of blood alternately blackened by darkness and highlighted garishly by raw street light. As they sat there on the sidewalk, covered in his blood, shaking, crying, and utterly defeated, the two of us looked right into the drunk man's beaming face and bellowed in unison, from the depths of everything we were, "Americans Always Win!"