We drank. Vern watched the Celtics and Paul eyed the women. I sipped my beer and watched no one in particular.

To my right, toward the rear of the room, a half-dozen guys were playing pool. They moved back and forth from the pool tables to a counter where their beers were lined up. They weren't very good pool players, from what I could tell, and they cursed after each shot.

To my left, three guys were talking to two women. The women were worn and weary, the kind who would look fifty when they were thirty-five. They'd probably spent the last five years in places like this, where just breathing the air would cut ten years off your life.

One woman was blonde, white blonde with black eyebrows. She was about twenty, wearing strategically torn dungarees and a sleeveless T-shirt with thin straps, and her breasts sagged. Her friend was shorter and wider from the waist down. Her hair was dyed, too, but it was reddish and brown at the roots. Both of them were smoking long, dark-colored cigarettes and drinking white drinks, probably coffee brandy and milk.

As I watched, one of the guys leaned close to the blonde and shouted something. She laughed and spit out some of her drink. He grabbed her rear end and then grabbed her friend, too, and the friend smiled and pretended to slap at his hand. He took a swig from a Bud longneck.

The guy was big, with a beer gut and muscular arms and shoulders. His hair was just long enough to show some vanity, and he had a weak chin. The fatal flaw.

I watched and tried to pick up the words over the Celtics and the music, which was loud and metallic. As I listened, the guy suddenly turned and looked at me, then turned back to his friends. They laughed and looked back at me and I felt a rush of blood hit my face. I turned to the pool players and then the pizza was slapped down, with three paper plates. Vern grabbed a piece, pulled the string of cheese toward his mouth, and then watched as a lump of cheese and sauce fell on his lap. Paul guffawed. Vern looked unhappy. I said I'd get some napkins.

Swinging wide of the big guy and the girls, I walked toward the end of the bar where there was a metal napkin dispenser. I pulled a wad out and swung even wider on the way back.

The big guy seemed to be moving toward me between the tables. I detoured toward the wall but he detoured, too, until he was standing in front of me. I stopped to let him by but he just stood there.

"Excuse me," I said.

"You're not excused," he said.

His T-shirt said BIG JOHN'S, HOUSTON, TEX. He hadn't shaved in a few days and he was scowling. Not that I was any prize.

"Could I get by?" I said.

"You like to horn in on other people's conversations?" he said.

"Not particularly. Mostly I just want to get back to my table before the guys with me eat my pizza."

"Screw your pizza."

I couldn't believe it. People around us were watching. A girl at the closest table got up and took her drink. I stopped smiling.

"I don't want any trouble. Hey, I don't even know who you are. Whatever you're all worked up about, it's got nothing-"

"I'm not worked up. I just don't like some candy-ass listening to my conversation, you know what I'm saying? Why don't you mind your own goddamn business?"

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do."

"You better try harder."

I swallowed drily and looked at him. He was a good two or three inches taller than me, forty or fifty pounds heavier. His hands were at his sides and his eyes were both intent and vague. He smelled like stale beer and cigarettes. I realized my heart was absolutely pounding.

"I'm too old for this crap," I said, my voice far away. "If you want to screw around, do it with somebody else."

"Somebody who isn't scared, Mr. Newspaperman?"

"No," I said. "Somebody who is as big a moron as you are.''

I dropped the wad of napkins on the floor. Chairs scraped as people pulled away. My heart was slamming now, like a basketball on concrete. I remembered that my father had told me to guard with my left and keep my punches close to my body. No loopy swings, he had said.

I was eight then. Maybe nine.

The right came first. My left went up to block it. My right shot straight out, aimed at his face but it hit his throat, scraping under his jaw. His teeth clacked and he swung the right again and tried to grab my arm with his left hand.

Everybody was yelling. Screaming. He was against me, trying to push me back. I staggered and the right came around again and crashed into my ear. I heard myself say "Ow," and bent my head lower and moved inside his next swing, jabbing blindly in the direction of his face.

One jab missed.

The next three connected and made a crunching, slapping sound. With the third, I felt something snap. Maybe his nose. His arms closed around me and he flung me sideways into the tables.

I hit my head on something, saw a white flash, and heard him panting as he came toward me. I rolled to the right and pulled myself up on a table, but he was coming at me.

There was blood all over his mouth and chin. The yelling was everywhere, so I couldn't think. I forgot my father's advice and swung a sidearm right. Hard.

I got a lot of air, then as he pulled his head back, my fist grazed his eye and his nose. The eyeball felt wet.

He bellowed and raised his hands to his eyes. I stood and waited. He started for me, then stopped and put his hands to his eyes again. A cop crashed through the crowd of bodies and slammed him to the floor. I was relieved for a moment and then I was on my stomach on the wet linoleum floor with a nightstick pressing into the back of my neck so hard that it hurt.

There was dried blood on my upper lip. I felt it with the tip of my tongue and then touched it gently with my finger. A piece broke off and landed on the desktop. I flicked it on to the floor.

Vigue hung up the phone.

"Badly scratched cornea and a busted nose," he said. "What do you think, Muhammad Ali? Should we stick with the simple assault or go with aggravated? Aggravated's a felony. Look more impressive on your resume."

I took a deep breath.

"I told you. I couldn't just stand there. He started it, took a swing at me. I haven't been in a fight since third grade, for God's sake."

"Beginner's luck, I guess," Vigue said.

"Come on, Lieutenant. I didn't want to hurt the guy. He was huge. I was just trying to keep him from killing me."

Vigue didn't look up from the form he was filling out.

"Happens," he said. "You get a guy who hasn't been in a fight in his whole life and someone goes after him and he goes berserk. We had one guy break half the bones in another guy's face. Stove him all to hell. Just couldn't stop punching once he got started. I think he was a librarian or something. Looked like a wimp."

He kept writing. I slouched in my chair and looked at the cuts on my knuckles. On Vigue's radio, I could hear the dispatcher calling the Androscoggin ambulance for an elderly man with chest pains.

Vigue yawned.

"You want to know who he is?" he said.

"Sure."

Vigue pulled a torn piece of computer printout from under the form.

"Let's see. Ah, yes. The Dirtbag Hall of Fame. Cormier, Roger D. Twelve eighteen sixty-one. Address used to be fifteen and a half Hancock Street, but he said he's been living with friends. In town and up in Roxbury. Some shithole, no doubt. Let's see. Weight, one eighty-five. Eyes blue."

"Black and blue," I murmured.

Vigue looked up, then back down.

"Mr. Cormier was laid off from the maintenance department at St. Amand last July. They laid off ten people or something back then, if I remember. I don't think he was in the mill long. Works in the woods, mostly. Those boys tend to get a little rambunctious when some flabby foreman tells 'em what to do. So that didn't work out. He said something about wanting to leave town, go work in Oregon or someplace. A big loss for the community. Now, let's see. Arrested for OUI and operating after suspension. But it's been almost, let's see, almost five years since he's been arrested for assault."

"Turned over a new leaf," I said.

Vigue folded the printout and attached it to the report with a paper clip.

"He's a minor-league dirtbag," he said. "Gets drunk and mouthy. Used to like to beat on people, if I remember correctly. May have taken our attitude adjustment course once or twice."

"Needs a refresher."

"He doesn't think so. Mr. Cormier says you cold-cocked him. He asked you about some story about the mill and you cold-cocked him. He informed us that you want to shut the mill down."

"He what?"

"Shut down the mill. A wise-ass New Yorker, I think was the way he put it. Guy from the paper trying to shut down the mill."

"Is that what this is all about? St. Amand stories?"

"I'm just telling you what he said. You called him a moron and took a swing at him. I think, personally, you're running with the wrong crowd."

Vigue stopped and lit a cigarette.

"You shed any light on this?" he said, talking smoke.

I thought for a second.

"I'm writing a story on the mill and the tax-break deal. Just looking at other cases where towns did the same thing with the parent outfit. Not that big a deal."

"Maybe Mr. Cormier thinks it is."

"I don't even know how he'd know about it. He doesn't work there anymore."

"Small town. Hard to keep a secret."

Vigue got up and left the room. I heard a filing cabinet drawer sliding in the booking area. I slumped in the metal folding chair and slid straight again. It hurt no matter how I sat.

My face and head ached. The chair was torture. They probably used it to extract confessions from prisoners who couldn't be broken with rubber hoses and cattle prods.

Vigue came back and I thought I caught a faint smile before he sat down. He was enjoying this, watching the reporter, the know-it-all who was always pestering him for information, squirming, at his mercy.

"I'll tell you what I'm gonna do," he said, feet on his desk, hands on his hips. "I'm not sure you did everything you could to prevent this altercation, but it is a first offense. I think you've learned a lesson."

"Give me a friggin' break."

"What do you want? Special treatment?"

"I think I'm getting it already."

"Maybe you haven't learned that lesson."

"What? Turn the other cheek?"

"Just walk the hell away. Leave the tough-guy stuff to the guys on the TV."

"Yeah, right. So what does he get? Cormier."

"He's been charged with disorderly conduct. That's ours. If you want to file an assault complaint, he'll get that, too. That means you testify as to his actions in the incident. You want to do that?"

"Hell, yes," I said, and winced as the cut on my lip started to open.

"Well, Mr. McMorrow, you can come in here between eight and five tomorrow and fill out a complaint. That complaint is reviewed by the DA, and then we most likely would serve a summons. He would be required to answer the charge in court."

He smiled.

"I testify?"

"That's the way it works, chief. You come to court and say what happened. That's sort of important, since you're the one alleging the offense. We could ask around at the bar, but we don't do real well in getting volunteer witnesses out of that place."

"So if I don't show up, he walks," I said.

"No. He probably pleads on the disorderly, unless he gets a total bozo for a lawyer, which is a pretty good chance. He gets a hundred-dollar fine. You come and play witness and he gets a week in jail, six months chitchatting with probation and parole. He gets one of those good-lookers and he may even thank you."

He gave me a big smile.

"Welcome to the system, friend."

I got up stiffly.

"Yeah, right. I'll let myself out."

And I did, stepping out into the hall, where Vern was reading WANTED posters.

"See anybody you know?" I said.

"Hey, you out?"

"I tied sheets together and crawled under the desks. The car running?"

"And pointed toward the border."

We went outside to where the car was waiting like a faithful spaniel. I got in and reached across to unlock the door for Vern. He reached in and took a box off the backseat and handed it to me. Four slices of cold, congealed pizza.

We drove through town to Vern's in silence. I couldn't think of anything to say. He apparently couldn't either, until we pulled up in front of the apartment house, big and dark with old-lady curtains silhouetted by dim lights on the first floor.

"Myrtle's in bed," Vern said. "Rev this thing and let's watch the curtains move."