The backyard of the frat house was filled with bodies rigid in attention and speaking in hushed whispers. Everyone was looking at the center of the yard, at the remains of the boxing ring. There was Earl, attended by Vicky and Piker and still in a posture of supplication in the center of the ring, and the more brave of the onlookers glanced at Scott, who lay motionless in what had been his corner.
     He was alive, his screams made that obvious, but they also made it questionable if he wanted to be that way. When he recovered his breath and wits, Earl unfolded himself and began the process of standing up.
     Soon Vicky was dwarfed by his bulk, Piker too, and it seemed as if Earl had grown another foot or two in each dimension. There was a nervous smattering of applause that greeted his standing, but Earl quieted that with a look around the yard.
     "I won," he said without emotion. There were some murmurs of assent and, with a bit more force to his voice, Earl added, "It's over."
     With Vicky tagging along and Piker following, Earl walked over to where Scott lay and knelt down beside his foe. Perris hurried over with Simone, and he knelt on the opposite side and looked at Earl over Scott's body.
     "Is he all right?" Perris asked. Simone's hand was on his shoulder, and he reached up and gently squeezed it.
     In answer, Scott produced a shriek that sent shivers down Earl's back and that caused Perris to grip Simone's hand too tightly. She jerked it back just as Vicky, still drenched from the between-round revival of Earl and now shivering, sat down next to the motionless boxer.
     "I can help him," she said to no one in particular, and began reaching out to touch Scott.
     Earl grabbed her hands and guided them into her lap. "Better wait a minute," he said.
     Perris looked nervously from Earl to Scott, and through the others present. "He's gonna be okay, right?"
     "Better hope so," came a voice that was new to Earl. He looked up, wiped his face with the towel that Vicky still clung to, and saw a young man with curly black hair and a Phi Psi Rho sweatshirt standing at Scott's head. His demeanor immediately corrected Earl's assumption that Perris was in charge.
     Perris regained his feet and drew Simone close. It wasn't clear to Earl if he was protecting his girlfriend or using her as a shield.
     "He'll be okay. Probably just had the wind knocked out of him," Perris said.
     "He's making a lot of noise for someone with no wind," Piker said.
     Earl, without thinking, threw an arm around Vicky and followed it with his jacket. "Hey, Scott, can you hear me?" he asked.
     Everyone watched Scott turn toward the voice, his face contorted in pain and his lips pulled back in agony. "Jesus!" he yelled.
     Perris began moving to grab Scott's ankles, but he was stopped by the frat leader. "Don't move him."
     "We can't just let him lie here," Perris said.
     "We can for the time being," the leader answered. "Someone...call an ambulance, the rest of you start clearing up this shit. Party's over."
     In twos and threes the crowd began wrapping up the tape that had formed the ring, started picking up the discarded red plastic cups that littered the lawn, and began tearing down the decorations that fluttered merrily in the yard.
     They dragged the keg back into the house and began throwing away the trash that covered the picnic table. Earl watched all this without saying a word, but Piker handed him the half pint before joining in the cleanup.
     "You did all right," Piker said, patting Earl on the shoulder. "You did just fine."
     Earl nodded and shrugged his shoulders.
     "You better get out of here," the house leader told Earl. "Can you drive?"
     "I can," Vicky said, rising to her feet. "But Perris drove us here."
     "Is that right?"
     Perris said that it was, but then remembered. "But Scott drove himself over in his truck." He turned to Earl. "Can you drive his truck back?"
     "Yeah, I guess I can do that," Earl said. He wiped his face again with the towel, which by now was as red as Earl's face. "Where are the keys?"
     Perris stared blankly at Earl, then looked at Vicky who lifted her hands. He bent over and began going through Scott's pockets, and soon produced the keys.
     "He's gonna take your truck back to the motel," Perris told Scott. "Is that okay? We're getting an ambulance to come and look at you."
     Scott made a face, but nodded, and Earl could see fear in Scott's eyes.
     "It'll be okay, fella," Earl told him. He knelt back down and grabbed Scott's hands in his own, larger and broken ones. "You'll be all right."
     Scott whispered "thanks" and Earl could see that his eyes were filled with tears, were awash in the watery denial of his pain.
     Earl took the keys from Perris and reached out and took Vicky's hand. Perris walked him through the house, telling Earl that he'd let them know as soon as he heard anything. Vicky didn't have a phone, but Earl gave Perris his cell number and in the front of the house, they shook hands.
     "It looks like you won," Perris said.
     "Yeah," Earl muttered. "I wonder..."
     "Better get out of here. We'll just say it was an accident or something."
     Earl left without thanking Perris, and he and Vicky climbed into Scott's truck for the ride home. Earl soon discovered that it was nearly impossible for him to grip the steering wheel with his broken hand, but since Vicky couldn;t drive a stick, he was forced to drive the half hour back to the Single Spire Motel.
     Vicky scooted over next to him once it became obvious that he was having trouble with the steering, and helped with the steering. In another time, Earl would have enjoyed her proximity, but that time had disappeared somewhere between her acceptance of the date and his acceptance of the fight.
     They drove slowly and carefully, and when they neared the motel Earl slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.
     "Vicky," he started, and she looked at him, staring at him and through him. There was a touch of sympathy and horror in her look, and she grabbed the towel and wiped his face. His stomach had bled all over his jeans and the seat of the truck, and his mouth and nose continued to ooze blood into and through his beard.
     "Let's talk about it at home, okay?" she said.
     "But I..."
     "I know."
     Earl drove the last block or so back to the motel and was able to park in the center lot, just where Scott had parked the truck earlier. He gingerly crawled out of the cab, and was met upon exiting by Vicky who had run around to help him.
     He was starting to feel all the bruises, cuts, and punches that he'd received in the fight, and began trembling. Vicky threw her arms around him and drew him close and tried to still his shivers.
     "I need to go to the liquor store," he said.
     "I'll go," Vicky offered. "What would you like?"
     Earl thought a moment. "One of everything," he joked, and Vicky was at first startled by his request, then smiled at his joke.
     "No, really. Do you want some beer?"
     Earl straightened back up and gently shook himself free of her. He reached for his wallet and handed her twenty dollars. "Yeah, get me some beer, and some whisky and something to munch on, too. And get yourself whatever you want."
     She took the twenty and tucked it in a small bag that she carried. "Okay, I'll be right back."
     "I'll be in my room," he said. "I'm gonna go clean up a little." He smiled, but didn't think it came out too good. "I'll wait up for you," he said and watched her wiggle across the lot before going to his room.
     Earl opened his door and pulled the cigar box from under his bed and went into his bathroom. By the time Vicky returned, Earl had given himself a shot and had filled his nostrils with toilet paper.
     He knew he wasn't handsome, and was a little afraid that he would looke ridiculous, but he also knew he had to stop the bleeding. He had a wad of napkins in his mouth and was folding a bandage of toilet paper when Vicky returned, carrying a large bag.
     He took the beer that she was handing him and noticed that she was having one, too. He hadn't seen her drink the night before, and was glad to see that she did. At dinner, she'd had tea, but the place didn't serve alcohol so he wasn't sure if she drank or not.
     It may have been the excitement of the evening, or maybe she was just trying to make him feel better, but Earl was feeling better knowing that she'd have a beer or two.
     "What're you gonna do with that?" she asked, indicating the wad of toilet paper in his hand.
     "I was gonna make a bandage for my stomach," he said, a little ashamed. With a stomach his size, he knew that he couldn't use a band-aid, not even if the cut was small.
     "I missed that one. Let me see," she said, and Earl blushed.
     He lifted his shirt a little, exposing the hairy rolls of fat that comprised his stomach. There was a dark gash about three inches long hidden somewhere in that expanse of flesh.
     Instead of flinching, which is what he expected to do at the sight of his stomach, she took the tissue and walked into the bathroom. She returned a moment later with a second wad, this one dampened, and began cleaning the wound.
     Earl laid back and tried to pretend that she wasn't looking at his worst feature. It stung as she squirted some Bactine on the wound, but she soon had the makeshift bandage over the cut and pretty well taped into place.
     "I don't suppose you have any handkerchiefs or anything," she said and Earl told her he didn't.
     "Well, you're out of washcloths and towels. Maybe I should run home and see what I can find."
     Before he could say anything, she darted out the door. Earl rummaged around in the bag and found that she'd bought a pint of Seagram's Seven, which wasn't a whisky he disliked. He opened the top and poured a bit into a glass that sat on his nightstand, thinking that if she wanted some there was a good chance that she wouldn't want to pass the bottle back and forth.
     She came back into his room wearing her bathrobe. He hadn't thought how uncomfortable she must have been in her wet, clingy dress, but was glad that he'd seen her in it. She evidently didn't have any handkerchiefs, either, or at least none that she felt like sparing since she was carrying a small handful of pink plastic packages.
     "I think this will do," she said, opening one of her parcels up. "I hope you don't mind, but this is the best I could do."
     Earl looked at the sanitary pad while Vicky stripped off the plastic and exposed the adhesive. "Does it have wings?" he asked.
     Vicky blushed, and Earl realized that was the first time he'd seen her do that. "It will work until the stores open tomorrow," she said, fumbling with the pad. "I brought a couple, in case we need to change it later."
     Earl picked up on her "we," and wondered if she was planning on spending the night. "How long will it last?" he asked.
     Again, Vicky blushed. "I don't know," she said. "Not for this kind of thing. I brought back some ointment, to help with the healing."
     Earl watched as Vicky laid the pad on his nightstand and pulled off the makeshift tissue bandage that she'd fashioned just a few minutes earler. It was already wet with blood and Earl flinched as she stripped off the tape and took some of his generous allotment of stomach hair.
     She took a small tube of some antibiotic out of a pocket of her robe and squeezed a little onto her finger. Earl held his shirt up above the wound and looked at the wall. He was ashamed of his stomach, and now he couldn't face Vicky while she was staring at it. He could feel her applying the ointment and soon he felt her cover his cut with the pad and pat it into place. She added some tape to hold it in place and when she called out "all done," Earl looked back at her, his own ears burning.
     "I'm sorry about my stomach," he said, pulling his ripped and bloodied shirt back down to cover it.
     "What do you mean?"
     "You know," he said.
     "That you got a cut?" she asked. "I feel bad about that, too. I hope it doesn't get infected or anything, it's a pretty deep cut."
     Earl sat up on the bed and took a swallow of his whisky. "I mean about how big it is, how fat I am." He lowered his head and looked at the places in his room where Vicky wasn't.
     "Oh, Earl, that's okay." Vicky gave him a smile, but Earl wasn't looking at her to see it. "I knew you were big before I worked on your stomach."
     This gladdened Earl a little, and he felt a little confidence coming back into his life. He even managed to look over at her. "It's my mom's fault," he said. "She fed me too much when I was a baby."
     Vicky listened to this and said nothing. Earl wasn't sure if he'd said too much, had gone too far into personal territory or what, and decided not to talk any more about the subject.
     Vicky took a sip of her beer and ended the awkward silence that followed Earl's confession by pulling some sponges from another pocket of her robe. "I brought these over to wash you with, but maybe you want to do it yourself. I'm afraid of hurting you."
     "Oh, no," Earl said. "You do it."
     Vicky began the task of cleaning up Earl's face. He'd done a good job in the shower when she was at the store, but his lip and nose had continued to bleed. She wiped up the fresh blood and gently cleaned around his swollen eye and cheek.
     "What happened here?" she asked, lightly touching his mouth with a corner of the sponge.
     "I think I lost some teeth."
     "Oh my God," Vicky exclaimed. "When he hit you?"
     While it was pretty obvious to Earl that, yes, he'd lost the teeth when Scott had been hammering on his face during the third round, he guessed that Vicky hadn't fully understood what had been going on. Earl hurt all over, more than he could remember, and not just where he had obvious bruises. He'd been in some fights as a kid, mostly because of his weight, but this was the first fight he'd been in as an adult. It hurt more than he'd expected to be beat up as an adult, and he knew that just from yesterday's little battle. Even before he'd stepped into the ring at the rear of the frat house, Earl's nose and lip hurt. The difference now, and it was growing by the minute, is that his whole body was feeling wracked and sore.
     "Yeah, when he was smashing my face."
     Vicky sat quiet a moment, and Earl finished his cup of whisky. "I wonder how he's doing," she said.
     "Me, too," Earl admitted. He'd been trying not to think of what might be wrong with Scott. "It wasn't my fault, whatever it was."
     "Oh, no, I don't blame you." Vicky stopped working the sponge on Earl's face, and slipped her fingers along his cheek. "It was an accident."
     Earl thought about that a moment. He'd put everything, all his weight and all his strength, into that last blow, the one that had caught Scott with both hands under his chin. He *had* intended to hurt Scott, to knock him out, to get him to stop fighting, and he felt responsible for that.
     He also remembered Scott's merciless pounding of him when he'd had the chance, and Earl didn't wonder if Scott would have done it again if he'd had the chance.
     Earl sniffled, and the sound startled Vicky.
     "Is your nose all full?" she asked.
     "Pretty much," Earl said. "My mouth, too."
     She lifted Earl's shirt and looked at the bandage there. So far there were no leaks it looked to be staying in place.
     Earl grabbed a beer and took a few swallows. "I'm not sure what all this blood is gonna do to my stomach, but I think it's good to keep it in my body, to not lose it all."
     "How are you feeling?" Vicky asked. "Really."
     Earl sighed and wiped his eyes. He was trying not to think about how much he hurt, but it was getting harder to ignore the aches that covered his body like graffiti on a cement wall.
     "I've been better," he answered. "What I'm worried about is tomorrow."
     "Tomorrow?"
     "Yeah, when the adrenalin is gone and I have to go back to work."
     For the first time, perhaps, Vicky thought about the next day. She had to be in Hollywood at eight the next morning and it was now getting close to ten. "Where do you work? Do you have to go in tomorrow?"
     "I work at Ed's, a few miles down the street."
     "Ed's?"
     Earl realized that he was about the only person who knew about Ed's. "It's a small metal shop."
     "What do you do there?"
     "I weld," Earl said. "Mostly."
     "And you have to go in tomorrow?"
     "Yeah." Earl took another swallow of beer, washing more blood from his mouth. "That reminds me. Do you have any more of that tape that you used to bandage me with?"
     Vicky pulled the tape off the nightstand and showed it to Earl.
     He took the roll and began wrapping it around three of the fingers on his right hand. Earlier, in the shower, he'd looked at the finger that had been kicked back and it didn't appear to be seriously out of place. He hoped that he could just tape it back together and keep it from moving and that it would heal itself.
     In fact, Earl hoped that everything would heal itself. He had no intention of going to a doctor. Not only were they expensive, but he didn't want to have anyone looking at his body. Also, Earl had a feeling that anyone examining him might ask how he got the injuries, and he didn't have any answer to give for that.
     "What's the matter with your hand?" Vicky asked. "Why are you doing that?"
     "I think one of my fingers got jammed or something," Earl answered.
     "We should get a popsicle stick. Do you want me to run to the store?"
     "Like that?" Earl asked, smiling. Vicky looked down, and remembered that she was wearing her robe.
     "Is it okay?" she asked. "Your finger?"
     "Hurts like hell," Earl answered. "But so does everything else." He studied his wrapped hand and gave the tape back to Vicky. "I think it'll be okay."
     "Oh, Earl, I'm so sorry," Vicky said.
     "It's all right," he answered. "Not your fault."
     "I know, but..."
     "Don't worry about it. I'll be okay." Earl finished his beer and laid back down on the bed. Vicky could see his face contort as he moved.
     "Let me work a little more on you, and then I have to go to bed."
     Earl's face clouded at the mention of her leaving. So much for the earlier "we," he thought. He couldn't blame her, and hadn't really thought that she would spend the night, but Earl was a little afraid. He was scared about his bruises, his missing teeth, his weight, and what he may have done to Scott and wanted someone to share all of this with. The only person he could talk about it with was Vicky or Perris, and only one of those two was here and only one of them did Earl want to spend the night with.
     Vicky touched his swollen eye, his cheek, his lip, nose, and stomach in turn, each time asking him to concentrate on the area under her delicated fingers. Earl couldn't tell any difference between how he felt before and after her treatments, but he didn't want them to end.
     He knew that he was too wired to sleep and worried about what he would do all night if she wasn't here. It suprised Earl that he was worried about that, since he'd been alone in this room every night for the last year.
     "Do you have to go?" he asked.