If you’re on Facebook you’ll have seen the many interactive questionnaires designed to entertain. While answering them online might reveal too much personal information to the public, sometimes I do them in my head.
Take the most recent one I saw. It asked 20 questions with the preface: Have You Ever? Each query dealt with some aspect of lawlessness such as whether you had: been arrested, smoked weed, went streaking, been expelled or egged someone’s house. To those, I was easily able to answer, no, but when I came to the final, gut-wrenching question I had to stop. The memories flooded back. Number 20: Have you ever been in a fistfight?
Anyone who knows me would register a certain amount of shock and alarm right about now. They’d know it’s not in my nature to physically assail someone, or be caught brawling outside a tavern, but one day, with good cause, I did just that.
It was a bright, summer afternoon in 1981, or thereabouts. Good friend Susan and I chatted as we strolled along a busy street in Lloydminster. Pausing at the entrance to an alley, we peered down it to check for traffic.
“There’s a fight down there,” said Susan. Sure enough, someone was getting punched, repeatedly. We stopped in shock. Then, looking closer, we realized it was a man hitting a woman and my pal hollered. “We gotta save her!”
She dashed toward the pair with me close on her heels. As we approached, the man knocked the woman to the ground and started kicking her with enormous cowboy boots. She cried aloud in pain, throwing her arms up to shield herself as he pelted her with vicious blows.
Quickly, Susan reached the woman and began to drag her away from the clearly intoxicated man. This was great, but the enraged fellow simply followed with a howl, continuing to rain abuse upon his victim. Enter me.
Was this the moment when hefting all those square bales on the farm would finally pay off? Would I be strong enough to fend off an infuriated and highly inebriated man? Was my father right, when he said one day I’d be glad for all the muscle manual labour built? Well—being glad might be stretching things a little, but I was pleased.
I slammed into the man from behind and sent him spinning. Then I sunk my hands into the material of his blue-striped cowboy shirt and swung him into the dirt. Picking himself up, he shook his head and stared at me blankly.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, with good reason. Charging, he met me head on and we grappled with one another for a time. He struggled to free himself from my clutches, but I snared him again and flung him away, ripping the shirt from his back in the process.
By this time Susan had gotten the woman to safety and the man and I stood breathing heavily and glaring at one another: after fighting, down a seedy back lane, behind a pub, in broad daylight. Looking up we saw that several cars had pulled over to witness the event, and pulling the shreds of his former garment around him, the man gave me a final evil scowl, and marched unsteadily back to the bar for another drink.
And so you see Facebook, I have committed one lawless act. I’ve been in a fistfight, but with good cause.
To contact Helen, or to order her books please go to [email protected] or write PO Box 55, Marshall, Sask. S0M1R0.
