Hard Rain

It was raining, and if Ed tilted his head back and looked at the sky he could see the droplets streaking toward him like stars did in movies with spaceships going into warp, colliding with his faceshield in hundreds of wet little explosions, until the plastic had a thick smear of water running over it, and the dark cloud canopy began to bend and shift in his vision. The traffic light ahead of him was a smoldering red that bled wide across the wet shroud in front of his eyes when he stopped watching the sky and started watching the signal. His arms were stretched forward to the handlebars, and his feet planted flat on the ground on either side of his bike. Ed could feel the rain soaking in through the leather of his jacket, fat cold drops rolling off his helmet and into his collar, and though he longed to move and relieve the pressure provoked in his lower back by the uncomfortable posture, staying still somehow made him feel less wet.

The rain came down so hard and loud that he couldn’t hear his engine running, but he could feel it in his hands on the grips, and in his crotch nestled up against the gas tank, a thrumming energy that seemed to radiate up his arms and into his belly. There was a tingling in his brain too, a prickling sensation deep and low down, somewhat similar to the pins and needles that scattered through his legs if he stood up too quick. Every cold breath felt like a flood of electricity roaring into his lungs.

Some quick and violent motion at the edge of his vision caused him to turn his head and look. Up on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, two kids were fighting.

Ed guessed them to be around fourteen years old. They were both so dark-skinned that at this distance they looked to Ed like silhouettes, except for the vibrant colors of their clothing. The two of them stood in formal position, lined up with the sidewalk and parallel to Ed in the street. A dozen more kids grouped around them, watching and exclaiming whenever an especially stiff punch was thrown. One of these spectators had his cell phone out, held at arm’s length and face level; he was filming the fight.

An oversized red shirt, soaked through so that it clung to him in places, adorned the fighter on the right. He was the larger of the two, at least three inches taller and thirty pounds fatter than his opponent. The other boy, in a wet white shirt that stuck to his chest and biceps like fitted pieces of armor—his rich black skin showing through—that boy, though smaller, seemed the fiercer of the pair. He held his arms up, elbows out, fists like hard, bulbous pestles welded onto the ends of his thin wrists, and he threw sharp looping punches that looked completely sincere.

It was the dignified stance of the two boys that Ed found most interesting about the spectacle. They faced each other at the very outer limits of their reach, and kept their feet anchored in place, leaning forward to throw a punch, or backwards to evade one. Sometimes the punches came in a volley, and once the fighter in the white shirt leaned so far forward that only the toes of his back foot remained on the ground, but at no point did the boys abandon their upright nature and descend into a chaotic grappling.

Such a proper affair, Ed thought. The last time he’d been involved in a fight only one clean punch had been thrown before he’d wound up in a hateful tangle on the ground, clubbing and tearing at his opponent like an animal. These boys had been pitching fists for nearly a minute, and they still hadn’t even stepped into each other’s territory.

The smoldering red turned green, and Ed grabbed the clutch and stepped into first gear. As he rolled on the throttle and pulled away from the stop, a part of his mind stayed with the boys on the sidewalk. Where would they be in another fourteen years? Would they still carry the civilized demeanor that shined through even in their fights? Or would they put more and more of their bodies behind each blow, until there was nothing left of that reserved civility, until they were clawing at each other like Ed and his last enemy had been, down in the grit of the street.