The men all around were yelling their various concerns at a fever pitch as Whiff heaved himself off the concrete and lurched back just as a hard paw of a foot pushed off of his big belly casting him back onto his considerable behind. No sooner had he landed so impolitely, and before the giggling of his soft outer shell stopped its motion, than he noticed to what ends he had been made. ‘Mister Texas’ had leaped over the body of Cat Claw and pushed off of Whiff as if he were a sprite springing off a dandelion.

Whiff sat in amazement and watched as the big eggplant shaped form of the one they called the Rat Swallower, a mop of pretty blonde curls improbably waving atop his squarish head, hissed like a huge spitting serpent—for spit he did, targeting the eyes of his elusive opponent. The big blonde rapist of guards and swallower of rats whole, who fancied himself some kind of human python, emulated his namesake by slinking toward his prey with sinuous slide-steps, all the while working his arms in a like way.

Cobb made a swift sneak rush and ‘Mister Texas’ stood his ground firing a jab and a right and a jab that seemed to melt on the wide square face of the spitting snake man. Then he was on him, those big pale arms over hooking the left and under hooking the right, those tree trunk legs pumping down in stomping motions to heel stomp the lighter man’s feet against the concrete.

“Let me help you boy.”

It was Old Blue screaming hoarsely in his ear, in some need of help himself as he attempted to lift Whiff’s not inconsiderable behind off the slab. Whiff stood up with his old corner man’s help and hugged the kind old white man to his side as they viewed the primitive proceedings. Old Blue screamed in his ear, a strained whisper all that emerged from his old lungs. “You done brought some shit up in here with you boy!”

Just then, as the big pale heavyweight heaved the wiry dark middleweight off his feet for a slam, ‘Mister Texas’ wrapped his legs around the big man’s waist, and with his arms now free due to the body lock he was in, grabbed the blonde curls with both hands and flashed a set of pearly white teeth that would have done Whiff’s midway man White Cap proud—and it was the beginning of Time once again; the beginning of the Yankee science man’s Time; not God’s Time with Adam being duped by Eve under the apple tree, but with beast feasting ravenously upon beast!

Old Blue recoiled and Whiff shivered even as the entire crowd sounded, “Oooh!”

‘Mister Texas’, hugging himself to his big antagonist like a revue girl hanging on a doorman behind the nickel pin booth, brought his open mouth down on the nose of the blonde giant and ripped it off, spitting it in a long arc toward Gill Saint. Rat Swallower bellowed what should have been a nasal call of protest only to have it sound like a tiny whale pushing mud up through its blowhole.

The giant clutched at the evil pixie in his embrace, peeling the hands away from his head, only to have the grinning fiend lurch in with teeth flashing and rip off an ear. Cobb then tried grabbing the smaller man’s head in his own hands to bite away his own self it seemed, only to have the wiry dastard ‘scooch’ around under his arm and take his back. Blood hosing from the gaping hole above his mouth the big blonde man reached desperately over his shoulder to dislodge the monkey on his back, only to fall into a full nelson.

Old Blue croaked as the crowd went silent, “That’s a neck breaker—it was all Japanese gorilla fightin’ up until now—now it’s just plain backwoods neck breaking.”

Rat Swallower Cobb now looked as if he could swallow a cat as he struggled to stay upright and dislodge the fiend from his back—red sludge still pumping up out of his nose hole like a shallow well under the spring rain. There was a moment of dramatic struggle—the two silently striving before all—then ‘Mister Texas’ pressed the harder with the two hands that commanded the cervical spine from behind, having been snaked through the backward lifted arms of the pale bloody mess that had once raped two prison guards at the same time down in the workshop. The giant moaned and tried to step forward and the monkey on his back took the opportunity to shift higher and ride him face first to the pavement, where the dubious life of Rat Swallower Cobb ended as if he were a broom being ridden too hard to earth by some Union witch in the Atlanta Night.

Silence reigned as it so often does when men realize all at once—like lied to children at the cotton candy stand paying extra for the stick—that the devil they once fancied living under their bed now stands before them, holding their awkward souls cruelly, as God looks the other way.