“Where is your shore patrol?” he asked.
“How would I know?” the biggest whistler said. “All I want is a good look at the dame.”
“Do people like you have names and serial numbers?”
“How would I know,” one said.
The other said, “I wouldn’t tell a chicken Colonel if I had.”
Old army boy, the Colonel thought, before he hit him. Sea lawyer. Knows all his rights.
But he hit him with a left from nowhere and hit him three times as he started to go.
The other one, the first whistler, had closed fast and well, for a man who had been drinking, and the Colonel gave him the elbow in the mouth and then, under the light, had a good right hand shot at him. When it was in, he glanced at the second whistler and saw that was okay.
Then he threw a left hook. Then he put the right way into the body, coming up. He threw another left hook and then turned away and walked toward the girl because he did not want to hear the head hit the pavement.
He checked on the one that had it first, and noted he slept peacefully, chin down, with the blood coming out of his mouth. But it was still the right color, the Colonel noted.
“Well, there goes my career,” he said to the girl. “Whatever that was. But those people certainly wear funny pants.”
“How are you?” the girl asked.
“I’m fine. Did you watch it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have bad hands in the morning,” he said absent-mindedly. “But I think we can walk away from it all right. But let’s walk slowly.”
“Please walk slowly.”
“I did not mean it that way. I meant let’s not be hurried in our departure.”
“We will walk as slowly as two people can walk.”
So they walked.
“Do you want to try an experiment?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s walk so we make even the backs of our legs look dangerous.”
“I’ll try. But I don’t think I can.”
“Well, let’s just walk then.”
“But didn’t they hit you?”
“One pretty good right behind the ear. The second boy when he came in.”
“Is that what fighting’s like?”
“When you’re lucky.”
“And when you’re not lucky?”
“Your knees bend too. Either forward or backward.”
“Do you still care for me after you have fought?”
“I love you much more than before if it were possible.”
“Can’t it be possible? It would be nice. I love you more since I saw that thing. Am I walking slowly enough?”
“You walk like a deer in the forest, and sometimes you walk as well as a wolf, or an old, big coyote when he is not hurried.”
“I’m not sure I wish to be an old big coyote.”
“Wait till you see one,” the Colonel said. “You’ll wish. You walk like all the great predators, when they walk softly. And you are not a predator.”
“That I can promise.”
“Walk a little ahead so I can see.”
She walked ahead and the Colonel said, “You walk like a champion before he is the champion. If you were a horse I would buy you if I had to borrow the money at twenty percent a month.”
“You don’t have to buy me.”
“I know about that. That was not what we were discussing. We were discussing your gait.”
“Tell me,” she said. “What happens to those men? That’s one of the things I don’t know about fighting. Shouldn’t I have stayed and cared for them?”
“Never,” the Colonel told her. “Remember that; never. I hope they split a good concussion between them. They can rot. They caused the accident. There is no question of civil responsibility. We were all insured. If I can tell you one thing, Renata, about fighting.”
“Tell me please.”
“If you ever fight, then you must win it. That’s all that counts. All the rest is cabbage, as my old friend Dr. Rommel put it.”
“Did you really like Rommel?”
“Very much.”
“But he was your enemy.”
“I love my enemies, sometimes, more than my friends. And the Navy, you know, wins all their fights always. This I learned in a place called the Pentagon building when I was still permitted to enter that building by the front door. If you like we can stroll back down this street, or walk it fast, and ask those two that question.”