Chapter Six:
“Boards don’t hit back!”
-B. LEE
PRE-INHABITED AS I was with my worries about Don Bruce and the Mob, the altercation between Sergeant Smiley and myself slipped my mind completely. As it turned out, however, this did not matter, as the sergeant took steps to remind me of it, and the way it was sprung on me, it wouldn’t have done me no good to have used up a lot of time and energy thinkin’ about it.
We had reached the portion of our trainin’ in which we was to learn how to relate to the enemy at close quarters … preferably without surrenderin’. That is to say, hand-to-hand type combat.
Sergeant Smiley was teachin’ this section himself, which did not strike me as odd until later, as he obviously had more than passin’ familiarity with the techniques we was to learn. He homed in on the Flie brothers as his demonstrator/victims, and had great fun showin’ us all that size was not a factor in hand-to-hand combat by tossin’ and punchin’ ’em both around with impressive ease … or, put differently, he really made them fly. While all this was great fun to watch, I could not help thinkin’ that the lesson he was attemptin’ to drive home stank higher than the “Realistic Doggie Doodle with Lifelike Aroma that Actually Sticks to Your Hands” that I was so familiar with. I mean, I wonder if he really thought he was foolin’ anyone with his “size doesn’t make a difference” spiel. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that size can make a considerable difference in a physical-type difference of opinion, as one honest to goodness fight will usually demonstrate this fact clearly enough to convince even the dimmest of wits. The only time skill triumphs over size is if the little guy is very skillful and the big guy is very unskillful … not to mention slow and maybe has a glass jaw. If they are at all matched for skill, the big guy is a good bet to make strawberry jam of the little guy if he is so inclined. This is why professional contact, sport-type athletes, not to mention kneecappers like Nunzio and me, are on the extralarge side. It isn’t because our employers figure we are cheaper if cost justified on a “by the pound” rate, it’s because we tend to win.