Peace

There are alternatives to spectating suffering.

“EVERYBODY STOP. RIGHT. NOW.”

It’s my Voice. My Dad-shout. I’ve only ever used the Dad-shout a few times, but growing up on a farm (where being heard half a field away over a bailing-line is a survivor skill), and in a family of Theater hippies (“Project Davey! From the Diaphragm!”) I can bark shockingly loud when I want to.

I am not remotely emotional. I am low affect, the tone of my voice considered for effect. More Bene Gesserit than WWE.

20 feet in front of me two 20-something dudes - Sober and Drunk - are on the edge of throwing punches. It’s an easy scene to read — the only bar in town is a few yards away. There’s a small group of concerned friends trying to talk both dudes down. A few people are crying. There are cell phones out, because of course there are.

I have only approached because I just heard a woman scream around the corner and, if I’m honest, it was a bad scream, and this is my town. Population a few thousand in winter, 5-10x that when the tourists are here for 10 weeks in summer. I used to be these idiots, townies fighting tourists right here in this parking lot, I think. 35-40 years ago.

The Voice has its intended effect: for just a few seconds, everyone stops, and looks at me, an unthreatening old bald dude in cargo pants. I don’t make eye contact. I just go stand between the two idiots, my hands in my pockets. I turn to Sober. “You, go somewhere else.” My voice is calm.

I turn to Drunk and say. “You, just walk away. OK?” I’m smiling faintly.

It doesn’t work (and honestly, I didn’t much expect it to), but it’s caused a delay, and I see a young girl, clearly part of this group, making a phone call.

“Cops?” I ask, raising my eyes to catch hers? She nods through tears. “Good, good. Stay on the line with them.” The police station is two blocks away. Everything in town is two blocks away.

Drunk pushes past me and tries to swing at the sober one, his mouth running with the belligerent string of idle threats and puffery only drunk dudes can come up with. I interpose my body, hands at my sides, just mosh-pitting them apart. The two of them start grappling around me, and while I am currently a pushing-60 mostly-Buddhist Jack-Anglican living in the woods, I’ve seen enough real world testosterone poisonings to recognize this is the point where this goes one of two directions for these chuckleheads: ambulance or overnight stay.

I’ve kept facing Drunk but Sober pushes around me and puts Drunk in a quick forward guillotine choke hold. Drunk makes bad movie soundtrack noises. I grab Sober’s elbows from behind. He is much stronger than I am.

“Just walk way dude.”

“I’m just gonna but baby to sleep here first…” he says, over Drunk’s gasping. I see the look in his eyes. It’s me at 20. All ego. He’s thinking “I’m winning winning a fight!” Likely has a little MMA or BJJ training, but the real world is messy he’s doing it badly. I can see his forearm is in Drunk’s windpipe, which is both the wrong way and dangerous.

“No, you’re going to go get arrested for assault in about 2 minutes. Just go home.”

I yank his arms harder, enough he looses the hold, and stand between them again, hands in my pockets. I don’t look at anyone’s faces. Mostly it’s because I’m autistic, but also, I did enough time being the guy in the red-suit beat up over and over again as the “bad guy” in “take back the night.” I’d be rubbish in a “real fight” - first one on the ground I’m sure. But I know enough to watch everyone’s hands and belt-lines in a scrap that could rapidly escalate to involve weaponry.

Drunk, who had been shoved away, regains his footing and pushes forward again as Sober starts to leave. Drunk ain’t done yet, whatever the beef. I’m bringing my best disappointed Dad-energy as Drunk seems to be deciding if he really wants to go after this old dude. He’s scream-yelling about how dead we’re all going to be soon.

Behind him I see someone else watching — a 6’5” obvious Gym Rat with well over 100 pounds on Drunk. He seems uninvolved with either party. I catch his eyes.

“Dude,” I say over the screaming. “If you can just hold him for 2 minutes till the cops get here, nobody has to get hurt tonight.”

He grabs drunks arms. There is no contest. Drunk is now just mad at me. I stand there with my hands in my pockets. He spits on me. “Who the fuck do you think you are you…”

He pauses, looking for a way in.

“… you blue-shirt and shorts wearing fairy?”

I shrug. I smirk.

“You could turn around and walk home…” I say.

“Do you know who my uncle is?”

“Don’t much care.”

“He’s the Sheriff. You’re in so much trouble old man…”

“That’s fine. I’m not afraid.” I realize it’s true. Not just because there’s no Sheriff.

I’m just here. Standing. Watching his hands. Smiling a little.

Drunk is Impotent Rage. There is more spitting. It occurs to me Drunk may be on something more than booze, but Gym-rat, looking somewhat surprised, just holds his arms, hard. I suspect he’s leaving bruises or maybe causing some soft-tissue shoulder-joint damage, but it seems like a fair trade.

The sirens pull up. Sober is long gone. Drunk is panting. I turn around and walk back to my wife, who followed behind me when I took off at a brisk walk from the Ice Cream line.

Lifting my head to look around, some 20 people are rubbernecking, a few with phones. There’s a small pop and some screaming. Drunk went for the cop, and got tazed.

All the phones are out. People keep recording. Some teenagers laugh.

Ice cream in hand, we go home.

—
A few hours later, my wife and I sit on the couch. I’m reading horror comics. She’s doing puzzles on her iPad.

“Sorry if I worried you…” I say. I haven’t much thought about what happened in town. There was no adrenaline. I have very little sense of “me” being there at all. “I hope you knew I wasn’t like, wading in or anything when I walked over and yelled.”

“Oh no, That was The Dad Voice, I knew what you were doing,” she says, putting her iPad down and grabbing my hand. “And you were totally calm. You never lifted your hands till that guy went at it. It went better for you being there.”

The silence that only comes from an overcast night in the woods comes back in for a minute.

“That would have been different 10 years ago wouldn’t it?” I ask, not looking up.

She knows what I mean. I well up a little.

While I have never been violent by nature, or thrown a first-punch or anything, I spent a lot of my time as a young man short-fused. Cocksure. Prone to inappropriate anger rumination. I was quick to over-react to perceived injustices and slights. A sketchy parking lot conflict, like this, would likely have gone from internal and placid (with a little autistic hand flapping), into animal rage.

I told myself I “channeled” all that with Tae Kwan Do and Judo and SCA fighting as I grew older, but honestly, all three mostly did the opposite. They honed, and trained the anger.

And one way or another, all that “channeled rage” most ended up in pain (mine). Broken noses (3x). A few broken ribs (2x). Dislocated shoulder (chronic). Broken thumb (1x). Broken fingers (2x). “Channeled” perhaps, in the sense I wasn’t showing up at Bars looking for fights after a bad day. But mostly just redirected into more socially accepted physicality where, thankfully, rage and irrationality tend to hurt the irate idiot more than the sparing partner or opponent.

10 years ago me still would have walked up, but I would have come in with real emotion behind the Dad Voice. Somehow, I would have made it about me. I would have made different, worse decisions, and someone, most likely me, would have ended up on the ground, a lot more hurt.

“The night would definitely have ended differently,” she says, squeezing my hand. I give her a little grin and squeeze back. She leans forward and kisses me on the forehead.

Like a benediction.

—

“Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.” – Thich Nhat Hanh