The fight sounded nasty when reports of it came over the scanner. A man on the ground being beaten by five others. At least one baseball bat involved.
Sirens started wailing. Gawkers started gawking. Bored reporters awoke from naps.
When I got there, a young guy was sitting on a curb, mopping at his forehead with a bloody towel. Several others flung their arms in the air as they gave their accounts of the brawl to police.
Two young men were loaded into the back of cruisers. A pretty girl twisted her hands as she watched from across the street.
The bat was found a short distance away. Aluminum. The kind of bat that makes a satisfying clang when you connect in a back-lot baseball game. An officer picked up the weapon. He examined it for several moments, and then wandered over to speak with a witness.
The bleeder continued to bleed. The two men in the backs of cruisers stared out at the battlefield, rendered mute.
So far, I had not removed the notebook from my back pocket.
Fights are not uncommon downtown, even in November. My job is to look around, ask a few questions and weigh the news value of the scene. Here was a man with minor injuries, a lot of accusations being hurled around and not much by way of drama.
I made quick work of it. A few questions for police, a cursory look at the agitated crowd, and away I went. Back to the office without news to peck out for waiting readers.
No news maybe, but there’s always a story. Behind every shoving match is a thread of something worthy of the afternoon soaps. Every screeching argument, every lover’s quarrel, every knock-down scrap comes with a tantalizing tale.
The phone rang while my hands were still cool from those few minutes on College Street. The caller was a witness to the brawl with intimate details of the fracas. He told me the tale and at last, I began taking notes.
Seems a young man and his girlfriend were shopping at a department store when words were exchanged with another group. Lurid remarks were made about the girlfriend. Crude and menacing comments were flung like stones, and then the merry band of wits sped off in a car.
The boyfriend was enraged. Unwilling to shrug off the vile comments, he got into his own car and gave chase. Eager to defend his lady’s honor, he sped after the villains as they drove through Auburn and into Lewiston.
The chase ended on College Street when the foul-mouthed flock pulled to a stop outside their home. From the other car emerged the incensed boyfriend with his Louisville Slugger.
The batsman headed toward the fellow who had made the most repulsive comments about his girlfriend. But before he could get at him, his older brother came flying out of an apartment to intercede.
It’s a quandary, I know. Over here you have a young man ready to do battle to reclaim respect for himself and his lady. Over there, you have a guy jumping into the fray to protect his bro’.
It’s a showdown worthy of Shakespeare except for one thing – that stupid bat. Roughly 30 ounces of aluminum added to the mix means the potential for a deadly injury rather than a mere bloody nose and a black eye or two.
When the older brother confronted the angry boyfriend, he got a bit of the bat for his trouble. My new friend on the phone says the boyfriend got in at least two swings before he was tackled by the rest of the gang.
At that point, neighbors picked up their phones. Police were called and officers responded. A garden variety confrontation became an ugly event that drew a half-dozen cops and one meddlesome reporter.
The man who called me was not disturbed because there had been a fight. Fights happen, he said. One guy feels disrespected or threatened by another, fists fly. It’s a territorial thing that goes all the way back to the day when we lived in caves and grunted our profanity.
No, the caller was disturbed because the young man with the bat was not arrested. The cops who came had separated the combatants, sorted through the story and restored peace to the downtown block. The only arrest made was of some guy who shot his mouth off and didn’t want to cool it when ordered to.
By some standards, it’s an anti-climax. Brawlers separated and moved along. Wounds licked and egos stroked. All’s well that ends well.
But the caller was concerned. Are fights where bats are swung so commonplace now that arrests are not certain and the attacks don’t even merit a news brief in the local paper? If a man with a bat will take on a group of rivals and lose, might he return next time with a gun?
It’s ugly from every angle. Few will favor the person who verbally assails a young couple in a public place. Fewer still will grasp the logic of pursuing the battle into the next city or taking a swing at retribution with a baseball bat.
Me, I stand apart from such lofty judgments. I’m all about the story. When the reader has the facts, he or she can make assessments about rights and wrongs, and about the many frailties of human nature.
Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. He says his lifetime batting average is .376 It’s up to if you want to believe that.
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