Chapter 23
AS A brawling arena, the middle of the street has a lot to recommend it. My feet wouldn’t slip on the asphalt. The sun, high overhead, wouldn’t get in my eyes, and the surrounding trees even cast nice shade. It wasn’t full of heavy or sharp pieces of stuff that could be used to brain me, like an alley or a junkyard would be. Frayville didn’t have any traffic to speak of, so the beat-down wouldn’t get called on account of oncoming vehicles.
The only problem with the arena was that Eric and I were in it, surrounded by a dozen angry men. The kind of men who went hunting and fishing every weekend, who worked with their hands and their backs. Tough, burly men who wouldn’t think twice about hauling a load of bricks across the yard or dragging a gutted elk three miles back to the tru
