Every 21 Seconds Brian D. Sweeney, Tate Publishing Page 10 of 12

We arrived there about 11:15 and were greeted with a you're not a local stare by what looked like a sea of John Deere hats. No big deal. We proceeded directly towards the bar. As drinks were ordered, I requested “Cotton Fields,” an old Creedence Clearwater Revival tune for our karaoke song. Ten minutes later we were called. Henry, Tim, Joe, and I went up, while Kevin stayed seated at the bar. We did our thing, two on each microphone. We stirred up a few laughs and a few stares. Afterward, Henry and Kevin ventured to the men's room.

While we listened to the next person onstage, a fight started at the entrance to the men's room. I noticed that Henry was a part of it and was being pushed out the door, while Kevin was trying to be a mediator. Henry’s not a fighter and didn’t even know what caused the problem. Joe and I immediately went over and told him to get back to the bar, which he did. We sat down, but we could see that the trouble was not going to stop. Even though we had nothing to do with it, we decided to finish our drinks and head out of there.

As it turns out, the individual causing the commotion was a local man, Nick Smith. My wife vaguely knew him from her childhood days spent at the cottage. He was at the bar with his wife and her friend. Smith was asked to leave by the bar employees for being unruly. After throwing his drink at the female bartender, he agreed to leave. Smith was tall, skinny, and had long black hair and a beard. The bartender and bouncers escorted him outside. However, he headed back in to get his wife (I guess he forgot about her). The bartender greeted him at the door with profanities, and Smith greeted her with his fist. He knocked her out cold. After seeing this, the other employees and some patrons brought Smith outside the bar for an attitude adjustment. It was at this point that my friends and I decided to leave. The last thing I remember was putting on my jacket and heading for the door.

I was told that as we walked out there was a small brawl off to the right of us, but we kept walking towards the car. I trailed behind my friends. Nick Smith emerged from the brawl somewhat enraged and incoherent. The locals and a few employees had given him a good beating. We happened to be walking to the car as the fight ended, and I was the last of the five of us. Smith assumed that we were part of the group pounding on him and made his way towards us. He ran up behind me and struck me with an upward jolt to the back of my head. I dropped like a rock. I assume that I never saw or heard him coming. Smith proceeded to jump on Henry, screaming, “I am going to break your neck!” The other three removed Smith from Henry as the police arrived on the scene. Someone had called the police prior to the bar employees dragging Smith outside. A female bar patron stood over me so the police would not run me over on the side of the street—I appreciated that. One of the bar patrons and the lady who had been standing over me tried to wake me as the police attempted to sort out what had happened. Their efforts to wake me were in vain, so the lady who had been standing over me approached Kevin and asked him if he was with me. Kevin was shocked to see me lying unconscious on the road—they had not seen me get hit. They also tried to wake me but with no luck. With me still unconscious, Kevin and Joe decided to put me in the Lincoln. They each grabbed an arm and dragged me across the gravel road and laid me in the back seat. An Officer Garner walked over and asked how I ended up on the ground. The lady who had been standing over me when the police turned the corner was the sister of the female bartender who Smith had knocked out, and she had ran outside in pursuit of him in an effort to obtain his license plate number.“That guy hit him!” she said, pointing at Smith. With that being said, the police placed Smith in custody for questioning. While the boys were being questioned, Officer Garner asked if I was a diabetic, due to my rather loud snoring. He had witnessed that kind of snoring with people in a diabetic coma. Kevin replied that I wasn't. While Officer Garner continued to talk to Kevin, Joe very skillfully removed the twenty-four empty beer cans from the backseat floor. Just as he finished tossing the last one into the bushes, another officer approached Joe and pointed toward the empties. “Yours?” he asked. Joe looked over at the pile and responded, “Those, oh, no, those aren’t mine.”

The officer had called an ambulance. I have to tell you that this bar, Reilly’s North, was a classic. It was in the middle of all these cottages, just sitting there on a dirt road. Absolutely a local bar, it had been there for years with one light in front of it; you know, that ugly fluorescent light that stands about fifteen feet in the air and casts a strange light in only one direction. It was the kind of place where beer in bottles was an upgrade.

Joe McAvoy accompanied me in the ambulance, while the other three went back into the bar and had a few cold beers with the employees and patrons who were involved in the “mixed-up-no-martial-art-skill brawl.” They stayed there until the police took them back to the cottage. From what I was told, the drive back to the cottage was quite humorous. The house we were staying at was difficult to find if you were not familiar with it, and the remaining three knuckleheads spent an hour in the back of a squad, with the officer threatening to either drop them off where they were or bring them to the station if he didn't find the damn house. Keep in mind that the cottage was only three blocks from the bar. No charges were filed against Nick Smith that night, and the police escorted him home. The policeman, it turns out, was a childhood friend of Smith's.

I arrived at a trauma center in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, at ten minutes after one in the morning. As they wheeled me in, Joe said the doctor commented, “Another drunken casualty from the Geneva strip.” Joe disputed that remark, arguing that there had been a fight at the bar and I was struck in the head while walking to the car. Knowing Joe, he most likely worded that last statement a bit differently, but I’m sure you get the picture. Because I had been at a bar, the doctor assumed I was intoxicated. I suppose he also assumed that I normally bled from the back my head. No testing was performed. I was given an IV and placed in a room to sleep it off.

My wife, Mary Beth, was not notified until Sunday morning. When she was contacted, the nurse had told her, “We believe that Brian is sleeping off a hangover, so you can pick him up later. He should be released by noon.”

From Every 21 Seconds by Brian D. Sweeney, published by Tate Publishing & Enterprises. Copyright © 2009 Brian D. Sweeney. Reprinted with the author's permission. All rights reserved. www.tatepublishing.com.
 

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