Have you ever seen a fight? Sure, most guys probably have. But I'd never seen one go down quite like this. Now most of my friends aren't really brawlers, but a couple years ago, I saw a guy punch another player in our Thanksgiving flag football game. He got kicked out and walked to his car swearing and griping about the injustice of it all.
But this past Friday night, there were no refs. And apparently calling the police isn't what you do around here. So it was up to Rich and me to intervene; or at least, it seemed like the right thing to do at first.
Our family was visiting his family Friday night in a fairly typical neighborhood of Santo Domingo. From their second floor balcony of the 5-story apartment, we heard some yelling out on the street. Looking over the balcony rail, we could see a Haitian guy sitting on the 3 foot wall by the sidewalk, with a Dominican really in his face over something. After a moment of yelling, he suddenly swung at him and knocked him off the wall. The Haitian disappeared for a moment on the other side and then was up and back over the wall. The Dominican was a pretty big guy, and eager to fight. The two men faced up, fists raised, right out on the sidewalk, under the street light.
Suddenly a girl from the parking lot below our balcony started to scream at them. I assumed she was the girlfriend or something, and then Rich and Kirsten both joined in yelling at them to back off. They ignored the protests and started in, punching and ducking.
"Rich, you got to go down there!" Kirsten yelled. They knew the Haitian, I discovered. He was the building guard that opened the gate for cars to park beneath the building. They also knew there was bad blood between him and a couple of the building residents.
"I'll go with you," I said, as Rich headed for the door. He grabbed a stick that was sitting by the door, hoping it would help deter the combatants when we showed up. We bounded down a flight of stairs, and out into the gated parking lot beneath the building, heading for the electric gate which was now beginning to open. Somehow I ended up in front of Rich, and I as I neared the gate to the street, suddenly a man came through toward me, a machete in hand. He walked straight toward me, an angry My mind started to race.
In a flash, I had three quick thoughts. It's funny how fast the mind works sometimes. One thought was suddenly wishing I wasn't down here. The second was wondering what it would feel like to get hit by a machete. The third was wondering if running back to the building would be a good move or attract unnecessary attention. He was coming toward me, but he wasn't really after me, was he? I stopped and moved back and to the left, watching him very closely.
Behind me, I heard a flurry of activity. Out of the building poured 7 or 8 young men, the first one out holding a pistol. With his left hand he reached down and I heard the metal slide as he loaded a round into the chamber. This was not an improvement.
Rich and I had separated to opposite sides of the parking lot. Before us was a guy with a machete. Behind us a guy with a gun. Plus two guys out on the street fighting and a host of young men ready to do who knows what. I moved cautiously toward the group of men behind us.
"Quien tiene el problema?" the guy with the gun asked. Who has the problem. Great. A guy with a gun looking for a problem. The two guys who had been fighting were nowhere in sight, and as I turned around, machete man was heading out the gate onto the street.
"Nobody here has a problem," I said. Some of the other guys who had just exited the building muttered an agreement. Now if everybody could go back inside, I thought, we can end this without anybody dying.
Rich was down toward the street still and some yelling started up again. The gunman ran down toward the sound. I stayed put. No way I was going back down there. Just beyond the wall, voices were yelling out on the street. It sounded like another group had arrived. Maybe from the building next door? A couple guys appeared at the top of the wall yelling into the garage. The idiot with the gun yelled back and then raised the gun, stepping towards them, pointing it and threatening to fire. The men disappeared from the wall. But the shouts and alarm didn't.
You could feel the tension and uncertainty. Is this what it's like right before a riot? Are there sides to this whole thing that I don't know about yet? What side is everybody on anyway? God, please don't let those other guys come back with guns, too. I have a feeling hothead here won't be able to resist squeezing off a few rounds.
Rich yelled at the guy to put the gun down. I yelled from the back. Another older guy was there now and saying the same thing. (I say older. I mean older like us, 30's, maybe 40's). Finally, the voices on the street quieted a little. The guy stuffed the gun in his front jeans pocket, the barrel sticking out. (For some strange reason I remember wondering if the safety was on. A sudden discharge can be rather unpleasant from that position.)
Rich and Old Fart started to herd them slowly back toward me and they begin to mill around. It seemed like they didn't know any better than I did what all the fighting was really about anyway.
Now here's the crazy thing. I had just called a taxi to take us home, and we were waiting for it when this whole melee started. So now our taxi pulls up outside the gate in the middle of a growing crowd of people. Calm seems to be returning even as the crowd grows, so I decide to stick with the plan.
"Look," I say loudly.
"That's my taxi. My wife and kids are going to be walking through here in a minute. Take that back upstairs," I say, pointing to Trigger Finger.
"I don't want any guns, or any machetes, or any fighting at all. Go!"
He takes a couple steps toward the door but then hesitates, not sure the action is really over. But now Kirsten is down with us and she lets him have it. What are you thinking bringing than down here and waiving it around? There are families that live here. We got kids coming through. She's pointing and waiving here arms like some crazy Cubana. One by one the guys slip back through the door and I join them to usher down the family.
When we finally all get into the taxi, the driver looks around at the group of probably 30 young people, now girls as well as guys.
"You having some kind of a party or something?" he says as we pull out.
"Yeah," I think. "Something like that."
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