A confrontation

St. Louis, Missouri

With the next semester beginning soon, college kids were all preparing for making the return trip back to Heathrow.

In the heart of Missouri on a particularly warm evening, a tall Asian college boy walked in a neighbourhood he would never usually enter. He turned a corner, entering a street named Longhorn Crescent. Every house was run down and old, shitty wire gates at the front of most of the houses.

The tall Asian, Zack, otherwise known as Z, walked slowly, trying to figure out the house that he was looking for.

Stopping in front of one of the worse houses on the street, he looked at the mailbox that had been knocked to the ground. Number 23 it read.

“This has to be it,” he thought to himself.

The small wired fence gate was open so Z walked right inside, strolling up to the front porch. The house was that poorly kept after that it almost looked as if nobody lived here. Knocking on the front door lightly, Z didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

It swung open and there stood Dixon.

The much shorter college kid with a dirty brown mullet down to the top of his shoulders. He had on a grey ripped singlet that desperately needed just to be thrown out. His face was bruised from his eye to his top lip. There was a cut on the other side of his face, just below his eyebrow. This didn’t look like any sort of accident, it was a clear sign of someone copping a beating.

Knowing him well, Z knew not to ask questions about it. Dixon grabbed him by the front of his top and brought him inside warning him to be quiet. He took him into the first room on the right, his bedroom.

“You better make this quick,” Dixon said, quietly shutting his bedroom door behind him, “Dad’s drunk again and he ain’t going to appreciate any fucking Chinese guy walking inside his house.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m Korean by the way,” Z said, not taking the threat of his drunk dad too seriously.

Z was struggling how to tell him something important, he had known Dixon since high school before the mullet wearing boy was expelled. The two attended the same college together with Dixon practically lying his way to get in.

After being kicked out of the football team by Bryce Walker, Z didn’t have much contact with Dixon anymore, the two going off in similar yet different paths.

“I just have something to tell you,” he said, almost pacing around his friend’s bedroom. The back wall that he kept noticing had an entire confederate flag covering part of it, pinned to the wall. It made him a little uneasy.

Dixon didn’t appear amused by his sudden appearance and the longer he delayed this, the more irritated he was getting.

“Just spit it out already,” he told him.

Z looked down at him, their height a major difference, “I saw what you did that night,” making Dixon pause, his expression on his face only getting worse.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he denied.

Z shook his head, “That short blonde girl… Mable… Maple… something like that. I saw what you did outside of the eagle nest that night. I was having a smoke around the side of the place, I saw what went down.”

You would be able to hear the sound of a pin drop right now. The tension could be felt just by glancing at Dixon’s seething face.

“Are you threatening me right now?” he suddenly asked bluntly.

The tall Asian shook his head again, “I’m not dude… I’m actually trying to help you out right now.”

“How the fuck are you helping me…”

“Before the end of semester, some blonde hair kid came up to me and a couple of others asking if I saw you and that chick that night. I think he’s been asking a lot of people… I’m assuming that’s something you would want to hear,” he explained to the shorter angry college boy.

Dixon looked like his head was about to explode, he held in his anger not to punch something and alert his father, “Fucking bullshit… Who the fuck was this? This guy that asked you?”

“Honestly don’t know dude, he’s a Sophomore? Seen him around here and there, I don’t know he’s name though.”

Dixon began pacing around the room himself, looking as if he was about to throw a fist through the wall. A punched wall wouldn’t have looked out of place in this old broken down home.

“You don’t do that sort of thing often do you?” Z happened to ask, knowing he could be pushing the boundaries in a place he didn’t want to do that in.

Dixon gave him the sort of look as if to say never ask him that again.

“Sorry, I’m just trying to let you know to be careful,” Z told him, trying to keep him from letting loose.

Suddenly, a noise could be heard from the other end of the hallway outside his bedroom. A door slamming and a bunch of incoherent mumbling came from the other end of the house.

“Shit. You need to get out of here right now!” Dixon then said, pushing his friend from college toward his bedroom window.

Z didn’t waste anytime getting the hell out of there. He opened up the clatch, pulling the window up and slipped himself out, quickly running across the front yard, over their fence and out of their property.

Back inside Dixon’s room, the bedroom door bursted open and in stumbled his father, an almost empty bottle of whiskey in one hand and a belt in the other.

Dixon’s lip began to tremble, he knew exactly what was about to happen.

***

Leaving Dixon’s house today, Z felt conflicted. He was a bit of a stoner, some what of an outcast from general society, very much loved to hear the sound of his own voice. However, I’m saying all of that, he wasn’t a bad person, he would never do the the things that Dixon had done and if it was anyone else, he’d probably have already turned him in.

Z knew how dangerous he was and what he could do if you messed with him. It may have been affecting his judgement but he was worried about the consequences of calling him out on his actions. Also knowing the way he was brought up and the rough childhood he had been through, Z hesitated to make a move on Dixon.

For now, his secret was safe…

***