This is a follow-on to Brad Paisley's song, "Karate," from his "Wheelhouse" album.
It was a travesty that he'd only gotten six months in the county jail plus three years probation, but she had wanted to press charges and get it over with quickly, and so he had shown up in court with his leg still in a brace, his arm still in a sling, a bandage on his nose, and a compression wrap around his rib cage. The judge had taken pity on him, and if it weren't for the bruises on her face, the judge might have let him off completely.
So in those six months, she had to figure out what to do next. She moved two towns away. She took everything out of their apartment except for his clothes, his toys, and some basic furniture. She didn't leave a forwarding address. She sold her car and bought another one, registered to her daddy at his address. She threw away her old cell phone and got one of those pay-as-you-go plans with an unlisted number.
She turned in his guns at the sheriff's office. Since he was now a convicted felon, he wouldn't be needing them anymore. Then she and her lawyer went next door, and got the judge to issue a permanent restraining order against him. A sheriff's deputy delivered the order to him at the jail. She heard that he had gotten so enraged that he had torn his bunk bed out of the wall by the bolts, and that his cellmates were screaming for the guards to let them out of the cell before he beat the hell out of them.
She wasn't stupid. She knew the restraining order wouldn't keep him away. She figured it would make him resolve to come after her. But she needed it on the record for what she was going to do next. And she needed to make sure - personally - that he would never come after her again.
She was proud of that black belt, the one that matched his eye.
The day he got out, he walked from the bus stop to their house. He knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He dug in the plastic bag the jail had given him with his shit in it, and found his keys at the bottom. He unlocked the door, stepped in, and dropped the bag in the hall. He shouted her name. The only sound was the echoes from the empty rooms. He walked through the house. He found the TV and the old, busted recliner in the living room. He found the card table and the folding chair in the kitchen. He found the twin bed, the dresser, the lamp and the alarm clock in the bedroom.
The alarm clock reminded him of the county lock-up: the bells all day long, telling him to wake up, to eat, to go out, to go back in, to prepare for lights out at night. He went out back, found a piece of firewood, brought it in the house and pounded the alarm clock to bits, leaving the debris on the dresser and the floor. Then he moved all the furniture into the bedroom. Except for the fridge in the kitchen, that's all he would need.
The sun sets late on the summer nights. About an hour before sunset, he was sitting in that old recliner, enjoying a late three-beer dinner and watching "Swamp Monsters" on Animal Planet, when the doorbell rang.
He sighed, got up, and went to the door. If he was surprised to see her standing there when he opened it, he didn't show it. Instead, he burped at her and said, "What?"
She smiled slightly. "This is my house. I want to come in, but you're here. That's a violation of the judge's order."
"Screw the judge's order. What do you want?"
"I'm coming in. Move." There was something in her eye that he had only seen once before - the last time they'd been together in this house, when he had ended up crumpled on the floor, against the fridge. So he moved, just enough to let her in. He turned his back on her and went back to the bedroom, where he settled into the chair again. She followed him.
She said, "Rent's paid here through December. If you stop drinking, you should be able to afford the rent."
"Fuck you," he responded.
"Not anymore," she said.
He burped again. "That's imaginative."
"Look," she said, planting herself in front of the TV, hands on her hips. "I know you're gonna come after me tomorrow, as soon as you sober up."
"So?"
"So I'm here to make sure you don't." She took a step towards him. He was too stupid to recognize the threat.
"I'll do whatever the hell I want to! You're still my wife, and I have a right to -" He really should have seen it coming. One minute he was sitting there in the fully-extended recliner, a beer in one hand, wagging the finger of the other hand at his wife, as he laid down the law. The next minute he was on his back, on the floor, with his legs folded over his chest and the recliner upside-down on top of him. The back of his head hurt, and stars were swimming in front of his eyes. He didn't know where the beer had gone.
He took a couple of breaths, and then pushed the recliner aside and staggered to his feet. That's when her booted foot caught him squarely between the legs. It was as if the football team had been taking shots at an imaginary bulls-eye painted on his balls. He was doubled up and lying on the ground again in an instant.
What he wanted to say, he couldn't say. It was all he could do to gasp and moan. The pain shot up into his abdomen and disabled him completely, making it hard to breathe and impossible to stand. He lay there curled up and grunting in agony for almost five minutes. Finally he stood up, not straight but at least on his feet, and said, "Damn you, woman, let me tell you something -" and that's when the wheel kick connected with the side of his face, knocking out six molars and dislocating his jaw. He spun around in a circle and landed on the floor, sitting improbably cross-legged.
"You don't get to tell me anything!" she said, emphatically but not yelling. "The law says you're not allowed to be anywhere near me, you're not allowed to talk to me, and you're not allowed to follow me. But I don't trust you, and I don't trust the law, so I'm here to make sure for myself that you don't talk to me from now on."
"You bitch!" he shouted as he got to his feet. "When I get my hands on you, I'm gonna -" Another front kick caught him between the legs, and his forehead led the way to the floor this time. He put his hands on the floor, to try to get back up. Then he opened his mouth in a wide, silent scream of agony, as her stomping heel broke the bones of his fingers, first on one hand, then on the other. He pulled his hands protectively to his chest and looked up at her, curled over but trying to straighten up.
He was on his knees, still with an open-mouthed grimace on his face. That's when her right hand came down in a cross-cut chop and broke his right collarbone. Before he could react, in one fluid circular motion she transferred her momentum from the right arm to the left arm, and shattered his left collarbone with her other hand.
It might have been the beer. It might have been shock setting in. Whatever it was, although he could feel the pain from his broken fingers, he couldn't feel any pain from the broken collarbones. But he couldn't move his arms. That's when she reached in and grabbed his beard.
He had kept his head clean-shaven in jail. It made him look badass, and nobody could grab it from behind. But he'd let his beard grow, like half of the other guys, because it made him look badass too. It made a great handle for her. She pulled him close, so close that when she hissed at him, he could feel her spit spraying all over his face. She said, "You are NEVER gonna put your hands on me again! Get it?"
Apparently he didn't get it, because he spat in her eye. She didn't stop to wipe it out. She relaxed her arm, letting him pull his head back - but not her grip on his beard. Suddenly the fist of her other hand shot out and caught him in the eye. Her punching arm recoiled and then lashed out again, catching him in the other eye. He screamed and squeezed both eyes shut, trying to blink away the pain, so he never saw her arm lash out a third time, to break his nose and to drive the cartilage deep into his sinus cavities.
With his elbows tight against his sides for his collarbones' sake, he raised his hands in a token attempt to block the next punch, which he couldn't see but knew was coming. This one broke out his front teeth. He covered his mouth with his hands, howling through his broken fingers. By now he was standing up, although bent over at the waist in an attempt to protect his upper body - when his crotch was suddenly the target of a third powerful kick. This one actually lifted him off his feet, and he hit the floor elbows first, shattering one and dislocating the other. He lay there in a ball, sobbing like a little boy and crying "Please! No more!"
For a moment, she stood over him, looking down on him. When she spoke, her voice was low, but it was hard with rage, and if he listened carefully, the edges were softened with a touch of false pity. She said, "Little man, how many times did you stop when I said, 'please, no more?' Did you EVER stop?"
She reached down and picked him up by the beard. Actually, she didn't pick him up, but it hurt so bad that he willed his legs to uncurl and try to stand up, to relieve the pressure on his beard. He looked like a bloody, beaten version of the cavemen in the high school science books. Once he was standing by himself on wobbly feet, she let go of his beard and said, "Look at me."
He tried, but he was still blinking from her punches. His shirt was stained with the blood flowing freely from his mouth and nose. He was still sobbing and whimpering.
She said, "You raped me so many times I can't count it. I don't think three kicks to the balls makes up for that. I should just cut your dick clean off." She pulled a fishing knife out of her pocket and opened it. He whined in fear, thinking she was serious. She waited until he stopped whining and went back to his whimpering, then closed the knife and put it away.
She said, "You hit me so many times that a few broken fingers isn't enough to make things right. You are NEVER gonna hit me again. Next time you try, I will break both of your arms." He gasped in wide-eyed fear and choked for a second on his own blood. He coughed it up, and it drooled down his shirt with all the rest.
She said, "You yelled at me for years, and you're still yelling at me, and you're not gonna yell at me anymore. Today I took out your jaw and your teeth. Next time I will crush your windpipe. You know what happens when I do that?" He swallowed, and his Adam's apple bobbed in acknowledgement.
She said, "Today I gave you two black eyes. If you come looking for me, I will find you first, and then I will TAKE OUT both of your eyes. And don't you think I won't.
"You are never gonna follow me. You are never gonna look me up. You are never gonna try to get near me. If you see me at the Winn-Dixie, you are gonna run out of the store and leave your groceries there to rot. Because I can take care of myself, and I ain't afraid of you anymore, and if I think you're coming after me, I WILL GET YOU FIRST."
But he wasn't ready to give up yet. Laying claim to the same justice that he had denied her for so long, he mumbled through his broken teeth, "I'm gonna call the fucking sheriff and git you arrested for assault and domestic violence."
She cocked her head and smiled sadly. "Sweetie, my name's on the lease, not yours. You violated a restraining order and your parole by coming back here today. The only thing you're gonna do with the sheriff is get your sorry ass hauled back to jail."
Then, laying cowardly claim to the pity every woman possesses, he whined, "Aw, c'mon, it's my first day out. Have a heart."
Black lightning flashed in her eyes. With words like sharpened flint, she said, "I had a heart! You broke it! And then you stomped on what was left of it! Why don't you see what it feels like!" She planted her weight on her right foot, spun in a full circle, and with the heel of her left foot caught him in the center of the sternum. It knocked the wind out of him, detached several ribs from the sternum, and sent him flying backward and halfway through the wall on the other side of the room.
Embedded in the wall, trapped between the studs, he watched with naked fear as she strode over to him. In that same flinty voice, she said, "I want you to remember our little talk today. I want you to remember it every day, for the rest of your life. Here's a little something so that you won't forget."
She thought that he looked like the punching dummy she'd used in her karate class. Remembering one of their classroom drills, and adding a little bit of her own, she left him her reminders. He started screaming when he saw the first punch coming, and he was unconscious by the time the last kick hit home:
Another punch in each eye, and one more into the bloodied and misshapen nose.
Two roundhouse kicks to the jaw, one from the left, and one from the right.
Side kicks to the shoulders, grinding the broken bits of the collarbones together.
Heel kicks to his mangled hands, which, incredibly, were gripping the wall studs for support. Too bad for him, the studs acted like anvils to her bony hammers.
One last front kick to the crotch. While that wouldn't pay back all of the times he'd brutally had his way with her, she could make sure that his equipment was so irreparably damaged that no woman would ever have to suffer that kind of abuse from him again. She didn't care if his balls were scrambled and his dick was so grotesquely broken that it hurt just to pee and could never be used for anything else.
With a mixture of triumph and relief showing on her face, she pulled a copy of the restraining order out of her purse, unfolded it, and laid it on the twin bed. She walked out of the bedroom. In the doorway, she stopped for one last look at the man dangling from the hole in the wall, his head slumped forward, blood drooling in great gobs from his chin, and a snoring, rasping noise coming from his mouth. Then she turned and walked out of the house, slamming the door shut behind her.
