Crash Landing

"It was the worsest thing I done ever saw in my life."

In a hushed courtroom, the jury leaned forward, hanging on every word that the witness mumbled into the microphone. He was only forty years old, but his matted hair, sunken bloodshot eyes, and unshaven face made him look over sixty. His clothes told the truth–they were all that he owned, and looked it. He sat there on the witness stand slumped forward, head slightly bowed, and hands pressed together between his legs, nervously rocking back and forth and obviously in dire need of some chemical that he hadn’t had in some time. He slowly shook his head from side to side, as if the memory of what he had seen was just too great a weight for him to bear.

His name was Sam Johnson. Sometimes he called himself Sam Johnston, other times he had told me that he was Tim Johnson. He wasn’t lying to me, or trying to avoid accountability for some transgression he’d committed–he just couldn’t always remember. A decade of anti-psychotics, rotgut booze, and living on the streets had taken their toll. He was soft-spoken and slow moving, and posed a threat to no one other than himself. Sam had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time. What he saw scared him half to death. And even now–a full year after he had witnessed the incident–the memory of the event was still capable of fighting its way through the mush of his chemically ravaged brain. Though he had difficulty recalling his own name, there was no question that he remembered what had happened in vivid detail. In a life of witnessing very bad things, there was no question that what he had seen that night was indeed the worsest thing he done ever saw in his life.

He was the first witness in the strangest case I had ever tried.

* * * * * *

After graduating from law school and passing the bar exam, I went to work for the District Attorney’s office. Like most new lawyers, I wanted to get all of the trial experience I could, as early in my career as possible. The DA’s office seemed like the logical choice, especially since the big law firms weren’t quite beating down my door with job offers.

I had worked my way through school as an ironworker, walking beams thirty stories above the street during the day, and struggling through torts, contracts, and evidence at night. Unlike my Ivy League brothers and sisters, I didn’t study law dressed in tweed and cardigan–I sat there for three years in steel-toed work boots, filthy blue jeans and a fresh tee shirt I’d throw in the back of my 1966 Volkswagen Beetle every morning. But it wasn’t a bad life. I liked working outdoors, getting dirty, sweating, and spitting Copenhagen all day. I especially enjoyed our lunches. Sitting on the side of a skyscraper- to- be, right on the edge of the building on the second floor, munching on baloney sandwiches and Cheetoes, we’d girl-watch as the downtown crowd made its way up and down the sidewalk across the street. But I knew it was a temporary thing. I knew that someday I’d be a lawyer, maybe working inside of one of the buildings I’d help build.

So when I passed the bar, the guys and gals of Ironworkers Local 48 threw a big party for me at the union hall, gave me a leather briefcase with my initials on it, and wished me well.

I spent two years working in the circus that is usually referred to as the Criminal Justice System. It was loud, harried, and totally unfulfilling. It seemed that all I did was review complaints, negotiate plea bargains with other lawyers, and periodically go to trial against some poor bastard who couldn’t afford a lawyer, and had to settle for a court-appointed, licensed dumbass who was never prepared and offered little resistance and no challenge. All I had learned in two years was how to get misdemeanor convictions against helpless, hopeless citizens who had no defense. It was like playing one-on-one basketball against a guy with no arms.

Bentley Drummond was a frequent opponent. At almost seventy years of age, Bentley exemplified the plight of the bottom-feeders of the legal profession. He’d never had a partner during his forty year career, and somehow had managed to scratch out a living on court appointments, traffic tickets, simple wills, and uncontested divorces. Bentley claimed no specific legal specialty, other than plea bargaining indigent defendants, getting his $250 fee from the county, and getting the hell out of the courthouse. I had tried six cases against him, all resulting in convictions. Prosecutors enjoy the luxury of picking their trials. If the defendant was represented by a lawyer who could find his or her way to the courthouse, and seemed to know any law at all, we could just offer their client the deal du jour, recite the plea to the judge, and close the case. But if they showed up at court like Bentley–disheveled, unprepared, and looking like a homeless person who had wandered on to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the middle of a trading frenzy–we’d offer something close to the death penalty for a DWI charge, he’d refuse it, and we’d set the case for trial. I could try a case against him in less than a day, from jury selection to verdict. He defended every case in the same way–mumbling something to the jury about the burden of proof, the beauty of our legal system, and thanking God that we lived in a free country and weren’t Communists, totally oblivious to the fact that the Soviet Union didn’t even exist anymore and the Red Scare died about the same time that Ronald Regan had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

So we had sat there together at the counsel table one rainy spring afternoon, waiting on the inevitable guilty verdict from the jury, and Bentley made me an offer. Since he had no pension, no savings, and no 401k plan, he expected to practice law until he died. But for once in his life, fate had smiled on his portly, rumpled soul. Bentley’s wife had suffered a stroke three years before and had been living in a run-down building disguised as a nursing home. She had developed massive bed sores that had infected her body and resulted in a painful, lingering death. Bentley retained some real lawyers to represent him in a wrongful death claim against the conglomerate that had owned the home, and the jury had scalded it with a massive punitive damages award. For once in his life, Bentley had money–and plenty of it. But he still had a lease for the next three years, and had an assortment of files that had to be worked. He wanted out, but someone had to come in and tie up the loose ends for him. After the jury had come back, pronounced Bentley’s client guilty of shoplifting, and the poor guy was dragged away in handcuffs to serve the six months in the county lockup, we went to the closest watering hole and spent some quality time together with a pitcher of Budweiser Draft. By the time we’d gotten near the bottom of the second pitcher, we had made our deal. I resigned from the DA’s office the next day, and began going through Bentley’s files to see if there was enough there to pay the bills. Our deal was simple: I would take over the lease and substitute in for him in all of his cases, and he would walk away in sixty days to live off the tax-free annuity that had resulted from the settlement with Mrs. Drummond’s nursing home.

As expected, Bentley’s files were a disaster. Little or no work had been done on them, papers were misfiled, documents were missing, and he had been totally out of touch with his clients. Since his "staff" consisted only of an answering machine ("You’ve reached the law offices of Bentley Drummond and Associates" his message said, ignoring the fact that there were no associates anywhere to be found. "I’m in court today, but your call is important to me. Please leave your phone number, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible."). The machine had the number "77" digitally displayed, and indicated that none of the calls had even been listened to, much less returned.

For two weeks I hardly stepped foot outside the office. I read and organized all of the files, sent letters to each client letting them know of the change in representation, vacuumed the worn, stained carpet (green shag, no less–fashionable for about six months sometime in the early ‘70's), dusted and polished the furniture–at least as much as Formica and vinyl could be polished–and hired a receptionist. Bentley didn’t keep his sixty day commitment. I never saw him again after the second day into our deal. It really didn’t matter, as he couldn’t help much anyway.

I searched the Yellow Pages, and found a company who would scrape the ancient paint off the glass on the door that identified the office as Bentley’s, had them replace it with blocked letters that proclaimed "Law Offices of Mike Walcott" (that’s me–not Michael, just Mike), had my stationery and business cards printed, and then went to work.

And that’s when I met Hans Rogall.

* * * * * *

The winter of 1946 was brutal in Germany. The bone-chilling cold and dark, bleak skies reflected the national mood. Berlin had been divided into sectors, and the Allied occupation of the capital was especially humiliating to the defeated nation.

No part of Germany had escaped the devastation of the war. Few major roads were passable and the railway system was virtually non-existent. Food supplies were scarce and unemployment hovered at fifty percent. Worse yet, word about the concentration camps had spread around the globe, and the German people were the objects of world-wide scorn.

Gunther Rogall and his wife Frieda had married secretly in 1944. The had met while working in a munitions factory in Bavaria. The Third Reich had imposed strict marital restrictions on the Germans in an effort to purify and protect the master race. As Frieda was Jewish, an official marriage license would never have been issued to them. On a snowy December night, a sympathetic Catholic priest had blessed the union between the nineteen year old Jewess and her Lutheran lover. Two years later, Frieda gave birth to their first child. Before she had even seen her son, she knew from the look on the midwife’s face that there was a problem.

Gunther’s genes and Frieda’s genes didn’t match up favorably. Frieda had experienced a healthy pregnancy, but no amount of nutrition or exercise could avoid what had happened to their child. The baby was less than a foot in length, had short, stubby arms and legs, a thick trunk, and a wide face.

Hans Peter Rogall, the name they had given to their firstborn, was a dwarf.

Even though the Reich had tumbled and Hitler and his pals had been incinerated in a bunker, Germany in 1946 was still not the place to raise a child as obviously deformed as Hans. Race purity had not gone away in Germany–it had just gone underground. So the Rogall family decided to leave their homeland. Where they would go was never an issue. The Rogall’s wanted to immigrate to America.

Allowing German nationals into the United States was not a high priority for the U.S. Immigration Service in 1946. But Gunther had an uncle in Brooklyn and Frieda’s parents had been taken by train to Auschwitz and never heard from again. Holocaust survivors and their families were allowed to immigrate into the U.S., and after months of letters, Hans and Frieda had received the good news. The sold virtually everything they had, and with two suitcases and an infant dwarf in tow, they headed to America.

The couple both went to work for the State of New York–Frieda as a toll collector for the Triborough Bridge, and Hans as a building inspector. They lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment in Queens and felt that they were the luckiest people in the world. Frieda would take Hans to work with her every day. There wasn’t much room in the toll booth, but little was needed for Hans and his miniature bassinet. By comparison to the life they had left behind in post-war Germany, the Rogalls were living in a dream world.

It all ended tragically on Hans’ sixth birthday. They were on their way to Hans’ birthday party at Frieda’s uncle’s home in Brooklyn, riding in the ancient Studebaker that Gunther had bought for a hundred dollars. A very drunk garbage truck driver had run a stop sign and slammed broadside into the Rogalls. Gunther and Frieda were killed instantly. It wasn’t until their bodies had been removed from the wreckage and the tow truck was being hooked up to what was left of the car that one of the police officers discovered that there was a third occupant. Hans was found wedged under the passenger’s seat, moaning and bleeding, but very much alive.

It was a month after the death of his parents before Hans was discharged from the hospital. Frieda’s uncle cared for him for a short time, but realized that at seventy five years of age it would be impossible or him to raise a six year old. Reluctantly, he placed Hans in an orphanage in Newark run by the Sisters of Charity, and that’s where he lived until he was eighteen.

Hans left the orphanage on his eighteenth birthday in 1964. With a small inheritance from his mother’s uncle, he struck out to make it on his own–no small challenge for a parentless dwarf. He worked in a variety of jobs, bussing tables in cafes in Manhattan during the day and doing janitorial work in office buildings at night. When Ringling Brothers brought their circus to New York, Hans had met with the circus manager and gotten a job in the troupe. For the next two decades, he traveled all over the country making children laugh as Monty, The World’s Smallest Man. It was a good life, and the trapeze artists, lion tamers, and clowns became Hans’ family.

But it all ended in 1984 when Ringling Brothers merged with Barnum and Bailey. The circus was waning as entertainment for children, as America’s youngsters turned to Nintendo and Game Boys as their pastimes. To survive, the circus had to change. It underwent a radical transformation from more conventional acts to high tech lasers, lights, and indoor pyrotechnics. Hans, Brenda the Bearded Lady, and The World’s Fattest Man were given their pink slips and shown the door.

The circus had been in Houston when Hans had received the bad news about the end of his employment. He had found a small, affordable garage apartment in just a few days, located behind, a large, wood-framed two-story house that had seen better days a long, long time ago. His landlady, Lillian Stowe, was an elderly widow who, at age 90, had been fighting her grandchildren’s efforts to put her in a nursing home. She only charged Hans minimal rent, as he helped her out by running errands for her, and doing fix-up work around the house.

Hans and Lillian quickly became best friends. They ate their meals together, went on walks together, and many evenings just sat around her living room in the worn, overstuffed furniture and chatted. They became an oddity in the old neighborhood–a ninety year-old shuffling along, bent over with her cane, and at her side the pudgy little dwarf wearing an old New York Yankees baseball cap.

While his immediate needs had been met, Hans still had a problem–getting a job. The Americans With Disabilities Act was years away from even being considered by Congress, and it was rare that employers would make any reasonable accommodations for job applicants who were as vertically challenged as Hans. He worked part-time as a doorman at a downtown Houston luxury high-rise, but had been fired when it was discovered that he couldn’t assist the elderly residents push the elevator buttons for the top floors. Working the night shift at the 7-11 in his neighborhood was also a disaster, as the only thing that late-night customers could see behind the counter when they entered the store was the top of Hans’ baseball cap. Half of the merchandise carried out of the store on his shift was not paid for. It seemed that in the mid-1980's there was just no place in the work force for an unskilled four-foot two-inch dwarf.

And then one morning Hans was sitting at Lillian’s breakfast table, sharing Cheerios and orange juice with his elderly friend, scanning the want ads in the Houston Chronicle when he saw an advertisement for a position that only had one requirement: the applicant had to be a midget. It didn’t say what you would be doing, or how much it paid, but the one requirement that was listed was Hans’ specialty–being an undersized human.

Little did he know that he was on the verge of making more money than he had ever made in his life.

* * * * * *

Bars will do anything to lure customers in and purchase watered-down drinks. Bar owners were an imaginative bunch, starting out with topless waitresses and dancers and then progressing to totally nude women. They’d put in pool tables, dart boards, video games, and, in the more sophisticated establishments, backgammon tables. Happy Hours, Ladies’ Nights, Two-For-One’s, Karoake, were all successful marketing ploys that kept them packed in while tremendous profits were being made on cheap booze.

But the competition was terrific. Shortly after any new promotion surfaced, everyone was doing it and the customers would quickly become bored. Something new and novel was always in demand. Wet tee shirt competition was hot–for about six months. Mud wrestling was the rage, but then became passe. Nude mud wrestling took up the slack for a few months, but the patrons quickly realized that you couldn’t see much more of the participants with their clothes off than you could with their clothes on–and it flared out in short order.

The ongoing marketing challenge wasn’t restricted to U.S. watering holes. Pubs in Ireland, Scotland and the U.K. relied heavily on ploys to attract thirsty revelers in search of a good time. But older countries enjoyed something that simply hadn’t had a chance to yet develop in the States: the pubs were part of the culture. Frequently, an Irishman would stop off for a pint of bitters on the way home at the same place where his great-grandfather guzzled the suds. Englishmen could raise a glass or two at an establishment where Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Wren inbibed with their buddies. In the Colonies, however, the typical bar was nestled in the back corner of a strip center, right between the Kinko’s and the Radio Shack. In place of tradition, the owners had to be more imaginative and creative than did their European counterparts.

And so we looked to Australia.

Just like America, Australia is still basically a pioneering nation–still young and developing. Australians are loud, brash, and relatively uninhibited by convention. At roughly the same time they gave us Crocodile Dundee, they gave us what would soon become the rage in the American bar scene: dwarf tossing.

The object of dwarf tossing is for a bar patron to throw a human being as far as possible. The dwarfs would wear protective knee and elbow padding, helmets and neck braces. Typically, several mattresses would be piled in a corner of the bar, and the contestants would pay a modest entry fee. The dwarf would wear a harness fitted with a handle on the back. After the participants and spectators had made sufficient purchases, the throwers would line up behind a line marked on the floor with tape. They would then take turns grabbing the dwarf by the handle, take two or three sideways steps, and sail him through the air into the mattresses. One of the bartenders would mark the landing spot, and then measure the distance from it to the tape on the floor. The winner would receive either a cash prize or a trophy–or both.

Dwarf tossing took off like a Saturn V on the launch pad. It included all of the ingredients of a successful marketing maneuver for the bars: it was outrageous, hilarious, novel, and, unfortunately, controversial. It was quickly banned by the Ministry of the Interior in France, and the city councils of Springfield, Illinois and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Florida State Legislature passed a bill outlawing dwarf tossing, but the Florida Supreme Court held the statute to be unconstitutional. Basically, the Court found that the law violated the Contracts Clause of the United States Constitution ("No state shall . . . pass any . . . law impairing the Obligation of Contracts") by interfering with the contracts between the dwarfs and the bar owners. Advocacy groups, like Little People of America, Inc., protested the practice vociferously, taking the position that it "tears down the structure and the esteem that little people are trying to gain." It received massive media coverage in a very short period of time, with segments devoted to it on 60 Minutes and Nightline.

And that’s how Hans Rogall found out about it–watching Mike Wallace attempting to torment a St. Louis bar owner about the barbarity of dwarf tossing. Hans didn’t think it was barbarous–he thought it was ingenious. What was wrong with someone being thrown through the air for money? He’d seen the graceful pairs figure skating in the Olympics, and the guys threw the gals a hell of a lot further than the drunks did the dwarfs. Humans were shot out of canons, dropped from helicopters, and balanced precariously on high wires–and no one seemed to care. Despite the "reasonable accommodations" requirement of the Americans With Disabilities Act, employers hadn’t rushed to shorten counter tops in stores or raise seats in delivery vans. Being just over half the height of most humans created obstacles that neither the dwarfs nor the law were capable of overcoming. Hans retrieved the Chronicle want-ad which he had cut out of the paper and fastened to his refrigerator door with a magnet. He called the phone number listed in the ad and confirmed his suspicion: dwarf-tossing had come to Houston.

So Hans withdrew a sizeable portion of his meager savings and went to a saddle shop in suburban Pasadena. Within a week, the saddle maker had fashioned a custom-fitted harness for him with a handle on the back. A half-dozen Velcro straps wrapped around his trunk, under his arms, and around the tops of his thighs. Hans was in business.

Pokes billed itself as the biggest bar in Texas. It had a full acre under its roof, three bandstands, and a dozen separate bars on the space around the periphery. In two corners it had hydraulically operated mechanical bulls that threw drunken cowboys off on to thick, padded mats. Over the last several years, the place had become a legend, and had been the subject of a made-for-TV movie and several documentaries. In addition to the mechanical bulls, Pokes had nightly arm wrestling contests, two-step competition and Dolly Parton look-alike pageants. Once a month, it featured a Red Man-sponsored Tobacco Spitting Contest. But the customers were getting bored. Pokes needed something new and different.

On a rainy Monday morning, Hans had donned his harness, put on his bike helmet and shin guards and walked in the front door of Pokes, asked for the manager, and within less than an hour had negotiated himself a contract. He was to be paid $500 per night, and would work on Friday and Saturday nights for one month. After the month long trial, he would sit back down with the manager and decide whether to renew the agreement.

Dwarf-tossing at Pokes was an instant success. Extra off-duty police officers had to be hired to handle the traffic jam in the massive parking lot and the overflowing, boisterous crowd inside. It was a marketing masterpiece, combining coverage from all of the local TV stations with searing editorials from Houston’s major daily newspapers. And everyone loved Hans. He had abandoned his circus name of Monty, The World’s Smallest Man, in favor of Lil’ Bubba, The Human Missle. The competition began at ten in the evening, giving Pokes enough time to cash in on the bonanza. Hans would arrive around eight, and would mingle with the patrons–wearing a ridiculously oversized bull rider’s cowboy hat and cowboy boots that were many sizes too large. He would retreat to the manager’s office about an hour before the competition began, giving the contestants enough time to pay their entry fees ($25) and get on the thrower’s list.

All of the tables and chairs had been cleared from one corner of the establishment, and a half-dozen old mattresses had been stacked in their place–some leaning against the wall in an angle, and others flat on the floor. Twenty-five feet away, a semi-circle had been laid out on the floor with masking tape. Anyone who touched or stepped over the tape was disqualified. One of the bouncers would position himself to the side of the mattresses, and would mark the exact spot of Hans’ landing. A tape measure would then be used to determine the length of the throw. A tote board had been painted on the wall, listing the names of the throwers and the length of their throws. There were twelve throws a night–one every five minutes from ten to eleven o’clock. For each throw, the crowd would begin a countdown from ten–just like NASA did when launching the space shuttle. The contestant would hold Hans by the handle on the back of the harness, Hans would tuck himself into the fetal position, and as the countdown ended the thrower would take two or three swift sidesteps and launch Lil’ Bubba toward the mattresses and the crowd would roar mightily.

There were a few glitches that were unavoidable. One was that Pokes had a low false ceiling, and every once in a while a contestant would get a little too much height on his throw and Hans would hit the asbestos ceiling tiles and ricochet to the floor. On one memorable night, he had actually been thrown through the ceiling, disappeared for an instant, and then came down through another tile right over the mattresses. Another problem was the reverse. To avoid the ceiling, some of the contestants would over-compensate and make their throws too low, skipping Hans across the floor toward the mattresses like a rock going across a pond. But he was never injured, as the helmet, the neck brace and all of the leg, shin, elbow, wrist, and shoulder guards did their jobs. He’d be a little sore the next morning, but for a thousand bucks a week, he found that he could easily put up with it.

Hans had never been happier. He had attained celebrity status at Pokes and had been quick to make friends with the bartenders, waitresses and bouncers. Despite his new-found fortune, he continued to live with Lillian Stowe, and from Sunday through Thursday they would keep their pre-Pokes routine. They still went on their walks together through the neighborhood, ate breakfast together, and spent the evenings in conversation in the living room. Before his one month contract at Pokes had expired, the owners – Billy Earl Bright and his brother J.T. – tripled his pay to $1,500 per night. They were scared to death that Hans would – as Billy Earl had said – "go free-agent on us" and sell out to the competition.

And then two months into the new contract, the career of Lil’ Bubba The Human Missile met with a tragic ending.

It had been a cold, rainy February night. As usual, Pokes was packed and Hans had been having a great time, walking around in his bull rider’s hat and cowboy boots and even signing a few autographs. The twelve contestant slots had filled up fast and the names had been scribbled on the tote board. Hans had noticed over the last few weeks that there had been a significant increase in the size of the throwers. As word of Lil’ Bubba The Human Missile had gotten around southeast Texas, the testosterone monsters began to come out of the gyms, ice houses and bowling alleys. The world record for dwarf tossing was just a shade over thirty feet. When he wasn’t being thrown through the ceiling or bounced across the floor, Hans would usually land somewhere between 15 and twenty five feet from the point of launch. Billy Earl and J.T. had decided to go for broke, and they offered $10,000 to anyone who could break the record.

And now it was getting serious. Of the first six throwers, five had tossed Hans over twenty five feet – the longest being twenty-seven and a half. The seventh contestant was the biggest human Hans had ever seen. Doyle Brown was a former University of Texas offensive tackle and had won a bronze medal in the discus at the Pan Am games his junior year. Although he’d been out of school for five years, Doyle still worked out every day, as was apparent from his six foot six, 350 pound mass.

When Doyle stepped up to the line and snatched Hans off the floor by the handle, the crowd sensed that something special was about to happen. Playing to his audience, Doyle held Hans straight over his head with both arms fully extended and let out a mighty bellow that could be heard outside in the parking lot. He motioned the crowd back to give him more room and began his throw a full fifteen feet behind the masking tape. Half way to the tape, Doyle began to spin – the same way he threw the discus. He completed three mighty revolutions – each increasing in speed – and the noise from the crowd was deafening. Tragically, Doyle over-rotated on the last spin and viciously slung Hans with every ounce of his strength. For a split second in flight, Hans truly became The Human Missile. Before Doyle had ever completed his follow-through, Hans was gone. The eighty pound bullet that Doyle had turned him into had gone through the sheet rock, the insulation, the plywood and the cedar shingles. Miraculously, Hans had hit the wall right between two 2x4 pine studs and all that he had left behind was a gaping hole halfway up on the wall, a full six feet from the first mattress on the left.

Stunned silence followed. The crowd had never seen a human thrown through a wall.

* * * * * *

"And had you been drinking, Sam, when you saw this ‘worsest thing’?," I asked.

He continued to rub his hands together between his knees, and said, "Oh yes, sir. Me and the boys had put away a little vodka and I was walking home. I was in the alley between Pokes and the transmission shop next door."

I encouraged him to continue. Sam’s eye witness account was the highlight of our case.

"Well sir, I was ‘bout a third aways down the alley, and there’s this explosion. Somethin’ busts out of the side of Pokes, across the alley, and hits the side of the transmission shop." Sam looked down at his hands for a moment and then added, "Then it dropped to the ground."

"What did you do then, Sam?" I asked.

Looking at the jury with pleading eyes he said, "I screamed. I screamed like a banshee. The light weren’t really good, and when I first looked at it, I thought it was a little suitcase or somethin’. But when I started to walk over to it," Sam hesitated and shook his head, "it moved. Scairt me near half to death. Then when I reached down to touch it, it groaned."

"What happened next?" I asked.

"I turned it over," Sam said quietly, "and I’m a-lookin’ at this road warrior-lookin’ little feller. It was like he was outta the movies or somethin’," and then he added, "the boy was really hurtin’."

In fact, Hans had been hurt. He had gone through the wall head first, which had caused a compression fracture of the third vertebrae in his neck. When he hit the transmission shop, he’d broken his nose. Hans had healed pretty well – there were no lasting effects from the injuries, but his career as Lil’ Bubba The Human Missile was over. The Bright brothers had encouraged him to hire a lawyer and sue ("That’s why we pay all them damn premiums," J.T. had told him) and then pretty much had admitted liability (Billy Earl had testified on his deposition that they’d taken the mattresses off the wall so they could get more people in to watch). After Sam’s testimony, Pokes insurance carrier finally paid up and we settled the case.

Hans ended up with a nice little nest egg, and my fledgling law practice got a boost of economic adrenaline. Hans ended up going back to work at Pokes as what Billy Earl called, "The World’s Shortest Matra-Dee." I even go to Pokes every once in a while to check up on Hans. The first time I went, he had grabbed me by the hand and pulled me all the way to the back, stopping by the far wall. "There it is!" he said boastfully.

It was The Hole. A large, frame had been built into the wall around it, and it was covered with plate glass so the customers could look out across the alley at the dent in the side of the transmission shop.

Right below the frame was a large, color picture of Billy Earl, J.T., and Hans, all laughing with their arms around one another.

Inscribed below the picture were the words Billy Earl had first spoken into the microphone after Hans had been thrown through the wall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Lil’ Bubba The Human Missile has left the building!"

THE END