Hurricane Alley: Beaver Fight

This article is written by guest poster Haiman Caine, who promises to start giving us a column every now and then. He’s sometimes called Hurricane, so we’re going to call his column “Hurricane Alley.”

Friday night was slow in the bar where I work. This guy–tall and lean, with a western shirt (the kind with snaps instead of buttons) and a big belt buckle over his 28-inch waist–came in and asked me if I wanted to fight a beaver. A beaver. It was not the best way to make my acquaintance, though. I know a lot of animals that I like a lot more than most of the people I meet. Call it a soft spot, whatever, I just know that right then I really wanted to knock him on his ass. But I’m also the bouncer, which gave me a little bit of a conflict to work through on the fly: As much as I wanted to hit him, it’s my job to keep the bar cool. So, rather than feed the guy his teeth right then and there, I gave him a little time so I could see the animal for myself. If it looked malnourished or mangy or abused in any way, this guy was going to wish he’d never met me.

I know that people sometimes “wrestle” bears and alligators. Because there are ways to approach some animals and, also, ways to drug them into a stupor. And a bear is big, too. Big enough to not freak out if a man-sized animal comes into its vicinity (although sometimes they will any way). Big animals sometimes have a temperament that can allow them to be tamed, but a beaver? A beaver is small enough to feel threatened by a man-sized animal. It might look all sweet and calm out there swimming around or gnawing on a tree, but there are animals that you just don’t mess with. Wolverines, for instance. And, though you might not believe it, beavers. Put it this way: a beaver can chew through wood, and they can whack that tail with a lot of force. These were some of my first thoughts, before the guy started up again.

“I’ve got a beaver man outside. He fights on the weekends–” at this point I interrupted him.

“Wait a minute: a beaver man?”

“Yup. He’s half beaver, half man.”

“And he fights?” I asked.

The guy shrugged. “For money.”

I just nodded, trying to take in what I was being told. One thing I knew was that I did not want to fight a man dressed up like a beaver. Not at all. Nope. What do they call those people, furries? Gives me the heebs. “What’s your name, mister?”

“Roy,” he said, and went on. “We travel all over the Florida looking for tough guys. From what we hear, you’re one of the toughest. Hurricane, they call you.”

I get this a lot. Most people who know of me will tell you that I’m always looking for a fight; but the people who know me know that I hate to fight, that fighting always drops my spirits. Before I became a bouncer, I never got into fights (excluding a stint in the military where fighting was my job). For some reason, though, people hear about me and they want to challenge me. It’s not a reputation I’m proud of, and it happens more often than I’d like to admit.

“I don’t fight for money, Roy, and I don’t fight for fun.” I said this, as grim as I could manage, but I knew how things were about to go. When someone wants to fight, they provoke. They’ll do anything they can to make you as mad as they can. The best thing I could do was walk away, but then the conflict reared up again. First, that I needed to escort this guy right back through the door, and second: how often do you get the chance to see a beaver man? One thing was for certain: he wasn’t going to get me to fight him unless he walked right up and hit me (or hit a customer in the bar).

Roy pulled out one of those Southern LINC walkie-talkie phones and said, “He don’t want to fight, Burt.”

Burt, I thought. Really.

Next thing I know in walks this little guy, maybe three and a half feet tall. He might have been a midget or a dwarf, I don’t know much about little people. But he was covered with this dark brown, coarse fur. He had a tail and he even had the big front teeth. Huge front teeth, in fact. He had a big, fat cigar stuffed into the side of his mouth, a big round gut, and all he was wearin was a pair of really short Levis, cuffed up at the bottom, and cut with a tail hole. All I could really do was cock my head and stare; much as I hate to stare at folks, he was a damn curious fellow.

The little guy walked right up to me. Stomped up to me, in fact, and there was no doubting his intentions: he was fixing for a fight. A little tongue flicked out and licked his big front teeth. He smacked his cheeks and his tail rose up about a foot and thumped back onto the floor with a Whomp! that was loud enough to grab the attentions of all seven or eight people in the bar.

I didn’t know what to do, really. It wasn’t like I could just walk away: what if he picked a fight with someone else? I’d end up fighting him anyway, just to get him out the door. Most of the folks in the bar milled over nearer, trying to get a glimpse of the little beaver man, who snorted, walked over to the bar and bit off the wooden leg of a bar stool. The stool crashed to the floor, and there he was, smacking that stool’s leg against his palm like a club, a mischievous grin behind his overgrown, rust-colored teeth (I’ve found out since that, while most animals use calcium to coat their teeth, beavers use iron, giving the teeth a red coloring). Possibly most disturbing of all were the beady little black eyes. He had hardly any white at all, just pupil. I figured they were contacts or something.

“You guys are gonna have to pay for that,” I said, pointing at the stool.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a tough guy?” the beaver man asked. His voice was gravelly, too deep to belong to someone that small.

“I’m just a bouncer here, mister. I don’t fight, I politely show people the exit if they start a ruckus.” I lowered my head and narrowed my eyes and added, “As polite as I can.”

He smirked a little at that, and his eyes narrowed, too. This was the moment when it would either happen, or it wouldn’t. I didn’t want it to happen. I said, “Let me buy you a beer instead.”

He snorted again, looked left and right, dropped the stool leg and climbed up onto a barstool. I motioned for Jorge to line us up, and he did.

“Mind if I ask you something?” I asked.

He had the long neck stuck into the corner of his mouth. “Shoot,” he gurgled (it sounded like “thoot“), still drinking. I looked over my shoulder but Roy was gone.

“This is a pretty convincing getup. I mean…”

He put his beer down, wiped his mouth on his furry little arm and said, “Ain’t no getup. I’m the beaver man.” He burped and started drinking again, motioning for Jorge to bring him another.

“Yeah, but…” I scratched my head.

He set the empty bottle down on the bar and reached for the fresh longneck. Before he took a drink, he sighed and said, “Doctors at Tallahassee say it’s a faulty genetic imprint. Something went mishmash with the wiring when my old man shot his load. They said I’m the only human being in the world with a tail.” He took a sip of the beer, put it back down and said, “I’m not the only one with fur, though. And I’m not the only one with iron enamel teeth. But mine are bigger.” He gave me a wily smile and a wink of one beady eye and started chugging away again.

“I guess I thought you’d had some drastic body mods.”

“Uh-uh. All natural.”

As it ended up, I kind of had to fight him anyway. Seems little people, even little beaver men, can’t handle their liquor very well. I say “kind of” because it wasn’t really a fight. He was so drunk I just had to drag him to the door. Roy was leaning on their ‘78 model Cadillac with a cowboy hat on his head. He opened one of the rear doors and I helped push Burt in. He was snoring when we closed the door.

“I knew it’d go like that,” Roy said. “Once he gets to drinking… he can be a pill.”

I nodded. I know a lot of folks like that. I’m like that, sometimes.

I told Roy good night and they drove away. I hate that I didn’t get a picture with the little beaver man, but maybe he’ll be back. Next time I’ll give him a shot at the title, while he’s sober, so long as he promises not to bite.

–Hurricane, 3-16-08

Read more of the adventures of Haiman and his cohorts at the Innerarity blog.