He showed up every night just before closing time at the tire store where I worked. The sheriff and our manager were good friends, so a deputy was assigned to cover the place every night as we were locking up. Most nights he got out of his car, came inside, and made sure that we were all suitably impressed.

He swaggered up and down the aisles as we counted the cash, and told us tales of the bravery and cunning of the men who served and protected. He expounded at length on his martial arts training and ability. Unlike the other mere mortals in the department, he did not carry a billy club. He packed a pair of numchucks, heavy wooden sticks joined by chain links. With those, he said, he could clear Saturday-night beer brawl in a matter of seconds.

One night though, he just sat in the car, and waved as we locked the doors. The next night it was the same. The third night, I got out a little early, and walked up to his car to talk with him. Even in the low light, the bandages and purple bruises were visible. He tried to hide it, but it was plain that he had been in a terrible fight, and had gotten the worst of it.

"What happened to you?", I asked.
"Got hurt stopping a fight in a bar", he answered.
"Must have been some fight".
"Yep."
And with that, he was away.

The next night was his night off, and we had a different deputy on duty. He came into the store, and I asked him about the great bar fight. He just laughed it off, but after the manager and I asked repeatedly, he told us what had happened.

It seems that our friend the martial arts expert had been dispatched to stop a fight in a local bar. He radioed that he had arrived at the bar and was going in, then no more was heard from him. The dispatcher became concerned when he could not raise the deputy on his remote radio, and a backup in the same area was immediately sent.

The backup deputies arrived at the scene. Concerned for their own safety, one entered the bar while the other covered him from the doorway. It was very quiet inside for the scene of a fight. In the center of the floor lay our hero, breathing, but bloody and unconscious. All around the room the redneck crowd sat, quietly sipping brew while the music played on. The deputies called for an ambulance, then asked what happened. One big fellow in jeans and a tank top spoke up.

"Me and Johnny had been mixin' it up a little when this fella came in screamin' and whirlin' them sticks all around".
"Who hit him?", asked the deputy.
"He come chargin' in here yellin, with them sticks just'a whizzin all around. Guess he was expectin' a big fight, but we had done settled down by then, we was just watching him."
"So who hit him?", asked the deputy again.
"Well, I guess he stopped for a minute, and sorta looked around to kinda take it all in, you know, and he wasn't watchin real close."
"WHO HIT HIM?" , demanded the deputy.
"Knocked himself out with his own numchucks", the man stated.

At this, the whole bar came apart. Everyone was laughing and re-telling the story to the deputies. He had charged into the bar, sticks whirling, yelling his best hi-ya, fully expecting to be in middle of a huge brawl. Instead, the fight had already petered out, and there were no targets for the whirling weapons. He paused for a split-second to take it all in, and the sticks, which had become momentarily unguided missiles, found his face and head. The backup deputies left with their fallen comrade and fourteen eye-witness accounts of the incident.