Literary Gut Punch: from Kevin Hardcastle's Montana Border

As you know by now, I love a sentence that whomps the reader in the gut. So I've slowly started compiling my favourite Literary Gut Punches (LGPs.). How appropriate that my most recent example actually describes a character getting punched in the face! 

Kevin Hardcastle's Montana Border appears in the June issue of The Walrus. (You can also read it online here.) I swear my testosterone quadrupled after reading it. 

"In the fight he got hit so hard that his molars sang."

Image credit: Alain Delmas (France) (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons