“Jesus, stop itI” somebody yelled.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me off I saw whirling faces and I struck at them.
The trucker was trying to creep away. His face was a staring mask of blood from which his dazed eyes peered. I began to kick him, dodging away from the others, grunting with satisfaction each time I connected on him.
He was beyond fighting back. All he knew was to try to get away. Each time I kicked him his eyes would squeeze closed, like the eyes of a tortoise, and he would halt. Then he would start to crawl again. He looked stupid. I decided I was going to kill him. I was going to kick him to death. Then I would kill the rest of them — all but Nona.
I kicked him again and he flopped over on his back and looked up at me dazedly.
“Uncle,” he croaked. “I cry Uncle. Please. Please — ”
I knelt down beside him, feeling the gravel bite into my knees through my thin jeans.
“Here you are, handsome,” I whispered. “Here’s your uncle.”
I hooked my hands onto his throat.
Three of them jumped me all at once and knocked me off him. I got up, still grinning, and started toward them. They backed away, three big men, all of them scared green.
And it clicked off.
Just like that it clicked off and it was just me, standing in the parking lot of Joe’s Good Eats, breathing hard and feeling sick and horrified.
I turned and looked back toward the diner. The girl was there; her beautiful features were lit with triumph. She raised one fist to shoulder height in salute like the one those black guys
gave at the Olympics that time.
I turned back to the man on the ground. He was still trying to crawl away, and when I approached him his eyeballs rolled fearfully.
“Don’t you touch him!” one of his friends cried.
I looked at them, confused. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to… to hurt him so bad. Let me help
– “
“You get out of here, that’s what you do,” the short-order cook said. He was standing in front of Nona at the foot of the steps, clutching a greasy spatula in one hand. “I’m calling the cops.”
“Hey, man, he was the guy who started it! He — ”
“Don’t give me any of your lip, you lousy queer,” he said, backing up. “All I know is you just about killed that guy. I’m calling the cops!” He dashed back inside.
“Okay,” I said to nobody in particular. “Okay, that’s good, okay.”
I had left my rawhide gloves inside, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to go back in and get them. I put my hands in my pockets and started to walk back to the interstate access road. I figured my chances of hitching a ride before the cops picked me up were about one in ten. My ears were freezing and I felt sick to my stomach- Some purty night.
“Wait! Hey, wait!”
I turned around. It was her, running to catch up with me, her hair flying out behind her.
“You were wonderful!” she said. “Wonderful!”
“I hurt him bad,” I said dully. “I never did anything like that before.”
“I wish you’d killed him!”
I blinked at her in the frosty light.
“You should have heard the things they were saying about me before you came in.
Laughing in that big, brave, dirty way — haw, haw, lookit the little girl out so long after dark.
Where you going, honey? Need a lift? I’ll give you a ride if you’ll give me a ride. Damn!”
She glared back over her shoulder as if she could strike them dead with a sudden bolt from her dark eyes. Then she turned them on me, and again it seemed like that searchlight had been turned on in my mind. “My name’s Nona. I’m coming with you.”
“Where? To jail?” I tugged at my hair with both hands. “With this, the first guy who gives us a ride is apt to be a state cop. That cook meant what he said about calling them.”