Socrates noted the smallness of the mugger's head in comparison to his hard, prison-built shoulders. He wasn't a man but a killing machine built on the body of a boy who had been sent off to jail and forgotten.
?Or you could try'n stop me.? The young man reached for Socrates' neck. Socrates tried to block the hand but he was slapped down to the ground. Slapped down. The boy didn't even use a fist to knock Socrates to his knees.
The older ex-convict rose up delivering a powerful uppercut to the mugger's abdomen but he might as well have socked an oak tree or a granite rock. The mugger's next blow was a fist that sprawled Socrates out on the floor of the alley. Two kicks followed in quick succession. Then Socrates felt himself being lifted from the ground. He hadn't felt a sensation like that since he was a child. But this time it wasn't his mother taking him out from harm's way.
Even that powerhouse couldn't lift Socrates from his feet. There was more than two hundred and fifty pounds to the Indiana ex-con. He let his full weight hang dead and the mugger was forced to drop him.
?All right!? Socrates yelled from the ground. ?You could have the money.?
With that Socrates Fortlow, who had never lost a fight because in the world he came from there was no rematch, picked himself up and produced the drab green envelope that contained two hundred nineteen dollars and eighty-six cents.
The mugger took his prize.
?Turn out your pockets, old man.?
?That's all I got,? Socrates said.
?Empty out yo' pockets, niggah, else I'm'onna hafta hurt you.? The mugger slapped Socrates across the face with the back of his right hand. It was too fast to block but Socrates didn't even try. The mugger was so smug that he didn't see the palm-sized stone that Socrates had picked up with his left hand. And once the slap was delivered the mugger had no limb with which to block the hard rock from crashing into the side of his head.
Socrates felt the bone crunching. He heard the high-pitched wheeze of the boy's last breath.
The killer child fell to his knees and then genuflected, pressing his meaty shoulder against Socrates' feet.
Socrates put the bloody stone in his pocket, reached down to retrieve his envelope, and walked the few back alley blocks to his home.
He washed the stone and threw it away. He cut his pants into strips and flushed them down the toilet because of the blood in the pocket. Then he sat in a chair and waited for the police to come.
The police always came. They came when a grocery store was robbed or a child was mugged. They came for every dead body, with questions and insinuations. Sometimes they took him off to jail. They had searched his house and given him a ticket for not having a license for his two-legged dog. They dropped by on a whim at times just in case he had done something that even they couldn't suspect.
Because Socrates was guilty, guilty all the way around. He was big and he was black, he was an ex-convict and he was poor. He was unrepentant in the eyes of the law and you could see by looking at him that he wasn't afraid of any consequences no matter how harsh.
The police were coming so he sat in his chair waiting and wondering if there was some other man like that mugger waiting for him in jail. He wasn't afraid but it was a new thing in his life to be kicked around and beaten by a single man. When he was younger no one could have done that to him.
Socrates went through it over and over, the whole ninety seconds, in his mind. The slap that floored him. The humiliation and the threat. The fear he felt when he realized that he could not hurt the mugger. But when he remembered the stone in his hand and the crush of bone, that's when Socrates paused.
He could feel the police coming after him; could almost hear his name along with the word murder.
?Most people don't kill,? he said to himself. ?They don't have to go out and murder. But what else could I do??
He wondered if there was a court somewhere back in the old days of Africa where a man could lay out what had happened and decide, among his peers, if there had been a crime. If there was a world where a man had a say and was concerned about his own guilt. He didn't want to plead but to understand.
He thought about the boy hunched down over his knees paying final homage to the violence he lived by. In some ways there didn't seem to be anything wrong. It was all natural. The man made into a wild thing going against his ancestor who was now half tame.
It was after midnight when Socrates decided to go to bed. The police hadn't made it yet and he was tired, very tired and sore.
They didn't show up at Bounty the next day either. Socrates was happy about that. He didn't want to embarrass his
