hitting a soft body part. Grace rose slowly to her feet, eyes narrowing as they focused on the scuffle fifty yards away.
Two of the older kids were holding the arms of the small one while a third danced in and out like a boxer, taking punches at his belly. Maybe the little kid had it coming; she didn’t know; but the basic rules of fair play were being violated here, and Grace just hated that.
‘Stay,’ she told Charlie – a totally unnecessary command considering that the dog was still flattened against the ground like a doggy pancake. She did it more for his pride than anything else.
There was little light left to reflect on the figure in the long dark coat striding across the park; and even if there had been, the three older boys probably wouldn’t have seen her coming. They were too intent on the task at hand. To them it simply seemed that one moment they were alone, and the next there was a quiet, even voice just a few feet away saying, ‘Stop.’
Startled, the kid throwing the punches jerked upright and spun on the balls of his feet to face her. He was maybe fourteen, fifteen at most, with stringy blond hair, a narrow angry face, and acne eruptions that shouted puberty.
Testosterone overload, Grace thought, her eyes flicking briefly to his two companions, who looked so similar they might all have been brothers. The three wore multi-pocketed baggy pants, the kind that sagged well south of a belt line, and cheap overshirts that hung down to their knees. Wannabe Scandinavian gangbangers. Clothes too thin to hide a gun.
The little one they held pinned by his arms was the only one wearing a coat, and Grace suspected that if he ever took it off he’d never see it again. You didn’t get lambskin jackets like that at Kmart, or even Wilson’s Leather. Obviously the kid lifted at the best places. He was as black as the others were white, which was surprising. You didn’t see the two races mingling much in the city, in peace or war.
He was folded over from the last punch he’d taken to the belly, and when he looked up she saw a baby- smooth face that should have been on a swing set instead of taking a beating. His eyes and nose were streaming, but his little jaw jutted defiantly, and he didn’t make a sound.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ The puncher’s small pale eyes made a disdainful sweep of her body that was intended to intimidate.
Grace sighed. It had been a long day, and she was too tired for this. ‘Let the kid go.’
‘Oh, yeah, right, sure we will. Get the fuck outta here, bitch, before we start on you.’
Brothers two and three jerked on the black kid’s arms simultaneously, as if they were one organism instead of two, chiming in with their own colorful suggestions. ‘Fuck her.’
‘Yeah, fuck her. Hey. Maybe we should really fuck her.’ Nervous giggle.
‘Yeah, teach the white bitch a lesson.’
The white bitch. Grace shook her head, deciding not to point out that they, too, were white. I’m getting old, she thought. I no longer understand the insults of young people.
The puncher hunched his shoulders and dropped his head, looking up from beneath lowered brows. ‘You like getting fucked, lady? You like it in the ass? That your problem? Your old man don’t give it to you in the ass like you like it, so you come over here looking for it?’
They were a year or two away from being truly dangerous, as long as they weren’t carrying. They could have blades, of course, and she was ready for that, but she didn’t think so. When they were this underdeveloped, weapons always came out early.
‘I told you to let the kid go,’ Grace said.
He took a step toward her and stopped, squinting in the near-darkness, something flickering in his eyes when he got a good look at her. ‘Oh, yeah, you did, didn’t you? Well, I’ll tell you what. You get down on your knees and suck my dick and maybe I’ll think about it.’
It was probably poor manners to smile, but Grace couldn’t help it. ‘You are a disgusting little beast, aren’t you?’
‘Whaddya mean, “little”?’ he snarled, and that made Grace laugh out loud. Funny, the things that set people off.
He took another quick step toward her, started to raise his arm, then screamed at an electric bolt of pain that started in his right trapezoid and shot down to his fingers.
Grace dropped her hand back to her side and calmly watched the would-be boxer scramble backward, clutching his shoulder, face screwed up in a furious effort not to cry. ‘Jesus Christ! What the fuck did you do that for? Who the fuck are you? Get the fuck away from me!’
Grace pouted. ‘What. No more romance?’
‘You bitch. You motherfucking bitch what did you do to me I can’t feel my motherfucking arm!’
‘What’d she do, Frank? What’d she do?’
‘I’ll show you.’ She took a step toward the other two, who exchanged an alarmed glance over the black kid’s head, then dropped his arms and quickly backed away.
‘Your ass is dead, bitch!’ one of them hissed at her, trying to swagger as he scurried backward. ‘You are one dead motherfucker.’
‘Uh-huh.’
She didn’t chase them, exactly. She just walked after them at an unhurried pace, finally stopping when she got to the curb, reminding herself that they were only kids, and you weren’t supposed to frighten children.
She watched them disappear into a crumbling stucco across the street, and then said out loud, ‘Don’t come up behind me.’ She turned to see the black kid frozen in mid-stride, a few feet away.
‘You weren’t supposed to hear me.’ Crestfallen.
‘Well, I did.’
A full lower lip jutted. ‘No one hears me. I’m the black shadow. I’m quiet as night. I’m the best.’
‘You are good,’ Grace gave him. ‘But I’m better.’ She started walking back toward the tree where she’d left Charlie. A loose sole flopped on the kid’s left tennis shoe as he trotted beside her. ‘You should have lifted a new pair of sneakers when you got the jacket. That’s what gave you away.’
‘The jacket’s mine.’
‘Sure it is.’
‘Good leather lasts a long time. Sneakers don’t. Those, I lifted. Show me what you did to Frank, huh?’
She lengthened her stride. ‘Go home, kid.’
‘Oh, right. Me and the blond brothers alone in the house after you made them look like pussies? Ain’t gonna happen. I’ll wait till Helen gets home.’
Grace stopped, took a breath, then looked down at him. ‘You live with those kids?’
He jerked his head toward the stucco that had swallowed Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest. ‘Foster home.’ He shrugged.
One of Grace’s eyebrows shifted up a notch. ‘An integrated foster home?’
‘Not enough black people signing up. Don’t you listen to the news? So sometimes the brothers get lucky, and sometimes we get Little Rock.’
‘What do you know about Little Rock?’
‘I read about it.’
‘Oh yeah? How old are you?’
‘Nine. Almost ten.’
Going on a hundred, Grace thought, and started walking again. It was almost full dark now, and she wanted desperately to be home. The kid stuck like glue.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she asked him without stopping.
‘I’m just walking.’
‘This Helen, is she your foster mom?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You like her?’
‘She’s okay. At least she keeps the other three from killing me, when she’s around.’
‘So where is she?’
‘Work. Gets home at seven-thirty.’
Up ahead, Grace saw Charlie’s nose peek around the trunk of the tree. ‘You’ve got about half an hour to walk,
