Undermind: Nine Stories (15 page)

Half-way through the park, there were several
picnic tables under a slatted roof. Daniel saw two dark figures
standing next to one of the Hibachi grills near one of the tables.
Instinctively, he steered his sister on a wide path away from the
strangers. One of them left the darkness of the roofed area and
began heading his way. Daniel started walking faster and took his
sister’s hand to make her keep up with him.

“Hey! Come here for a minute.”

Daniel knew the voice without even turning
around to see who it was. There was no mistaking Billy the Bastard
and his fat, mean voice.

“Keep walking,” Daniel commanded.

Rebecca trotted to keep up with her big brother.
She sensed from the tone in his voice and their increased pace that
something was wrong. But she wasn’t scared. Daniel wouldn’t let
anything bad happen to her.

They were crossing into the darkest part of the
park, halfway between the light pole near the grills and the
nearest streetlight by the sidewalk where Daniel and Rebecca would
turn to head toward their street only one block away. They just had
to keep walking and ignore Billy. Maybe he’d give up and go back to
where he came from.

Daniel wondered later how a fat kid who was so
out of shape could come up behind them without a sound. One second
he was walking through the grass, and the next, he was face down
with the wind knocked out of him. He struggled to breathe, but it
seemed impossible. Just when he sucked in what felt like a
lifesaving breath, it was knocked out of him again by Billy
stomping on his back and laughing like a stupid, fat demon.

He turned to see if his sister was okay. She was
lying beside him, facing him with her mouth open in a silent cry.
She couldn’t make a sound because she was also trying to breathe as
her body tried to cry. Daniel was filled with rage. How dare he
hurt a little girl? What kind of person could do that? He would
gladly take whatever Billy had to dish out if he would just leave
Rebecca alone.

As soon as his diaphragm stopped its spasm,
Daniel sucked in a deep breath and screamed, “Leave her alone!
She’s just a little kid!” His voice came out way higher than
normal, but he didn’t think about that at the time. He was scared
to death of Billy, but he was also so angry with him, he’d be
willing to fight him (and lose) if he could just get up from under
his big fat foot.

“What are you gonna do about it, ya little baby?
Are you gonna cry all over me?”

Daniel hated knowing that it was true; he was
crying. He wasn’t making any sounds, but hot tears were running
down his cheek and dripping into the grass. He tried to toughen up
inside and make his tears stop, and make his voice sound bolder
than he felt.

“I just think you should pick on someone your
own size, instead of a little girl.”

“Greg! Danny boy just admitted he’s a little
girl! You gotta hear this.”

“I wasn’t talking about me, you fat
bastard!”

Daniel and Rebecca screamed in unison as Billy
jumped up several inches and then landed on them where he had been
standing on them before. Their breath whooshed out of them and for
the third time, Daniel couldn’t breathe. As he waited for his
breath to come back, he grabbed fistfuls of grass and raged
internally. He shouldn’t have said anything. His sister would pay
just as much as he would for anything he said or did that angered
Billy. That was unacceptable.

The only way he could offer her any protection
at all was to completely give in to Billy. To be a good big
brother, he had to humiliate himself and not be her hero. He hoped
she’d understand later that it was all he could do. He hated Billy
even more now than ever before. Taking away his sister’s admiration
of him was crueler than simply beating him up. He swore he’d get
revenge somehow, some day.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Just tell me what
you want.”

“That’s more like it. Now say you’re nothing but
a little girl.”

Daniel clenched his teeth.
Please don’t make
me look like nothing in front of my sister.

“Go on! Say it!”

He knew if he didn’t, Rebecca would get hurt
again. She was crying now and her voice was tearing him up inside.
He needed to get her away from here.

“I’m nothing but a little girl.”

Billy laughed his stupid laugh again. Daniel
could tell it wasn’t even a real laugh. That’s part of what made it
sound so stupid.
Ah ha ha. Ah ha ha.
He wanted to punch
Billy in his fat face.

“Will you please let us up now?”

Billy tried to think of how else he could take
advantage of the situation, but he was distracted by the two
overloaded bags of candy lying in the grass. He couldn’t wait to
see what was in them.

“After you say it again. Say you’re a little
girl. And a fag!”

Daniel almost blurted out how stupid that was.
It didn’t even make sense. But Rebecca’s crying kept him
focused.

“I’m a little girl, and a fag.”

This struck Billy as genuinely funny and this
time he laughed for real.

“Oh gawd, Greg. You just missed the funniest
thing.”

He stepped off of the prone kids and gathered up
their Halloween bags, still laughing.

Daniel was relieved to feel the pressure come
off his back and that he could breathe much easier. He knew he had
made things better for himself and for Rebecca by degrading himself
for the amusement of that fat moron. He stayed down, unsure if
getting up would cause Billy to resume his assault. But he didn’t
want to further embarrass himself by asking Billy for permission to
get up.

He couldn’t tell if Billy was walking away or
not. Somehow, he was very quiet in the grass. He craned his head
around to look behind him and saw two figures next to the grill the
way they were when he had first entered the park.

He got up quickly and pulled his sister up.

“Come on!” he said, and they ran together toward
the light.

When they reached their street, Daniel slowed to
a stop and bent over to catch his breath. He looked at his sister,
feeling shame and guilt.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca. I had to let him take our
candy so he’d leave us alone. And I couldn’t fight him because he
had a friend there and it would’ve ended up being two against
one.”

Rebecca looked into his eyes, biting her bottom
lip. Her left cheek had dirt and grass stains on it. The front of
her mummy costume was wet. He picked off blades of grass and asked,
“Are you okay? Do you hurt anywhere?”

“My back hurts,” she said in her sweet little
voice, and she sniffed, trying not to cry.

Daniel pulled her close and hugged her. He cried
silent tears, thinking of how he had failed to protect her. She was
so small and innocent and didn’t deserve to ever have anything bad
happen to her.

“You’ll feel better in a little while. I
promise.”

But she didn’t. The pain got progressively worse
until a few days later their parents took her to the hospital.
Daniel was taken to stay with an aunt for a few days.

Daniel peripherally saw a small light moving
rapidly in a short arc. It was a glow-stick coming toward him in a
kid’s hand from ahead on the left. If it hadn’t been for that, he
probably wouldn’t have even seen what happened next. There was a
kid running along on a collision course with a little Cinderella
and her mother just off to his left. The mother and daughter looked
like they were done trick-or-treating and were either walking home
or to a parked car.

The kid with the glow-stick was carrying a
pillow-case burdened with a tremendous amount of candy. Daniel
thought it was a good thing he was running because the kid could
stand to burn a few calories. He looked about fourteen years old.
Dark blonde buzz cut. At least twenty-five pounds overweight, and a
look on his face that Daniel was sure he’d seen many times before.
It was the look of a self-centered bully who had no regard for
anyone else in the world but himself and his own cruel desires. He
could practically be Billy’s kid, all these years later.

Daniel lightly braked his Dodge Durango to a
crawl and watched the boy as he ran right up behind the little
blonde girl. The kid extended one of his arms toward the girl’s
back as he slowed down, but still impacted it with enough force to
send the girl flying forward and down onto the asphalt that she and
her mother had just stepped onto.

The next few seconds occurred quickly and
mindlessly for Daniel, like a montage of sights and sounds. He saw
the girl’s face lift up from the street with blood running down
from one of her eyes – he stopped the Durango and slammed the gear
lever into park – the boy picked up the girl’s plastic orange
pumpkin and in one motion tilted it into his open pillow case –
Daniel reached for his door handle - the mother quickly went toward
her daughter with her mouth open in shock and fear – Daniel opened
his door and stepped out – and the montage slowed down as he
focused his attention on the boy.

The kid dropped the pumpkin and cinched his
pillowcase, holding the top end with one hand while sliding the
other down to the bulk of the candy several inches below and began
to spin the pillowcase around.

Daniel yelled, “Hey!” as loud as he could,
intending to emote a sense of force and authority. He could hear
both the mother and daughter crying behind him and that fueled his
rage; a rage that had burned for fifteen years.

The kid stopped for just a second as he turned
to look at Daniel over his shoulder. And he smiled. Daniel couldn’t
believe it. The little bastard smiled at him as if he had just
accomplished something impressive. Then he started to run. One
second later, Daniel ran after him.

The kid was overweight, but determined to get
away with his loot. He took off faster than Daniel would have
thought possible. All of the anger, guilt and shame from that
Halloween long ago drove him forward like a lion. It was as if he
was transported back to the past and he was chasing Billy the night
he hurt Rebecca. Some part of his mind knew that this was
different, but another part said it was the same.

It was always the same - human predators preying
on the weak. And the weak were always decent people. Smaller,
smarter, nicer, and unable or unwilling to defend themselves out of
fear.

The bullies were always the same, too. Big, mean
and dumb. Projecting their self-hatred on those they envied and
could never be like. So they traded self-esteem for a sense of
power; lying to theirselves that over-powering their victims made
them somehow superior to those they victimized.

Daniel had never fought back before, but that
was about to change. Something broke inside him. Something that
kept him restrained within the bounds of society’s rules; the same
rules that let bad guys get away with hurting people. No one was
supposed to take the law into their own hands. You were supposed to
take your beating, then report it to the officials who may, or may
not obtain justice for you.

The image of that tiny Cinderella’s face hitting
the pavement merged in his mind with the image of Rebecca’s mouth
open wide in a silent scream and it pushed him over the edge. This
little girl’s night of joy and candy harvesting with her mother
turned instantly into a night of blood, pain and tears. With
Rebecca, the bleeding was internal, so he’d never seen it. Maybe if
someone
had
seen it, she would’ve been taken to the hospital
sooner. Maybe if he had somehow fought back that night, she’d still
be alive today.

Giving it no thought at all, Daniel leaped for
the kid’s back as he stretched out his arms, aiming for the kids
shoulders. Daniel connected and his weight brought them both down,
skidding on the street with the kid serving as a buffer between
Daniel and the blacktop.

“Get offa me!” the kid screamed. The pitch of
his voice was high and close to tears. Daniel got to his feet,
breathing hard through his clenched teeth. He reached down and
picked up the pillow case. Some of the candy had scattered onto the
street, but the case was still very heavy. It occurred to Daniel
that the kid had probably stolen most of it. And that made him even
angrier as he visualized little girls throughout the night being
slammed from behind by this punk.

The kid turned over and pulled himself up into a
sitting position and saw Daniel coming right at him. He started to
scoot backwards, looking up at Daniel’s enraged face, first with
cocky defiance and then raw fear as he began to understand that the
tables had been turned. Someone bigger and stronger than him was
the predator now.

Daniel stomped on the candy that had spilled
from the pillowcase as he approached the kid, turning it under his
boots. “You stupid, worthless, fat, little piece of crap!” he
growled.

“Lea’ me alone!” the kid cried.

Daniel almost felt a second of pity for him. His
chin was scraped badly from his slide on the street and was
bleeding onto his ripped and stained t-shirt. His hands had pebbles
embedded in them and blood was oozing out around the pebbles and
gravel. Just when Daniel thought that maybe this kid had gotten
enough punishment, the image of the little girl flashed into his
mind again, followed immediately by the image Rebecca’s face the
last time he saw her as his father had carried her out to the car
on the way to the hospital; crying from the internal injury that no
one knew was there.

“You think it’s cool to hurt people? Knock them
down and steal from them? How do you like it now, you little
bastard!?” he asked quietly, but with years of pent up rage boiling
inside him.

Unbelievably, the kid started to deny any
wrong-doing, “I… I didn’t… I didn’t…” and his words were cut off by
Daniel kicking him once in the head. The kid flew back, his head
hit the asphalt with a thunk, and he stayed there, not moving.
Daniel turned around and ran back to his Durango. He got in,
dropping the pillowcase on the passenger seat and put the truck in
Drive with one hand as he pulled the door shut with the other. He
drove past the kid who was still lying on the street apparently
unconscious, and he used a side-street intersection to do a
U-turn.