I lean down and get close to him. He flinches as I do.
“If I ever see any of you anywhere near this school again, I’m gonnareallyget mad,” I say. “And then give you an even worse beating than this before I go for fucking ice cream.”
Then I say, “Nod if you understand what I just told you.”
He nods, then goes back to holding his wrist and whimpering as he does.
I leave him where he is and go back for the leader, who’s sitting up now, shaking his head like a horse trying to shake away flies, like he’s trying to un-ring his own damn bell.
“Who do you work for?” I ask.
“Fuck you,” he says.
“I could beat it out of you, just for fun.”
“Thought you just did, Big Nothing,” he says.
I slap him again, and then I’m grabbing him by the front of hishoodie and lifting him up the way you’d lift up a doll, then putting my face close enough to his that I can smell the beer on his breath.
“Fuck you,” he says again. “You don’t know the trouble you just made for yourself.”
“I’m thinking that’s pretty tough talk for a guy with his feet dangling in the air.”
“I’m done talking,” he says. “Do what you gotta do.”
“How about you do something for me instead?” I ask. “How about you walk your ass over to that gate and pick up the trash and get out of here before I really lose my temper.”
“This ain’t nearly over,” he says.
“And just like that,” I say, “my day just got better.”
I put him on the ground and give him a good shove in the direction of his buddy and tell him to start walking. He does, his hand coming up to his face as he gives one quick look back at me, maybe to see if I’m about to come at him one last time.
I’m walking back to my own truck, trying to get my breathing back to normal, my right shoulder feeling as if somebody set fire to it, thinking what a dumb-ass I was to use my right hand on him, when I hear the police siren.
When I turn to see where it’s coming from, I hear a voice that I immediately know belongs to Taylor McCarter Webb.
“Silas,” she yells. “Look out!”
And I see that an out-of-control vehicle, an old pickup not being driven by a friend this time, is coming straight for me.
TWENTY-THREE
I MANAGE TO dive out of the way of their truck, the hard landing on my shoulder making the pain shoot all the way through the rest of my body and making the day even more of a blessing than it already is.
The boys in the pickup don’t get too far, though, because before they can make their exit from the lot, I see a blue-and-white county police cruiser, lights flashing, roadblocking them before they can get to the street.
In the same moment, I hear the voice from the siren speaker telling them to get out of the vehicle and then step away from it as soon as they do.
But my sense of relief doesn’t last as long as the time it takes me to drag myself to my feet, because what I see next is Sheriff Nash Hader getting out of the cruiser and slowly stepping away from his own vehicle.
He takes a look at the boys just out of their truck, and I see the group leader saying something and pointing to where I’m now standing, and then Hader is staring across the lot at me.
Even from a distance, I can almost swear he’s smiling.
This is the same Sheriff Hader who’s had bad blood with our family—mostly with my father when he was still alive—from the time the Original Silas Tucker had been regularly kicking Hader’s ass when my father was the star lineman from Cross Rivers and Hader was the star running back from Old Mill High.
Hader, whom my father thought was just another bully with a badge, had never gotten over the fact that in their last league championship game, my father hadn’t just caused the fumble that would win the game for Cross Rivers—once he’d picked up the ball, he’d stepped on Nash Hader on his way to the end zone. That image made it to the front page of all the local papers and became a permanent part of local sports lore, in there with anything I ever did on a football field in our town.
