the concrete floor like she was sliding into home.
And there she stayed for too many seconds, an uncomfortable gap in time before she slowly turned to her side and grabbed her ankle. My instinct, as foolish as it would have been, was to run out and help her, but even in the frenzy of that moment I knew the help she really needed had to be applied elsewhere.
Below I could hear the trio ascending the stairs.
Had she not taken the spill, she would have slipped away; her lead was simply running out.
The losers were one flight below, laughing and verbally offering their crude intentions for this innocent girl.
I took off my sunglasses and crammed them in the pocket of my jeans, turned my baseball cap backward.
Melody, now crying, pulled herself to her feet, tried to resume running, but nearly fell to the ground again.
The losers came into view at the landing one half flight below. Sweat Jacket had his hood pulled tightly around his head, adjusted himself through his jeans.
Melody could barely walk, bracing herself on the trunks and hoods of the cars she passed. She did not have her keys out, and she was too far from her car. Melody was not going to make it.
And as the three hoodlums stepped up to the top of the flight, stood a mere two feet behind me, Sweat Jacket put his hand on my shoulder, gave me a weak shove, and said, “Look out.”
I sighed, turned from the door to face the men, knocked Sweat Jacket’s hand from my shoulder and simply stated, “I’m afraid this is where your journey ends.”
I spent my life assessing tough guys, who could be beaten and who couldn’t. Respectively, the three guys facing me in the garage stairwell were amateurs, juvenile delinquents in the bodies of adults. My ultimate reaction to the hoodlums was driven partly by adrenaline, but not at all by bravado. Imagine three toddlers coming your way in an attempt to wreak havoc. How concerned would you really be?
Sweat Jacket, clearly the leader, as demonstrated by his constant position at the front and center of the other two, stood about three inches taller than me and six taller than his buddies, morons who giggled and laughed at anything Sweat Jacket said or did. Each of them appeared to be emaciated, thinner versions of their once healthier selves, their skin hanging on them like garments from a heavier season of their lives. They hesitated in front of me only to catch their collective breath.
So, if bravado played no role in my reaction and adrenaline a minimal one, what drove my response to these men? The answer is embedded in the snapshots that flooded my mind, the images of what might have happened if I were not there that day, what Sweat Jacket would have done to Melody, and what his hangers-on would have emulated shortly thereafter, the way they would’ve torn her apart in a vile and violent way, how she would learn the lesson that nothing and no one in this life can be trusted and how there is not much worth living for, how they would have reinforced the notion that she was nobody, echoing what the federal government had already imprinted in her young mind: She was nothing more than an object to be used and discarded. Regardless of how I managed to be there at the right time, how I managed to eliminate this destructive and potentially deadly event from Melody’s life, understand that I am not a hero. I am not a guardian angel, for no angel could do what I am capable of, for what I ended up doing in that stairwell. The simple answer to that question is this: My reaction to those three men was based on a torrent of unabated hatred and rage.
Sweat Jacket tried—failed—to shove me to the side, decided yelling at me might get the reaction he desired. “Fugoutamaway!”
“No,” I said, “and I’m telling you now this is probably going to turn out badly for the three of you.”
“Dude, don’t mess with me!”
One of Sweat Jacket’s buddies—can’t remember which one—added a warning inside a chuckle: “Serious, dude, you don’t wanna mess with Willie.”
“Oh, the mess is unavoidable. The challenge for me will be beating you to the point where I don’t actually kill you.”
Willie smirked, tried to move me to the side again with no success. Remember: toddler. He bobbed his head a few times like a prizefighter, looked more like a