Shakespeares Champion Page 0,25

head back against the car.

"Lily! You okay?" a voice called from the crowd, and I saw my neighbor. Carlton, neatly groomed as always, was accompanied by a bosomy brunette with a headful of curls. I remember thinking about his companion for longer than the topic deserved, trying to recall where the woman worked.

It had been nice to have someone ask about my welfare. I was feeling distinctly flat and a little shaky.

"I'll be fine," I said. I closed my eyes. I would have to get up in a minute. I couldn't sit here looking hurt.

Then Claude was bending over me, saying, "Lily! Lily! Are you hurt?"

"Sure," I said angrily. I opened my eyes. "Having to do your cops' jobs for them. Help me up."

Claude extended his hand and I gripped it. He straightened and pulled, and I came up. Maybe not gracefully, but at least I was steady on my feet once I got there.

Darnell Glass was standing by that time, too, but leaning heavily against his car, Tee Lee supporting him on his other side. The Marine let go of his captive, and the white boys were getting into Tom David's patrol car.

"You have a problem with your officer there," I told Claude.

"I have more problems than that right now," he answered quietly, and I observed that the crowd was restless, and hot words were being exchanged among a few young men in the parking lot.

"Get in my car," he said. "I'll get the boy and the girl."

So we all took a ride down to the police station. The rest of the evening was completely miserable. The white boys were all juveniles. Their parents descended in a cloud of buzzing, like angry African bees. One father snapped at me that he ought to sue me for hurting his boy - the one I'd kicked in the groin - and I used his prejudice against him. "I would love to tell the court how a woman beat up your boy and two others," I said. "Especially when they were ganging up on one young man by himself." I heard no more comments about suing.

Until now. And I wasn't the target of the lawsuit.

As our waitress left, Claude spread his napkin in his lap and speared a shrimp. "Tom David was there and did nothing," he said, just a hint of question in his voice. "Todd was there and did nothing."

I raised my brows. "That's right," I said. "Do you doubt it?" He shot a look at me from under his heavy brows. "Tom David says he had to keep the other people from joining in. Todd says he was afraid he wouldn't be recognized as an off-duty officer and would be seen as joining in the brawl."

"Of course they're going to say that, and there may even be some trace of truth to it. But they also let two other people do their job, me and the Marine. Tom David, for sure, wanted Darnell Glass to get beat up. At the very least, Todd didn't care if that happened."

Claude avoided my eyes, clearly unhappy with the idea that a member of his force would let violence go unchecked, even though to my certain knowledge, Claude bore no love whatsoever for Tom David Meicklejohn.

"And Darnell struck the first blow," he said, again in the tone of one confirming an unpleasant truth.

"Yes. It was a good one."

"You never met any of those boys beforehand," Claude said.

"No."

"Then why so partisan?"

I stared over at him, my fork suspended midway to my mouth with a bit of flounder impaled on the tines. "I didn't care until they all jumped him," I said after a moment's thought. "I would have done the same if Darnell had been white and the other guys black." I thought about it. Yes, that was true. Then the familiar tide of anger surged up. "Of course, as it turned out, I might have saved my strength and let them go on and stomp him."

A dull red flush crept up Claude's face. He believed I was accusing him of something. But I wasn't, at least not consciously.

Darnell Glass hadn't lived long after that evening in the Burger Tycoon parking lot.

Four weeks later, he'd been beaten to death in a clearing in the woods north of town.

No one had been arrested for the crime.

"If the rumors are true and Mrs. Glass does bring a suit, you're sure to be called as witness." Claude felt obliged to point that out to me, and he