The five-fingered gash across Josh’s face enraged him. He grabbed Katie’s wrists and threw her to the ground into a pile of beer bottles. Daniel picked up a stray bottle by his foot and hit Josh square in the forehead with a solid throw. The jock staggered back, tripped on another empty and landed hard on his back. Daniel grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled her out of the dugout. He dragged her toward his bike as she struggled to lunge at Josh. She had lost all sense about the reality of fighting a big, angry, dumb jock. Daniel shook her by the shoulders.
“Stop it, Katie! I know you’re mad, but he’s going to cream us when he gets up.”
The sound of bottles rattling signaled the jock regaining his feet. Something about the look in Josh’s eye snapped the girl from her fit; perhaps it was the same gleam of bad judgment with which he stole her virginity. Josh looked resolved to undertake new sins. It was time to go.
Daniel peddled for two toward the field exit. The dirt was terrible for traction, but he didn’t dare look back. He turned right at the exit on a course for the better side of town, riding along the first-base line. Daniel barely registered that Josh had climbed over the chain-link fence ahead of him when all of a sudden he landed on them hard and knocked them down. Katie rolled into the street. Daniel was pinned, the bike frame cutting into his leg from his assailant’s weight. His rib was on fire. A fist smashed his nose; pain swimming across a web of nerves. Another one hit him in the jaw. He saw spots before his eyes. Katie rammed Josh with her whole body and knocked him back. Daniel slid out from under the bike, trying not to pass out. His bandaged rib protested any further action. He staggered to his feet just as Josh grabbed Katie’s wrist and twisted. There was a horrifying crack. She screamed. He clipped her in the cheek with a right jab and she crumpled to the ground like a rag doll.
Daniel was furious, angrier than he’d ever been in his life. Josh blocked his punch and returned a solid jab to the gut. The jock grabbed Daniel by the top of his shirt and almost lifted him off the ground as he shoved him back onto the hood of a parked Dodge Ram. Daniel struggled, but his assailant’s arms were birch-tree thick.
“I am not going to jail for raping no one!” Josh shouted. “Especially for your little tramp girlfriend.” Then, Josh stopped punching him and looked into the cab of the pickup.
Daniel looked, too, and saw a bare leg in a white lady’s pump straddled over the steering wheel. The other leg lay over the headrest of the driver’s seat. A well-manicured woman’s hand gripped the passenger-side dashboard. And above the horizon of the dashboard were two pair of eyes looking straight at him. One of those pairs was Clyde’s.
“Oh, crap.”