Saving Angela

Stu wanted to play tee-ball, but getting a game together was proving difficult today. Valerie and Kyle sat cross-legged in the den as if nailed to the carpet, eyes wide and glued to the TV screen, motionless and silent but for the blur and click of their fingers on plastic controllers. The wires stretching from the controllers to the game console quivered and twitched like the spilled entrails of a living thing. On the screen, two quasi-human figures engaged in pixelated combat to the death. Cartoon blood splattered at the impact of over-sized slashing blades and electrified spears.

Stu didn't understand the attraction. All he knew was that every time he tried to get their attention the only response offered was an inarticulate grunt that varied only in the level of annoyance expressed.

He gave up and decided to try Andy. He hoisted his aluminum baseball bat a little further up his shoulder, sighed, and trudged down the hall to the living room.

Andy was doing algebra and couldn't be bothered.

"Go see if the twins wanna play," he said.

"Never mind," Stu said.

He sighed, turned away from his oldest brother, and walked out the front door. The two foot by three foot by eight inch tall stoop made a good place to sit or wipe your feet, but that was the extent of its usefulness. A concrete path made of paving blocks stretched twenty feet from the stoop to the sidewalk.

Stu dropped his baseball bat and let the tip bounce on the walkway. A tiny chunk of concrete came loose and landed into the grass. Stu's eyes widened to match his toothy grin. He gripped the bat in both hands and raised it high above his head, like a sword. He conjured the image of his older brothers and sister in the grain of the artificial stone path.

'Grunt at me?' he thought. 'I smash you head!'

He swung the bat in a hard downward arc with both hands. A hollow 'chink' sound echoed against the stucco houses, and a slightly larger piece of concrete flew into the grass. The impact resounded in the skin of the baseball bat, and his arms and elbows rang painfully with the vibrations of the metal.

'A little too tight.'

Again he raised the bat above his head, but this time, he let the bat float loose in his hands. He conjured an image of his mother, still at work on this summer day, but couldn't bring himself to strike the death blow. Instead his father's face took over. It was a distorted, demonic face, dark and vaporous, an eight year old's remembrance of a ghost last glimpsed at five.

"Shitfuck!" Stu said. It was his favorite word. A combination of the only two 'bad' words he knew. Doubly damning, it was the most powerful curse imaginable to his young mind.

Stu brought the bat down with his exhalation, twice as strong as before, and the bat struck the concrete path with a dull 'thunk' and stuck there. An army of cracks radiated from the point of impact, and the pieces sank in toward the center.

His smile stretched further and he raised the bat again.

"Stuart Pearson, what are you doing?" a woman's voice called from the sidewalk.

Stu looked up at his mother's best friend, Angela, standing next to the mailbox at the other end of the walkway. She was pretty and single and had no kids of her own. She was the same age as Stu's mother, but his mom always said Angela looked ten years younger. She wore licorice red sandals, a pair of loose, cut-off blue-jean shorts, and a faded yellow-on-yellow-and-white flowered tank top. Her brown hair was tied up in a bun.

"Nothing," he said. He dropped the bat and his arms to his sides.

"You know you aren't going to be able to hide that from your mother when she comes home tonight," she said, smiling.

"Yeah."

He looked at the cracked tile. Stu hadn't considered that anyone would mind that he'd discovered the secret of breaking stone. In retrospect is seemed a little obvious. He stared at his feet.

Angela shook her head at him and sighed.

"You look bored. You want to go get some ice cream with me?"

Stu felt this was the dumbest question he'd ever heard, the day he didn't want to get ice cream with Angela was not a day that he wanted to live to see, but he knew better than to phrase his answer in those terms, even if he didn't know what that meant.

"Can we? Please?" he said.

"Well, duh, yeah, c'mon, let's get out of here."

"What about Andy and Val and Kyle?"

"Screw em," Angela said.

"What?"

"Nothing, c'mon."

Stu stood up.

"Okay, one second," he said.

He ran in to Andy and said "Imgoingtothestorewithangieberightback" and ran out the door again. He dropped his bat in the umbrella stand as he passed.

In the street, Angela was standing on her tip-toes in front of a monstrous black pickup truck. Her fingers grasped the edge of the window and her head just barely reached far enough to let her peek inside. Stu could make out snatches of conversation as he got closer

Angela was doing most of the talking.

"...and head down about five miles on central, it's on the left. Can't miss it."

There was a pause.

"Hell no, you fuckin' creep!" she said.

She tried to push herself away from the window, but instead of moving out, she moved up, and her feet dangled inches above the pavement. The man in the truck had her by the shirt and was pulling her up towards him.

"No! No! Fuck! Help!" she screamed.

Stu heard the man in the truck say, "Shut up, bitch!" and then she did. He watched her head snap back as the man's fist caromed off of her cheeks and face. Stu could see Angela's blood on his knuckles. The fist slammed into her again and again without pause or mercy.

He was rooted to the spot.

"Stu!" Angela's scream shook him.It sounded liquid.

Stu grabbed a handful of gravel out of the driveway and slung his tiny fist at the truck.

"SHIT-FUCK!" he said. "LET GO OF HER!"

The gravel made an impressive clatter against the side of the truck, but Stu didn't stop to watch. Before his first shot reached its mark with a sharp series of reports, he was already grabbing another two handfuls.

"What the fuck?" the man in the truck said when he heard the pellets on his paint job. He let go of Angela and she fell to the ground limp. Her legs stayed in the gutter and her head smacked audibly against the concrete.

Stu launched his second round of rocks into the open window of the truck, the pebbles peppered the man's face and he cursed creatively. Stu learned a few new words in the exchange.

The man was dark, but not black, just deeply tanned. He had curly black hair that peaked out, wild, from under a green, yellow, and white John Deere hat. He had a thick, bushy mustache, but no beard. There was a glossy emptiness in his brown eyes that Stu could see as he launched another fist full of rocks at them. Stu could see glistening red specks on the man's face where the rocks struck.

Tires squealed, smoke rose, and the truck fishtailed and sped away down the street. The engine roared like a caged demon, growling lower in its throat as it fled.

Stu ran to the crumpled Angela. The air around her was thick and smelled like a sweaty handful of pennies laced with a hint of chemically synthesized springtime flowers; blood and perfume, sex and death. She was on her right side, facing the street. She wasn't moving. When Stu got close enough to touch her, he could barely hear her whimpering and gasping. The sound was wet and scratchy. Her face was rough and jagged and streaked with blood.

"Are you okay?" Stu said. He felt stupid asking, but he didn't know what else to say. He put his hand on her blood-stained shoulder. He felt her shaking

Angela's ruined face relaxed. She moved her head towards the sound of his voice.

"Stu?" she said.

"Angie?"

"Stu...I'll be okay...I'm tired."

Stu started crying.

"It's okay, Angie. You stay here and rest. I'll be right back."

He stood to run back inside for help and heard it.

The drone of the engine stopped getting deeper and seemed to slack off for a second. There was a moment of almost-silence, and then a hideous squealing of tires as the engine roared back to life.

Stu looked down the street. Less than a quarter-mile away in the cul-de-sac, the rear of the truck was spinning in a circle around the front. Smoke rose from the tires, leaving thick, black streaks on the grey road. After a couple revolutions, the truck straightened out with the grill pointing straight at Stu and the still-prostrate Angela.

The driver managed to find a way to make the engine rev even higher, and the truck leaped and growled and bore down on them.

He dropped back down to his knees next to Angela.

"Angela, get up," he said.

"Wha-...no..stu...I'm tired."

"He's coming back, Angie, get up."

She grunted something like "no," weakly.

"BitchCOCK!" he said, using the new words the stranger taught him."Get up get up get up get up get up!" Stu brought his tiny fists down like hammers on Angela's hips and buttocks.

Angela stirred.

"Stop it," she said.

He did not stop.

"Stop it," she said again, stronger.

He continued.

Angela turned her waist up toward him and screamed, "Stop it!" She lashed out, and the back of her left hand caught Stu on the cheek and knocked him to the ground.

Stu heard the pitch of the engine climb higher and louder. He didn't bother to look up at the truck, he didn't want to know how close it was. He picked himself up, grabbed her wrist with both hands and started pulling.

"Get up, you stupid cockshit!" he said. He yanked and tugged at her arm with all the strength he could muster in his tiny eight-year-old frame.

It was enough. Her body slid a bare inch across the thin strip of grass, gravel, and concrete. She stirred.

"God dammit!" she screamed at Stu.

She got her legs under her and shook the boy loose from his death grip.

"Come on, he's coming!" Stu pointed down the street.

Angela stood up, woozy, and looked. The truck was close enough to see the red streaks on the drivers face. She screamed and ran for the door.

Stu followed and the truck smashed through the mailbox in a shower of splinters. The rear end slid sideways into the yard and cut deep gouges in the grass. It slid so far that the bed of the truck wrapped around Stu's favorite climbing tree.

The truck settled and the engine stopped. The driver's door flew open as Stu and Angela reached the front stoop.

"I'm gonna kill you for scratchin my paint, you little shit," the driver shouted, exloding from the cab.

Andy opened the front door from inside.

"What the hell is going on out here?" he said. His breath hitched and caught when he saw the grotesque mask of Angela's face. "Ohmygod."

Stu led Angela inside to the den and told her to stay on the couch. Val and Kyle were beside themselves.

"What's happening?" they asked him. "Is that Angela?" "Are you okay?" "Should we call the cops?"

"Call 911 and hide," he told them. He ran back to the front door.

Andy was leaning against the door with his shoulder, trying to keep it closed as the truck driver beat on the other side trying to get in. His thick work boot was wedged in the doorway, preventing Andy from being able to shut and lock it completely. The man cussed and screamed wildly.

"I don't know how long I can hold him," Andy said. A thick blue knot was growing on his forehead.

Stu nodded. The handle of his bat sticking out of the umbrella stand provided inspiration. He snatched it up and grabbed it tight in both hands. Stu raised the bat high above his head and brought it down with everything he had on the man's toes with a cry of "BitchCock!" The thick leather of his work boots was tough, but not steel-tipped. The bat sank deep into the shoe with a satisfying smack.

The man howled and pulled his foot back. Before Andy could get the door closed, he rocked back towards the front and pounded on it with the meaty bottom part of both his fists. The door flew open, pinning Andy to the wall.

The man came through the door like a loose locomotive, red faced and steaming, howling obscenities. Andy fell to the ground as the door swung closed. The man started kicking him and slamming the door against his prostrate body.

Stu ran into the den, down the length of the couch and then looped around the back side of it and stood out of the line of site from the front door to the right of the entryway with his bat at the ready. He remembered a line from a movie his mother wouldn't let him watch.

"It doesn't matter how big a man is, one clean shot to the knee and he's down."

The man saw Angela and made a beeline.Stu got ready, waited until all of the angry man's weight had settled on his forward leg and the rear leg lifted from the ground, and swung the bat at the side of his weighted leg's knee.

The man fell like a howling, wet sack of potatoes. His face smashed into the carpet in the midst of the mass of abandoned video game controller wires.

Stu knew what he had to do. He wasn't going to let this monster hurt anyone else.

He scrambled up the man's back and grabbed a handful of wires on either side of the his head. He put his feet on the back of the man's neck, squatted down, and pulled up and back on the wires as hard as he could with his arms, while pushing with his legs. They both slipped over the man's chin and caught tight against his throat.

The man squirmed and thrashed and clawed at Stu's feet and legs but he could get no leverage to cause any sort of real movement. Soon enough, the man stopped twitching, but Stu held tight long past that. He held and pulled with all his might until his brother Kyle came in and gently pulled him loose. Stu was sobbing and soaked with his tears and sweat and someone else's blood.

"It's okay, Stu," Kyle said. "You can relax now."

Stu pressed himself against his brother's chest and cried. Andy was shaken but mobile, talking to himself and rocking on the couch. Valerie was attending to Angela, making her sit up and sip some water, keeping her talking and awake until the paramedics arrived. She looked like hell for a couple weeks, but the incident left no visible scars.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, his wind pipe was severed by the pressure of the wires, and his neck was broken postmortem. His name was Steven Hanson. The police told them later that he lost his job and couldn't afford to continue taking his antidepressants. The violent rage was attributed to withdrawal symptoms.

Andy had a broken arm and three cracked ribs, no concussion, but one hell of a goose-egg.

Stu was a little shaken, but okay, and as good as new a couple days later after some ice cream with Angela.