Agrippa didn’t pursue. He reestablished his base, his hands raised in a loose, relaxed guard. He looked at the final two. They were standing near the sandbox, completely paralyzed by the sudden, overwhelming violence. The swagger was gone. The cruelty was gone. All that was left was raw, unfiltered terror. They looked at Trent, snoring wetly on the concrete. They looked at the neck tattoo kid, still unable to breathe. They looked at the heavy kid, bleeding profusely into the grass. Then, they looked at Agrippa. Agrippa’s face was utterly blank. His eyes were dead black stones. He took one single slow step toward them.
“Are we done?” Agrippa asked. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but in the sudden silence of the park, it sounded like thunder. The two remaining bullies didn’t speak. They didn’t even check on their friends. They turned and bolted, scrambling up the grassy hill so fast they tripped over each other, leaving their dirt bike, their friends, and their pride behind. Agrippa watched them go until they disappeared over the crest of the hill. Only then did he let out a slow, controlled breath.
He unclasped his hands, shaking them out, feeling the familiar ache returning to his knuckles. The adrenaline was receding, and the pain in his lower back was already creeping in to replace it. He didn’t look at the three groaning bodies on the ground. He turned slowly, the predatory grace vanishing, replaced once again by the stooped shoulders of a tired man. He looked toward the sandbox. Larry was still sitting there. He had dropped his yellow dump truck. His big dark eyes were wide, staring at Agrippa. Agrippa’s heart, which hadn’t spiked once during the fight, suddenly hammered against his ribs.
He felt a sickening wave of guilt. He had tried to protect his son, but he had exposed him to the very monster he tried so hard to keep buried. Agrippa wiped his hands on his jeans, suddenly terrified of what his son saw when he looked at him. “Larry,” Agrippa said, his voice cracking. He took a hesitant step forward, suddenly feeling clumsy and large. “Larry, I’m… It’s okay.”
Larry stared at the bodies, then back to his father. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He reached down, picked up his yellow dump truck, stood up, and walked over to Agrippa. Larry reached out his small hand and wrapped his fingers around Agrippa’s thick, calloused thumb. “Time to go home?” Larry asked quietly. Agrippa looked down at his son, feeling a lump the size of a golf ball form in his throat. He squeezed the small hand gently.
“Yeah, buddy,” Agrippa whispered. “Time to go home.” Agrippa didn’t make it to his truck before the distant rising wail of sirens cut through the hum of the interstate. Someone in the overlooking brick apartment complex had undoubtedly seen the encounter. Or more likely, they had seen the sudden explosive end of it. When you drop three human beings onto concrete in under 10 seconds, it tends to draw an audience. Agrippa stopped at the edge of the parking lot. His 2011 Ford F-150, rusted around the wheel wells and dusted with sawdust, sat 30 yards away.
Running was what criminals did. Running turned a clear-cut case of self-defense into an evasion charge. Agrippa wasn’t a criminal. He was just a father who had run out of pavement. He opened the passenger side door of the truck. The hinges squealed in protest. He hoisted Larry up onto the worn fabric seat, brushing a stray fleck of sand from the boy’s knee. “Sit tight, buddy.” Agrippa said softly. He reached into the glove box, pushing aside a stack of overdue utility bills, and pulled out a slightly crumpled box of apple juice. He punctured the foil hole with the tiny plastic straw and handed it to his son.
“Drink this. I have to talk to the police for a minute.” Larry took the box with both hands. He didn’t look scared. He looked intensely curious, his dark eyes shifting from his father’s calm face to the flashing red and blue lights that were now aggressively strobing against the darkening tree line of the park. Agrippa closed the truck door with a solid thud. He leaned his hips against the rusted quarter panel, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited. Two cruisers hopped the curb, their tires tearing up the manicured grass as they angled their headlights directly onto the playground.
The beams cut through the growing twilight, illuminating a scene that looked like the aftermath of a localized bomb blast. Trent was just beginning to stir. He was on his hands and knees, swaying heavily, vomiting a vile mixture of cheap beer and stomach bile onto the concrete. The scrawny kid with the neck tattoo was still on the ground, curled tightly on his side, hyperventilating as his bruised liver screamed trauma signals to his brain. The heavy-set kid was sitting on the grass, his shirt entirely soaked in dark arterial blood, holding both hands over his shattered nose, and rocking back and forth in silent shock. Four officers exited the cruisers simultaneously, hands rested cautiously on the butts of their sidearms.
They scanned the playground, taking in the three broken bodies, the abandoned dirt bike, and finally, the solitary figure leaning against the beat-up Ford in the parking lot. A heavy-set sergeant with salt and pepper hair and a deeply lined face detached himself from the group and walked deliberately toward Agrippa. His boots crunched on the gravel. He stopped 10 ft away, his flashlight beam clicking on and sweeping quickly over Agrippa, checking hands, checking waistline, checking for blood. He found nothing but calluses and faded denim.
“You want to tell me what happened here?” the sergeant asked. His name tag read Hayes. The voice was flat, tired, and cynical. It was the voice of a man who had seen too many domestic disputes and bar fights to ever believe in a simple truth. “Five kids,” Agrippa said evenly, his voice carrying the same flat cadence as the cops. “They brought a dirt bike into the playground, harassing the mothers. Then they decided to harass me and my son.”