“It’s a free country, grandpa.” Trent sneered. He took another step forward. He was in the zone now, the radius where bad things happen fast. Agrippa’s eyes mapped the geometry of the situation. Trent was the loudmouth, but his hands were low, his chin was up. The scrawny kid on the right had a nervous energy, likely to throw a wild overhead. The two in the back were non-factors unless things went to the ground. The fifth guy, standing near the sandbox, was the wildcard.
Trent looked down at Agrippa’s hands. He saw the calluses, the dirt beneath the fingernails, the cheap digital watch. He saw working stiff, a loser. “Nice shirt,” Trent said, gesturing to Agrippa’s frayed flannel. “Get that at the soup kitchen?” Agrippa didn’t respond. He was watching Trent’s shoulders, the telegraph system of the human body. Trent, irritated by the lack of fear, decided to push the envelope.
He turned his attention back to the sandbox. He took a few steps toward Larry. “Hey kid,” Trent barked. Larry froze. He looked up, his large dark eyes wide with sudden alarm. He pulled his yellow truck tightly to his chest. Agrippa stood up. He didn’t jump up. He didn’t aggressively spring to his feet. He simply rose, unfolding his frame with a fluid mechanical grace that seemed entirely out of place for a man who had looked so broken moments before. The movement was so smooth it momentarily confused Trent. He stopped walking toward the sandbox and looked back at Agrippa.
“Don’t talk to him,” Agrippa said. The gravel in his voice was gone, replaced by a flat deadened tone. It was the voice of a man stating a physical law of the universe. Gravity pulls down. Water’s wet. Do not talk to my son. Trent’s ego wouldn’t let him back down in front of his friends. He puffed his chest out further, closing the distance between himself and Agrippa, stopping just a foot away. He tilted his head down to look Agrippa in the eye.
“Or what?” Trent challenged, his breath reeking of artificial strawberry and stale beer. “You going to do something, old man?” Agrippa looked at Trent, really looked at him. He saw the slight tremor in the boy’s jaw, the rapid blinking of his eyes, the adrenaline dumping into a system that had no idea how to process it. Trent didn’t want to fight. He wanted Agrippa to cower. He wanted the ego trip of making a grown man back down.
“There’s a way this goes,” Agrippa said quietly, almost gently. “Where you walk back to your bike and you ride away, and you wake up tomorrow feeling just fine.” Trent let out a loud, incredulous laugh, turning back to his friends. “Are you hearing this guy? He thinks he’s John Wick.” The others laughed, emboldened by Trent’s bravado. The circle tightened. They were encroaching on his space, cutting off the angles of egress.