Byron arrived at 7 as usual. Caleb was already waiting by the bench, their bench under the oak tree. But something was different. Caleb was standing next to it, not sitting. Byron walked closer and saw it. Someone had sprayed the word blind across the seat in white paint and below it, smaller, Go home. Caleb looked up at Byron. Mr. Byron, who did this? The stutter was back. Three months of progress gone in two words. Byron didn't answer. He set down his bag and sat on the bench anyway, right on top of the paint. Come on, he said. Let's work on your cross today.
But Brad wasn't done. From Brad's perspective, this was the best content he'd ever made. The baptism video had outperformed everything on his page. His followers wanted more. Comments said things like Do it again and Make the old man cry. Brad's friend suggested they find someone else, but Brad refused. He liked Byron specifically because Byron never reacted. The non-reaction was the content. The silence was the joke. Brad also knew something the rest of the park didn't. His father was Councilman Garrett Sawyer, three terms on the city council and chair of the public safety committee.
Every cop in the precinct knew the name. Two complaints had already been filed about Brad's behavior in the park. Both had been quietly moved to the bottom of the pile. One had disappeared entirely. Brad could do whatever he wanted, and he knew it. The neighbors knew it, too. Mrs. Patterson watched from her window every morning. She saw the water. She saw the gloves in the trash. She saw the spray paint. She picked up the phone twice to call the precinct. Both times she put it down. What's the point? she told her daughter. His daddy runs the whole thing.
Deshawn's mother pulled him from the group after the baptism video went viral. I can't have my son around that, she said. She didn't mean Byron. She meant the danger that Byron attracted by refusing to leave. Kesha's father did the same. Find somewhere else to play, he told her. Kesha cried for two days. Within a week, only Caleb was left. His grandmother didn't have the option of finding somewhere else. She worked from 6:00 to 4:00. The park was it. Every morning, Byron showed up. Every morning, Caleb showed up. Every morning, Brad showed up.
And every night, Byron sat in his garage in the dark. The heavy bag hung from the ceiling beam, the same one he'd installed in 1986 when he still thought he might come back to the ring. He hadn't touched it in 30 years, but now his hands found it in the dark. Left jab, right cross, left hook. The bag swung, and he caught it. The rhythm came back like breathing. His right eye saw nothing. His hands remembered everything. He hit the bag for an hour, then two, then three. He never told anyone. Not Caleb, not Mrs. Patterson, not the ghost of Helen, whose roses he watered every morning before walking to the park.