Six Against One
“Walk away. This ain’t your business.”
The words hung over the parking lot like smoke.
It was almost nine o’clock on a Tuesday evening at Doyle Fuel Station, and the last orange strip of sunset had disappeared behind the buildings on Fifth Street. The convenience store sign buzzed overhead. A few insects circled beneath the fluorescent lights. Beyond the pumps, the highway carried a thin stream of traffic, each car disappearing into the darkness almost as quickly as it appeared.
Nobody was stopping.
Nobody except Casey Marlo.
She stood across the street with a grocery bag hanging from one hand.
At first, she had only heard shouting.
Then she saw the old man on the ground.
He was wearing a faded black motorcycle vest over a gray shirt. His silver hair was damp with sweat, and blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow. Six young men surrounded him.
One held a rusted pipe wrench.
Another had a cracked plastic chair in his hands.
A third kept kicking the rear tire of an old motorcycle parked beside the curb.
Casey recognized the bike immediately.
A 1959 Panhead.
She had seen photographs of them in library books.
But she had never seen one this close.
The old man tried to sit up.
A boot struck him in the shoulder.
“Stay down, grandpa.”
The men laughed.
Casey stopped breathing for a second.
Then the old man looked toward the darkness beyond the pumps.
His eyes found hers.
“Help me, please.”
Something inside Casey broke.
Not fear.
Something older.
A sentence her grandfather had spoken seventeen years earlier came back to her with perfect clarity.
If it was you stuck out there, I’d want forty people to have a reason not to stop and one person to stop anyway.
Casey set the grocery bag down.
She crossed the street.
The tallest of the six noticed her.
“Girl,” he called. “Keep walking.”
She didn't.
He stepped closer.
“This isn't your business.”
Casey looked at the old man.
Then at the pipe wrench.
Then at the six men.
“Six on one?” she asked quietly.
The tall man laughed.
“You think you're gonna do something?”
“No.”
She reached down.
Her fingers closed around a bicycle chain lying beside the dumpster.
“I know I'm going to.”
For one second, nobody moved.
Then Brody Kane smiled.
He raised the wrench.
And Casey threw her water bottle.
It struck him across the back of the head.
Brody stumbled forward.
The other five turned.
Casey moved.
Brett swung the plastic chair.
She stepped inside the arc of his arms and drove her shoulder into his ribs. The chair shattered against the pavement.
Cody grabbed for her.
She snapped the chain across his shins.
He screamed and dropped.
Two down.
Four standing.
Brody recovered and charged.
Casey ducked beneath the wrench.
The metal passed so close to her ear that she felt the air move.
Then something happened behind her.
The old man stood.
Not slowly.
Not painfully.
He came off the pavement with the suddenness of a man who had been waiting for exactly the right second.
His bad knee screamed.
He ignored it.
He swept one boy's legs out from under him.
The boy crashed backward.
Another froze.
Walter Doyle stepped beside Casey.
His palm settled on her shoulder.
His voice was calm.
“Walk away while you still can.”
The boys stared at him.
Something in his face changed the entire atmosphere.
Brody looked at him for a long second.
Then he ran.
The others followed.
A Chevy screamed out of the parking lot.
Silence returned.
Casey stood frozen.
Then her knees gave way.
She dropped onto the curb.
The old man crouched beside her.
He noticed her swollen forearm.
Without asking permission, he pulled a folded blue bandana from inside his vest and wrapped it around her arm.
“What’s your name?”
“Casey.”
“Why'd you do that?”
She swallowed.
“Nobody else was going to.”
Walter studied her.
For the first time that night, he smiled.
Not because he had won.
Because he had finally found someone who understood.
Forty-One Dollars
Three days earlier, Casey Marlo had stood in her grandmother's kitchen counting forty-one dollars and some change.
The house was small.
The paint around the windows had begun to peel.
The refrigerator hummed louder than it should.
But Casey loved it.
It was the house where she had grown up.
The house where her grandfather had taught her how to hold a wrench.
The house where her grandmother still made coffee every morning even though she rarely drank more than half a cup.
Eleanor Marlo sat at the kitchen table checking her blood sugar.
The number on the screen made her close her eyes.
Casey saw it.
She pretended she hadn't.
She slipped a twenty-dollar bill into the rent jar.
“Casey.”
She froze.
“Bring that back.”
“Grandma—”
“Bring it back, baby.”
Casey slowly removed the twenty.