11
David and Goliath

I returned from work and swung the silver Spider into my drive.

I hopped onto the deck and was just unlocking the front door when I saw something that disturbed me greatly: in the yard opposite, Zachery’s gigantic son Erwin was dragging young Pip along by the scruff of his neck like a fellow with a string puppet. It was clear that the boy was petrified.

I dumped my books on the folding table – and, I admit, I didn’t know what to do. I was the outsider, after all, and anyway, you’d have to be a damned fool to take on a monster like Erwin. Common sense told me to go inside. Common sense told me to take a shower and avoid trouble, but my conscience is an undisciplined fellow. It yelled at me to intervene and it simply would not shut up. If there’s one thing I cannot stand it is blatant injustice. I had trouble enough with the disgraceful Jim Crow laws in this part of the world, but the appalling abuse of a child by a seven-foot bully could not be tolerated.

With no real plan, I rose to my feet. ‘Excuse me!’ I called. ‘Excuse me! Are you Erwin? Are you Mr Zachery’s son? My name’s Jack – Dr Jack Morrow, to use my full moniker . . .’

He turned his lantern jaw and leered at me. Once again I noticed the peculiar lumbering quality of his movements, like a creature from a swamp.

‘You tawkin’ at me?’

‘Look, it’s none of my business but—’

‘Goddam raight it’s none ’f yer business, y’ puny freak.’

He held the boy with two fingers and stared at me in utter disbelief. The scene was straight out of the Bible – like David and Goliath, except that wee fellow had a slingshot, didn’t he? David had been in with a fighting chance.

‘Well, in a way it is my business, see, because I’m about to be a kind of tutor to Pip – and to Hannah too – starting this afternoon, as a matter of fact. Look . . . look here, I have all the books and I’ve bought them a pencil case each – the Flintstones, isn’t it? Fred and, er . . . Wilma?’

I rummaged in my bag and dangled two pencil cases in the air. I was babbling. Terrified actually, but just trying to defuse the situation. Erwin seemed so astounded by my effrontery, by the pencil cases, by my Irish tone, that he must have loosened his grip on the boy . . .

In a split second of mayhem, Pip seized his moment, wriggled free of Erwin’s grip, darted between those giant legs and bolted – straight across the track towards me.

With a single bound, he vaulted all four steps, dived behind my back and disappeared through the door of my bungalow like a fellow with his hair on fire.

Erwin blinked at his empty hand, like a raptor who has fumbled his prey. Then, slowly, his eyes turned to me. I have never seen a look quite like it. It was a look of unmodified violence. It was the expression of a stone-hearted killer, and it chilled me to the marrow of my bones.

He lumbered slowly out of the yard towards me, arms extended like a vision from a nightmare.

I employed all my training to search for an appropriate way to handle the situation, but all that came to me were rambling prayers from my convent school:

‘ . . . Holy Mary and all the saints defend me. Be my protection against all evils of the world below . . . Amen, Amen, Amen.’