Although Clark had no doubt that he could have gotten away, even pushing the basket, he knew that Charlie wouldn’t be nearly as lucky.
As Charlie stopped, gasping and puffing, Clark could almost hear the older man’s heart beating irregularly, skipping a beat.
Forcing himself to stop, Clark turned to face the truck, which squealed as it turned the corner at a high rate of speed. Clark grimaced as the truck's headlights glared, covering both him and Charlie in beams set on bright.
The truck stopped and for a long moment the only sounds were those of the engine as it roared.
Clark wondered if they were planning on running the both of them down. He wasn’t particularly worried about himself, but Charlie would never survive something like that.
A moment later, dark silhouettes dropped from the back of the pickup bed.
“Hey, pendejo,” the lead figure said quietly as it stopped into the light. “It looks like you’ve got something that belongs to us.”
“It’s not yours,” Charlie muttered under his breath. He was breathing heavily, holding on to the shopping cart to hold himself up.
“What did you say?” the man asked, stepping forward.
It surprised Clark how young the man looked. He must have been in his early twenties. He had a wisp of a goatee and moustache, one which looked as though he was trying too hard. However, there was a hard look in his eyes.
The two men to his left and two men to his right were larger, but just as young.
Clark glanced at Charlie, who looked pale despite his dark skin. He was having trouble breathing, and there was a resigned look in his expression. “Just let them have it,” the Charlie said. “It’s not worth it.”
Losing his life over forty dollars’ worth of trash probably didn’t seem like a good deal to Charlie. Even if the men didn’t kill him, they might injure him badly enough that he might not be able to survive the next cold snap.
Still, the look on his face made Clark’s gut clench. It was as though a little part of Charlie was dying inside as Clark watched. He’d seen that look countless times on the face of his foster brothers and sisters as they’d been bullied and degraded as human beings.
Clark hesitated, conflicted. Was Charlie’s pride worth the risk that he might get hurt? Stepping into a fight like this one had been what caused Clark’s life to collapse in the first place.
There was no way he could fight these people without risking their lives. Clark felt frozen at the thought of stepping forward. Human bones were fragile, and it was getting harder and harder to judge how much force to use. His strength was growing every day, and the same effort that would have been appropriate last week would be enough to kill a man now.
It wasn’t worth it.
“Fine,” Clark said, stepping away from his cart. He slung his backpack over his shoulder. There would be other bars with cans; the men in the trucks couldn’t get to them all.
“That’s what I thought,” the man said. He gestured toward the others who stepped forward to grab the bags out of the carts. He grinned, the expression on his face nasty.
Clark stepped backward toward Charlie, who was also slowly moving away. Clark slowly began to turn away- as much as it galled him to let these men bully him and Charlie, the thought of what would happen to them if he tried to fight back made his heart race.
“Did I say you could go? “ The man’s voice was taunting now. “It seems to me that you owe us a little something for trying to take our stuff.”
“We don’t have anything,” Clark said. It was hard to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“You’ve got whatever is in those packs, and whatever is in your pockets.”
Clark closed his eyes. What he had on him was everything he owned. Charlie’s possessions were even more valuable; he didn’t have Clark’s gifts. A few dollars might mean the difference between life and death to the older man.
“No.” Charlie said. His breathing had slowed, and there was a sudden look of determination in his eyes. “It’s not yours.”
“Don’t be stupid, ese,” the man said. “What you got in those packs worth your life?”
The door to the cab of the truck opened and the last occupant stepped out. He was carrying a crowbar. The other men threw the bags in the back of the truck and pulled out baseball bats.
“There are six of us and two of you,” the man said. “What are you going to do?”
Clark felt frozen, but Charlie stepped forward. “Whoever said there’s just two of us?”
The growling from the darkness was the first warning the men had as Rufus came from out of the darkness, his lips pulled back and his teeth showing in a snarl. Clark had forgotten just how big the big dog was, and his eyes gleamed, reflecting the truck’s headlights.
“You think we’re afraid of Cujo here?” The man’s voice wasn’t nearly as confident as it had been. “There’s still six of us.”
As big as the big dog was, it wouldn’t last long against six men with bats.
Clark slowly set his pack down. “You’ve got what you came for. There’s no reason for this to get ugly.”
“All you’ve got is a big assed dog.” The man said, his eyes never leaving Rufus. “Otherwise you’ve got nothing.”
“I’m warning you,” Clark said. He felt the old, familiar anger rising, the anger that he’d only dared to give in to once. Every act of bullying, every act of indifference, every feeling of being powerless to change the injustices he’d seen on a daily basis had fanned the flames.
He lived in a world of glass, where the slightest wrong move would mean that things would be forever broken, but there were times where he wished he could simply let loose.
“What are you going to do?” the thug asked again.
Clark felt the fire rising in his eyes and he quickly looked away from the men to the only target he could feel safe in focusing on.
The truck’s right headlight exploded. The men turned and a moment later the left headlight exploded.
“What makes you think there’s just three of us?” Clark asked from the sudden darkness.
The sudden change in light levels left everyone night blind. Clark’s vision recovered almost instantly, but he knew it would be several minutes before the men were able to see. They’d assume that Clark and Charlie had at least one more accomplice behind them.
Charlie was just as night blind as the others; more so as he’d been looking into the light.
Clark quietly slipped around the men, who’d huddled together, flinching involuntarily as Rufus growled from a different position. The dog was suddenly a much bigger threat and the men knew it. Although they were unable to see, Rufus had better night vision and a sense of smell.
“Maybe we ought to go,” one of the men said quietly in Spanish.
Clark only had schoolroom Spanish, although he’d always had a knack for languages, but it was enough to understand the whispered comments they were making.
If he let them go, they’d just keep doing what they were doing. Yet it wasn’t safe for him to hit them, or even grab them.
The truck was still running. Clark looked at it and grinned. Maybe if he dented their truck they’d think twice the next time they came across somebody they thought was helpless.
He ran toward the truck and kicked at the door as hard as he could. He hadn’t been alone often enough to really gauge his strength, but he knew he was strong enough to make a big dent.
It was only as his foot connected that he realized just how much of a world of glass he lived in.
***************
“Any idea how that happened?” Charlie asked, his head craned upward.
“No idea,” Clark said, feeling stunned.
The men had all fled, and the bags of cans, both those he’d and Charlie had collected and those the men had already had in the pickup were scattered everywhere.
The truck was upside down a hundred feet away, caught in the top of two huge oak trees.
“You don’t think they’ll be needin their cans, do you?” Charlie asked.
Clark glanced at the older man and couldn’t help but grin. In the face of what had to look like a miracle, Charlie kept his mind on the practicalities of the situation.
“We’ll have to hurry before the cops get here,” Clark said.
The men had already crushed their cans and Clark found that he could fit three times as many in the cart. At the sound of distant sirens he said, “We’d better get going.”
Charlie nodded and grinned, his teeth white in the darkness.
**********
At first all Clark saw was a pile of trash; Charlie had led him to an isolated area and they’d had to push aside what had looked like a solid piece of wire fencing. They’d pushed their carts inside and replaced the fence.
There were in a small loading area.
“This warehouse is abandoned,” Charlie said.
He fiddled with the trash pile and a moment later Clark realized that the light cardboard was covering a tarp. A little fiddling, and the tarp became a tent.
“Hey, this is warm,” Clark said.
“The warehouse next door isn’t abandoned,” Charlie said.
It took Clark a moment to realize that the older man had built his tent over a heat duct. Despite the ice and snow the inside of the tent was somewhat warmer.
“It stays warmer if I leave most of it lying flat,” Charlie said. “With just enough room for me and Rufus. But I can expand it for tonight.”
He did something else and soon there was enough room for the three of them, Clark, the old man and the giant dog between them.
The incident with the truck had frightened him, but there was a sense of exhilaration in stopping those men from doing what they’d done.
He’d never had time enough alone to practice using his strength, which made him more dangerous than a freight train in a china shop. Yet he was able to pick up eggs without breaking them. It was only when he got excited, or tried to use more than a certain level of strength that he got in trouble.
Well, he had nothing but time now.
He’d practice with his abilities, and he’d go back to school; he’d find a way. He’d go to college and eventually he’d have the kind of home his parents had. He’d have the stable, loving home that he deserved, and he’d find a way to protect people.
Life wasn’t good, but it would be.
