Punk 2 spoiled things by tipping the contents of Gillie's basket onto the ground and lunging for something lying there that took his fancy. Gillie pushed him away and he retaliated by shoving her back much harder, so that she sprawled on the ground. Her face had turned red and she was close to tears. Unfortunately, she saw me at that moment and relief and pleading stayed those tears.
I groaned inwardly. Caught. No way out. Shit! I strolled over, all nonchalance and quivery knees. Keeping my voice low in the best Eastwood tradition, I said, "You okay, Gillie?"
The punks looked my way, the idiot grin still on Leather-jacket's acned face. Oh God, I thought, this is a scene from a bad teen movie.
Gillie was picking herself up, the other girl watching me with interest.
"Yes, I'm all right, Mike," Gillie replied, and stooped again to retrieve the items she'd lost from her basket. Punk 2 kicked one of them away from her fingers, shrieking with glee at the fun of it all.
I walked up to him, glad he was shorter than me. "I think you'd better get lost," I told him. "About now, would do."
His cocky grin lost some of its substance and he glanced around at his companions for support. Leather-jacket sidled closer, and No. 3 maintained his interest in the contents of his nose.
"What you fuckin' gonna do about it?" Leather-jacket inquired, breathing heavily on my neck (this one was taller).
"You don't want to find out," I replied, annoyed that my voice had cracked slightly midsentence.
On close inspection I saw they really were only kids, not bona-fide toughies in the ghetto sense; they were acting the role, but I wasn't sure they'd convinced themselves. That encouraged me.
All the same, there were three of them and I was in deep. It was Leather-jacket's turn to speak and he seemed to be having trouble forming a sentence (or maybe even a thought). I saved him the trouble. "Either you leave these people alone, or I'm gonna flatten you." I did my best to look mean.
It frightened me, but seemed to have the reverse effect on him: he grabbed my shirt and tried to head-butt me. I ducked reflexively and his mouth and chin came in sharp contact with the top of my head. His surprised howl of pain cheered me considerably, although an area of my skull had gone instantly numb. When I straightened, he was holding both his hands up to his mouth, blood already seeping through his fingers, a one-note moan accompanying the blood.
"There's more where that came from," I warned, feeling elated and refraining from rubbing my scalp.
His pal, No. 2, may have been smart enough to realize Leather-jacket's injury had been more by accident than design; he charged me, bellowing a battle hymn that sounded something like, "Youuucuuuuhhhhnn . . ."
When pain might be involved, I can be pretty nimble: I stepped away from his outstretched arms and his stomach ran into my clenched fist. It was hardly a punch—his own momentum had provided most of the force—but he creased up, sucking air. I threw him across the hood of the nearest car and I think the metal surface, obviously having been boiling nicely under the sun for quite some time, must have scalded his cheek because he yelped and leapt up again. I was close behind him, though, and pushed his head back down, using my weight to hold him there and letting him sizzle.
No. 3 had finally stopped picking his nose and gone on to scratching his armpit, a bewildered expression striving to give his features some form of intelligence. Leather-jacket was still making muffled noises, his bloodied fingers like a red bandana over his chin.
I was slightly out of breath, but summoned up enough control to smile laconically. "Don't say I didn't warn you," I said, almost enjoying the moment and lowering my voice another octave.
To my horror, the other two began to close in, the injured one gurgling curses now, the body I held pinned against the car hood kicking out behind, trying to rise.
"Boys, boys, what is going on here?"
It was a new voice and belonged to a smallish head jutting through the open window of a car that had just cruised to a halt. I could have kissed that little head, which I noticed was mounted on a white, circular ring. The vicar, or priest, looked shocked, as though he'd just run into the overspill from Gomorrah.
"Miles Carver, is that you?" He was looking directly at Leather-jacket.
Miles? I smiled, beginning to enjoy myself again.
"What on earth are you up to, boy?" The cleric switched off the engine and stepped from the car, looking aghast at all of us. He was a short man with one of those youthful, unlined faces that put him in the sixteen-going-on-fifty age bracket; an indication that it was toward the latter end of the scale was his plastered-down hair, all neat rows as parallel as weavers' warp strands, pink scalp gleaming between the lines. He wore a tweed jacket over his black shirt and white collar, and his fawn trousers bunched around his ankles as though they were his big brother's hand-me-downs.
"Would somebody mind telling me what this is all about?" he demanded.
Miles mumbled something that none of us understood. Punk 2 had ceased wriggling under my grasp, although he strained to keep his face off the hot metal, and No. 3's hands had now sunk deep into his pockets in a conscious effort to keep them away from his nose and armpit.
It was Gillie who spoke up: "The boys were trying to steal from us when Mr. Stringer here came along and stopped them."
I glanced at her in surprise. "Steal" was a bit strong.
"My goodness," the vicar exclaimed. "Is this true, Miles?" He ignored the incoherent protest, probably well-used to such denials. "Will you never learn? It was only my personal intervention that prevented you from being put on probation last time, and now I find you've let me down again. I'm afraid I'll have to have another word with your father."
Miles blanched visibly.
"No real harm done," I volunteered. "Things got outa hand, that's all."
The vicar turned his attention on me, sizing me up somewhat coldly I felt. "I should think it would be all right to let go of that boy now," he said, pointing at my charge.
"Sure." I released my grip and the boy sprang away from the car hood as if ejected. He regarded me morosely, rubbing at the back of his neck.
"Thomas Bradley, you too." The vicar shook his head in sad resignation.
Punk 3 hung his head in suitable shame—the vicar was probably on speaking terms with this one's father, too.
"I can only ask you to forgive these lads," the cleric begged the girls and myself. "They left school last term and with employment in this area so hard to find . . ." He left the excuse hanging in the air for us to deduce the reason for their misbehavior. Try as I might, I couldn't find the answer, but I let it go, glad anyway that I'd come through unscathed and looking pretty good at that.
"The boys are extremely sorry that they bothered you ladies . . ." (they didn't look that apologetic to me) ". . . and I'm sure this sort of thing will never happen again." The vicar gave each second-rate punk a baleful glare, then told them to be on their way, and "sharply" too. They lumbered off, Miles (Miles? Oh really?) leaving a blood-spot trail behind. I was amused that a little guy like the vicar could have such a subduing effect on them and, not for the first time, realized that village life was a lot different from the city's.
Gillie and her friend picked up their pieces and put them in the back of the car, and I noticed the cleric was watching them with barely concealed disdain.
"Thanks for helping out," I said to him. "I was beginning to lose my temper."
He faced me and his hostility was evident in both voice and expression. "Yes, well, such incidents are unfortunate. However, I do wish you people . . ." For the second time he left a sentence hanging in the air.