Free Nobody’s Hero by j. leigh bailey Page A

Danny swooping in, arms held wide like he was flying. Danny grabbed one little boy off the top of the pile and swung him around before depositing him back on the grass. The boy giggled. “No fair!”
    “I’ve got top secret orders from
la general
to rescue the captain. It’s time to eat.” Danny deepened his voice to make this pronouncement.
    With that news, the small people fled. Somebody, and Brad couldn’t have put a name to him, tripped over Brad’s arm and landed elbow first onto Brad’s stomach. All the air whooshed out of his lungs. He lifted the boy—who, upon closer inspection, he guessed was the one called Juan Carlos—and set him safely on the grass even as he jerked into a sitting position.
    Danny held a hand out to him. Brad grabbed it and hauled himself to his feet. He didn’t need help, but he couldn’t resist the chance to hold Danny’s hand, if only for a second.
    “C’mon,” Danny said, slapping Brad on the back. “
La general
has spoken. It’s time to eat.”
    “
La general?
” Brad asked, stumbling over the pronunciation.
    “Yeah.” Danny pointed to a group of women sitting in lawn chairs and eating off paper plates. “
Mi mamá.
Nobody messes with her.”
    After loading up their plates, Danny led the way to a group of people about their age.
    “I think all the chairs are taken. You want to pop a squat in the grass over there?” He pointed next to Connie and her boyfriend.
    “Sure.”
    Danny made introductions. Besides Connie, the others included her boyfriend Bobby, Connie’s brother Manny and his girlfriend Paige, and another cousin, Tommy. There was no way he’d be able to keep all the names straight.
    Brad had barely taken a bite when a small form settled in next to him.
    “Are you the Pied Piper or something?” Danny looked pointedly at the line of kids who’d come to sit with them. Veronica sat at Brad’s right, and a handful of others—the ones he’d been playing with earlier—all tried to sit as close to him as they could.
    “Well, hello there.”
    “Will you play wif us again after we eat?” Juan Carlos asked with a lisp caused by a missing front tooth.
    “Sure. What do you want to play?”
    “Soccer,” suggested a little boy who was older than Veronica but younger than Juan Carlos. Brad couldn’t judge any of their ages accurately, but he was pretty sure he was getting them in the right order chronologically at least.
    “Soccer?” he asked.
    “Yeah!”
    Since it looked like all of the kids were in agreement, Brad said, “Sure. I think we can do that. Do we have a soccer ball?”
    “Yes,” Juan Carlos said, jumping to his feet.
    “Stop.”
    Juan Carlos turned his big brown eyes up to look at Danny. “I was just gonna get the ball.”
    Danny pointed at the boy’s plate. “Eat first. The ball isn’t going anywhere.”
    Juan Carlos scowled at his plate. “The big kids will get it first.”
    Brad looked at Danny, who shrugged. “Sometimes the bigger kids—”
    “Ahem.” Connie arched her brow and smirked at Danny.
    “—sometimes the really big kids grab the ball first and then the little ones are left out.”
    “On behalf of the
little kids
,” Brad said, “I’m calling dibs on the soccer ball.”
    * * *
    The plates had been cleared away and the kids—there were ten of them—split into two teams. Danny didn’t normally play with the little ones, but he’d let himself be talked into joining one of the teams so Brad could join the other. Watching Brad with the kids was kind of fun. It was like he didn’t work so hard to stay separate.
    “Go, Avengers!”
    The sudden shout from five kids and one adult burst in the air. On the other side of the lawn, where two paper plates had been weighed down to represent the goal box, Brad and his team pumped their fists in the air and charged to the center point of the yard.
    Something tugged at the hem of Danny’s shorts. “Do we have a name?” His seven-year-old cousin Alex stared up at