Free Tiny Little Thing by Beatriz Williams Page A

I know you lost a leg and everything, and you probably believe in what you’re doing, God help you, but it’s fucking
wrong
to award a medal in
my
name—because
I’m
a citizen of this country, too, man. I’m an American, too—award a fucking
medal
for invading another country, a third world country, and killing its women and children just because they happen to want a different way of life than fucking capitalism.”
    The silence, frozen and horrible, locks us in place.
    “I see,” says Caspian, absorbed in the hyacinths.
    Frank rises to his feet. His lips are hung in a politician’s smile, so slick and out of place it makes me wince. “Tom, why don’t you go back in the house and take a little breather, okay?”
    “Oh, come on, Frank,” says Constance. “He’s allowed an opinion. Tom, you’ve had your say. Now calm down and let’s finish our dinner.”
    Tom stands up, a little unsteady. “Sorry, Connie. I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and eat dinner with you people. You fat, satisfied pigs who give medals to fucking murderers—”
    “Jesus, Tom!”
    “Now, Tom . . .” I begin.
    He turns to me and stabs a hole in the air between us with his rigid index finger. “And
you.
Sitting there in your pretty dress and your pretty face. You’re a smart girl, you should know better, but you just keep smiling and nodding like a pretty little fascist idiot so you can get what you want, so you can smile and nod in the fucking White House one day . . .”
    Somewhere in the middle of this speech, Caspian wipes his mouth with his napkin and stands up, sending the chair tumbling to the stone rectangles behind him. He walks down the line of chairs and yanks Tom out of place by the collar. “Apologize,” he says.
    The word is so low, I read it on his lips.
    Tom’s face, looking up at Caspian, is full of vodka and adrenaline. “Why? It’s the truth. I can speak the truth.”
    “I said. Apologize.”
    Just before Tom replies, or maybe too late, I think: Don’t do it, Tom, don’t be an idiot, oh Jesus, oh Caspian, not again. I think, simultaneously, in another part of my head: Dammit, there goes dinner, and also: Should we try serving afterward or just put everything in the icebox for a cold buffet tomorrow at lunch?
    “Oh, yeah? And what are you going to do if I don’t? Knock me out in front of everyone?”
    Caspian lifts back a cool fist and punches him in the jaw.

Caspian, 1964
    W ell, hell.
    If it were just Caspian occupying that diner booth, he’d be on the guy’s ass in a second, two-bit potbellied crook waving a gun like that. Wearing a goddamned
suit
, for God’s sake, like he was a wiseguy or something.
    But Tiny.
    He reached across the table, grabbed her frozen hand, and slid the engagement ring off her finger and into his pocket. She was too shocked to protest. She stared at the crook, at flustered Em trying to open the cash drawer.
    “Get down,” he muttered.
    She turned her head to him. Her face was white.
    “Get down!”
    The man waved his gun. “Hey! Shut up back there!”
    From underneath his mother’s protective body, the little boy started to cry.
    “Shut that kid up!”
    The boy cried louder, and the man fired his gun. The mother’s body slumped.
    Em screamed, and the man lost his cool, flushing and sweating. “Shut up! Shut up!”
    Em tried to dodge around him, to the mother on the floor covering her boy, but he grabbed her by the collar and held the gun to her forehead. “Nobody move, all right? Or the waitress gets it. You!” He nodded to the frozen-faced couple in the first booth. “Put your wallet on the table! Right there at the edge!”
    Em squeaked. Looked right across the room at Cap and pleaded with her eyes.
    Damn it all.
    Cap reached for Tiny and shoved her bodily under the table. In the next second, he launched himself down the aisle toward the man, who spun around and hesitated a single fatal instant, trying to decide whether to shoot Cap or to shoot