guys wonât give you the time of day.â
Everybody was waiting patiently; but after a few minutes, some people started getting antsy. There was a little pushing and shoving. A guy next to me wearing a camouflage jacket stepped on my toe. As I tried to get my foot out from under his, my hand brushed against his back.
âHey, knock it off!â he said without even turning around to face me. âI was here first.â
âWhy donât you relax?â I told him.
âYeah,â Sunrise said, âwe donât even want autographs.â
The guy turned and looked at us. He was older than me, maybe 20. He had a crew cut.
âThen what are you doing here?â he asked.
âI want to talk to Roberto Clemente,â I told him. âItâs very important.â
âItâs a matter of life and death,â added Sunrise.
âThen why donât you write him a letter?â the guy said. âThe people who are here want autographs. We come to every game.â
âItâs a free country,â Sunrise said. âWe can go wherever we want. You donât own this spot, you know.â
âHey, be cool,â I told Sunrise.
I could tell that this was the kind of guy you didnât want to get angry. Guys like him are just looking for somebody to fight.
âWhy donât you go protest against something, buddy?â he said to me. âDirty hippies.â
I did look like a hippie, with my headband and love beads. And we were pretty dirty too, come to think of it. I couldnât remember the last time I had a shower. Sometime in the twenty-first century.
âHey, why donât you leave him alone, mister?â Sunrise said. âHe wasnât bothering you.â
âWhy doesnât he make me?â the guy with the crew cut said, pushing my shoulders back. âYou wanna fight?â
The dumpy lady grabbed her son by the shoulder and pulled him away from us.
âNo, I donât want to fight,â I said.
âOf course you donât,â the guy said. âYouâre a coward, like all those other freaks protesting against the war. But itâs okay to let our soldiers fight and die so you can live in a free country, right?â
âThe war is stupid,â Sunrise told him. â Nobody should die. Itâs not even a real war. Only Congress has the power to declare war, and they never did. Do you know how many of our soldiers died in Vietnam last year? 16,000!â
âYou know whatâs gonna happen if the Commies win?â the guy yelled. âThe whole world will go Communist. Itâs because of unpatriotic traitors like youthat our guys are dying and weâre losing the war.â
âItâs because of morons like you that we have a war there in the first place!â Sunrise shot right back.
The guy cocked his fist.
âIf you werenât a girlââ he said.
âHey, leave her alone,â I told him.
âOkayâ¦â
Thatâs when he hauled off and punched me in the nose.
I staggered backward. He had taken me completely by surprise. There were tears bubbling up in my eyes, but I didnât want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me wipe them away. I touched my nose. There was a trickle of blood on my fingers.
Iâve been in a few little skirmishes with kids my age, but Iâve never been flat-out punched in the nose by a grown man before. Iâm usually pretty good about holding my temper. But when somebody socks you in the face, you canât just stand there and take it.
I charged at him and tried to punch his lights out, but he got his arm up quickly to protect his face. My best chance, I figured, was to go all out. I started flailing at him with both fists as fast and hard as I could. The more blows I threw, the more I would land. That was my strategy.
âStop it!â Sunrise yelled, trying to pull us apart.
But I wasnât listening to her. Me and the