Free Roberto & Me by Dan Gutman Page B

guys won’t give you the time of day.”
    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.
    â€œHey, knock it off!” he said without even turning around to face me. “I was here first.”
    â€œWhy don’t you relax?” I told him.
    â€œYeah,” Sunrise said, “we don’t even want autographs.”
    The guy turned and looked at us. He was older than me, maybe 20. He had a crew cut.
    â€œThen what are you doing here?” he asked.
    â€œI want to talk to Roberto Clemente,” I told him. “It’s very important.”
    â€œIt’s a matter of life and death,” added Sunrise.
    â€œThen why don’t you write him a letter?” the guy said. “The people who are here want autographs. We come to every game.”
    â€œIt’s a free country,” Sunrise said. “We can go wherever we want. You don’t own this spot, you know.”
    â€œHey, be cool,” I told Sunrise.
    I could tell that this was the kind of guy you didn’t want to get angry. Guys like him are just looking for somebody to fight.
    â€œWhy don’t you go protest against something, buddy?” he said to me. “Dirty hippies.”
    I did look like a hippie, with my headband and love beads. And we were pretty dirty too, come to think of it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a shower. Sometime in the twenty-first century.
    â€œHey, why don’t you leave him alone, mister?” Sunrise said. “He wasn’t bothering you.”
    â€œWhy doesn’t he make me?” the guy with the crew cut said, pushing my shoulders back. “You wanna fight?”
    The dumpy lady grabbed her son by the shoulder and pulled him away from us.
    â€œNo, I don’t want to fight,” I said.
    â€œOf course you don’t,” the guy said. “You’re a coward, like all those other freaks protesting against the war. But it’s okay to let our soldiers fight and die so you can live in a free country, right?”
    â€œThe war is stupid,” Sunrise told him. “ Nobody should die. It’s 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€œYou know what’s gonna happen if the Commies win?” the guy yelled. “The whole world will go Communist. It’s because of unpatriotic traitors like youthat our guys are dying and we’re losing the war.”
    â€œIt’s because of morons like you that we have a war there in the first place!” Sunrise shot right back.
    The guy cocked his fist.
    â€œIf you weren’t a girl—” he said.
    â€œHey, leave her alone,” I told him.
    â€œOkay…”
    That’s 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 didn’t 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.
    I’ve been in a few little skirmishes with kids my age, but I’ve never been flat-out punched in the nose by a grown man before. I’m usually pretty good about holding my temper. But when somebody socks you in the face, you can’t 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.
    â€œStop it!” Sunrise yelled, trying to pull us apart.
    But I wasn’t listening to her. Me and the