Bread Upon the Waters Read Online Free PDF Page B

me.”
    “The bastards,” Jimmy said.
    “Young, deprived people, with ugly racial memories,” Hazen said, shrugging. “Lawlessness the order of the day, property a flaunting of unearned privilege…”
    Speech for the Defense, Strand thought. Your Honor, let me introduce certain extenuating circumstances …
    “You mean they were black?” Jimmy said harshly.
    Hazen nodded soberly. “I have been warned by my friends from time to time. Especially after dark.”
    “Damnit,” Jimmy said to his parents, “how many times have I told you Caroline should stay out of that goddamn park?”
    “How many times, Jimmy,” Strand said, “have I told you you ought to stop smoking and you ought to get to sleep before five o’clock in the morning?”
    “Stop wrangling, you two,” Leslie said sharply. Then to Hazen, “How did my daughter get involved in this?”
    “She appeared out of nowhere,” Hazen said. “Through the bushes, I imagine. The three men—boys, actually, no more than fifteen, sixteen, I imagine—had crept up behind me. The first I knew I was hit on the head, I was staggering a bit, but holding firmly on to my bicycle, which was the object of the assault. My hat flew off, they hit me again along the cheek and one of them pulled out a knife and began to slash my jacket…” He looked down, fingered the tattered leather. “I doubt they actually wished to stab me, merely to frighten me into letting go of my machine, the cut on my head came at this moment…. I was shouting, although it was with some difficulty, as one of them had his arm around my throat. Amazingly strong, a boy that age.”
    “And you held on to that bicycle all that time?” Jimmy asked incredulously.
    “It was my property, James,” Hazen said mildly.
    “Christ,” Jimmy said. “For a bicycle. How much did it cost? A hundred? A hundred and fifty?”
    “Slightly more than that,” Hazen said. “It is a French machine. Ten gears. But the money was not the point. As I said, it was my property, not theirs.”
    “And you were willing to take the chance that they’d kill you for a lousy bicycle?”
    “The principle is not open to question,” Hazen said with dignity.
    “You were willing to get killed?” Jimmy repeated.
    “I didn’t reason it out calmly at the moment,” Hazen said. “But I imagine the thought must have crossed my mind. Luckily, your sister appeared, completely surprising the young rascals. She screamed before she struck and the noise froze them for a moment. In that moment—it all went so fast I couldn’t follow it—she laid about her with her tennis racquet. With the side. It must be quite a weapon. Sharp edged and all that. She smashed the hand of the boy with the knife with her first blow and he cried out and dropped the knife. With her second blow she opened the face and I’m afraid did grave damage to the eyes of the boy with the lead pipe and he dropped the pipe and bent over and staggered away, with his hands to his eyes. Then she struck the boy who had the knife across the face twice and he fell to the ground. You never think of a tennis racquet as a weapon, do you? The third boy merely ran away. All this time, your sister was screaming—wordlessly, I must say—although no one seemed to hear it, or if they did, paid no attention to it. She said, ‘Hold on to me,’ and she seized the handlebars of the bicycle and we ran—I believe we ran—out of the park. And here I am.” Hazen smiled up at Leslie and Strand.
    God, Strand thought, that little girl! “I’m glad now,” he said, “I gave in when Caroline asked me to buy her a steel racquet.” He had to make the little lame joke to keep from showing the emotion he felt, the fear that had swept through him for his daughter as Hazen told his story.
    “I, too,” Hazen said gravely. “More than glad. It is not perhaps too much of an exaggeration to say that I owe my life to your daughter. Tell her, if there is any way I call show my