Featherless Bipeds Read Online Free PDF Page A

tears.
    â€œDon’t hurt me,” he says.
    I hold him against the wall. He does not struggle. He is at least a foot shorter than me, and he can’t be more than a hundred pounds. His fresh-off-the-shelf black boots and chain-festooned jacket weigh more than all his vital organs combined. He is no more than fourteen. As much as I long to kick the shit out of a skinhead, beating up this one will make me no better that the jerks who are reeling him in with free music and food.
    â€œNot so tough without your cement-head buddies, are you, kid?”
    When I turn to look at the girl behind the garbage can, he wriggles free and runs away.
    She is a mess, curled up in a ball, breathing rapidly, her head sandwiched between her elbows. There are dirty footprints all over the back of her jacket. Bruises are already forming on her legs. They have dumped garbage all over her. There are coffee grounds and bits of kleenex and egg yolk in her red hair. The wooden handle of a protest sign is wedged between her knees. The hand-painted slogan on the placard says “Love for ALL humanity”.
    â€œDo you think you can walk?” I ask her as she slowly unfolds her legs and rolls over.
    She nods yes, but she stumbles when she tries. I catch her and hold her under the arms. If you change her green eyes to blue and her red hair to brown, she resembles my younger sister Charlotte. She’s about the same age, too.
    I should have killed that little punk when I had the chance.
    â€œI think my ankle’s sprained,” she says, her lower lip quivering. “Or broken.”
    â€œI’ll help you get an ambulance.”
    â€œAt least they didn’t get a chance to rape me,” she says, and she crumbles against me, sobbing. Her resemblance to my sister makes my insides twitch.
    Of course, no telephone company would put a pay phone in such a burned-out, boarded-up area as this, so I will have to walk her at least as far as the nearest restaurant or convenience store before I can resume my search for Zoe.
    As we limp along, the street now strangely quiet, she tells me her name is Bernie — short for Bernice. She is in grade eleven at one of the high schools in the suburbs. She and her friends have just finished learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. in history class, and they decided to take seriously his mantra, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem”.
    â€œYou’re a brave girl, Bernie,” I tell her.
    Several police cars come roaring up the street, sirens wailing. I jump out and start waving my arms. A cruiser screeches to a halt in front of me.
    â€œAre you trying to get yourself killed?” the officer barks at me as we move around to the open driver’s-side window.
    â€œI found this girl — she was beaten up by some skinheads. Can you get her to a hospital?”
    â€œWe’re on our way to break up a riot they started at the waterfront. Sorry. You’ll have to wait until our backup shows up.”
    With that, the cruiser races away.
    â€œMaybe you could take me to the McDonald’s a couple of blocks from here,” Bernice says between bloody coughs. “My friends said we should meet there if we got separated.”
    Since there doesn’t seem to be anywhere closer that might have a phone, I take her to the McDonald’s. Thankfully, her friends are waiting there for her, uninjured.
    â€œLet’s get in the car and hunt down the bastards who did this!” one of the boys shouts, after the hugs and tears and explanations are finished.
    â€œYeah, let’s make ’em pay!” adds one of the girls, “There’s seven of us, and only three of them!”
    â€œHow about instead you get Bernice to a hospital,” I suggest.
    They agree to do this. One of the boys shakes my hand. “Thanks, man, thanks for bringing Bernie back to us.”
    â€œAll in a day’s work,” I say.
    Then I walk