M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton Page A

bracelets. They jingle, M.C. had time to think.
    One hand was in his pocket on his knife for protection. He reached for the light with the other hand. The light flicked off again. But he was rolling over, still reaching, and caught her, part hard shoe and part ankle. The shoe kicked out and connected with his forehead. Ina shock or pain, the blow knocked him flat on his back.
    His head hurt so, he could have cried. He moaned once and then moaned again. He was thinking fast, the second moan was playacting. He lay still with his head turned slightly away from where he thought the light would be.
    The light shone again, coming from behind him. He waited and continued moaning softly. He listened through the painful ache across his forehead. She moved in closer to him. He closed his eyes.
    “You had to start it,” she said. “Up there on the mountain, with your fire and your shouting.” Her voice was anxious and whining.
    She came up on his left to stand over him. He lay calm, resting, so that his eyelids would not flutter. He made his breath grow ragged and shallow.
    “What is it?” she said.
    She kneeled. M.C. heard the light scrape as she placed it on the ground by his shoulder. He wondered if Ben could see them. Sure, he could. The light was still on, shining full on M.C.’s face.
    “Hey, are you all right?” she said. Gently, she shook M.C. by the shoulder. But he played possum dead.
    “Oh, what have I done!” Her whining voice was above him. She was close to his face. Then her fingers, cool, like soft points of delicate pressure, were outlining the bump that had swelled on his forehead.
    Carefully, M.C. began to move his left arm. She must have thought he was coming awake, for she gave a sharp cry of relief. Without touching her, he was able to slip his arm all the way across her back at the waist.
    Swiftly, he grabbed her above the left elbow, pinning her arm to her side. She fell hard on his chest. His fingers had her arm in a vise, and something else—a handle.
    At once he felt the imprint of a heavy, unsheathed blade between them.
    But his mind didn’t dwell on it, not even in surprise. He jerked the knife away toward her back, forcing her to move off a little, so he could slide the belt around to which it was attached. He pressed her arm down on the knife now at her side. If she struggled, she’d risk being sliced.
    Both his arms were around her tightly.
    He discovered he had taken his own knife from his pocket and was clutching it at her back. Feeling her soft, yet solid weight against him, he stared straight into her stricken eyes.
    “Hi,” he said. Impulsively, he kissed her lightly on the lips, the way he might have kissed a child good-by. At once he knew he shouldn’t have. She hadn’t felt like a child.
    Her eyes filled with terror. She kicked at him, her hard shoes bruising his shin bones.
    “Hey,” he said, now grinning with the triumph of catching her. Yet his mind remained sharp, wary, a hunter’s mind.
    She’s got a free hand. Scared enough to—
    The thought came to him, clean and deadly.
    He saw blinding light suspended in darkness above his eyes. His turn to feel terror, and he let her arm loose.
    No time to reach the light before she flung it viciously at his head. But the light hung there for a brief instant, in which he was aware of his hunter’s hand holding the knife at her back.
    He used it, expertly. He could make a bleeding animal slash with it. But he stopped himself in time. She was no deer. Instead he thrust delicately through her shirt and made a clean check mark into her skin. A cut, but not deep. Just enough to draw blood and hurt.
    In that one instant given him, all was sequential, ordered. She stiffened, uttering a sickening whine of fear, and reaching behind to clutch her wound, she dropped the light. M.C. jerked his head away to protect it, and knocked her off him.
    The light hit him hard on the shoulder. It was a bruising blow, but it was better than having her