The Orange Houses by Paul Griffin Page B

cheek, swollen from when Shanelle clocked her. They stared at the blood-soaked bandage on her forearm. Then their eyes went to him.
    Mik pulled him across the street. “We gotta hurry now, Jimmi.”
    He looked over his shoulder. Car doors were opening, tenement doors. Men followed, drawing their phones. Five dudes trailed them, eight, now a ninth with a Lou isville Slugger.
    â€œJimmi, you run,” she said. “You fly .”
    â€œI ain’t leaving you,” he said. The morphine had started to wear off. He would get her to the avenue, the traffic, people—“People, please,” he said to the vigilantes.
    They came down on him fast, tens of them, seeming like hundreds as they ripped Mik from him. Pinned against a truck, he could do no more than watch as they passed her kicking and screaming to an enormous woman who held her back with manlike arms. He broke free with a pair of punches that jacked the men into a fury. Their hatred stunned him. He knew these men, their brothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, helloed them daily in these streets surrounding the hospital. They were his neighbors, his friends. Why now did they kick him? He called out to them by name, and they struck him harder. He staggered to bent knees. “Let her go,” he said. “Do what you got to do with me, but let her go.”
    Somebody kicked the back of his skull. Numbness spread over and through him.
    â€œString ’im up,” said the lead vigilante, some gangbanger.
    They roped him by his ankles, threw the line over the streetlamp’s arm and heaved him high. The physical pain was nothing compared to seeing them upside down with fever in their eyes. He’d seen men work each other up like this in battle. Any sense of why they were killing was lost to them. They knew nothing but a want for maximum destruction. One man saddled another’s shoulders. Another handed that man the ball bat. He jabbed Jimmi’s gut. More men saddled more shoulders and pummeled Jimmi Sixes. They beat his arms and legs, his face with fists that tore skin. One man lashed him with a studded belt.
    Jimmi felt as if he’d been thrown under a speeding car. He convulsed. The rope snapped and dropped him to the sidewalk. Falling into darkness he saw Mik and thought, I want to live. I was eighteen.

chapter 39
    TAMIKA
    The fall . . .
    Jimmi dropped onto the crowd. Landing on them made them angrier. They tossed him at each other as if he were somebody else’s trash.
    â€œWhat a sound,” the leader said to Mik. “Somebody make that girl stop bawling.”
    The giant woman held her hand over Mik’s mouth, jerking back just shy of hard enough to snap Mik’s neck. She twisted Mik to make her see the woman’s slitted eyes and pulled-back lips. “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right now,” the woman said. When Mik bit the woman’s palm, the bruiser jerked harder on Mik’s head. “Hush. We got you. He can’t hurt you now, blessed child.”
    â€œRoll ’im out,” the lead gangbanger said. “Roll ’im out , I said. Yeah, like that. Put his chin on the curb and stomp down.”
    Two lifted their boots to kick down the deathblow to the back of Jimmi’s neck when someone must have yelled something that got the men to hold up. They whipped their heads to look up the street. Mik followed their eyes.
    â€œYou will stop .” Fatima shoved through the crowd. She put herself between Jimmi and the mob.
    â€œGet that bitch out the way,” the lead gangbanger said.
    Others shouted the same and worse. The screaming shorted out Mik’s hearing aids. She read one woman’s lips: “Terrorist.”
    Fatima stood tall and spread out her hands stained with newspaper ink. She yelled to quiet the mob. As the crowd noise dropped off, Mik’s hearing aids came back partway. Fatima said, “You will not harm this man. You will