Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Author:Catherine Ryan Hyde
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Chapter Sixteen

SIDNEY G.

For their benefit, he injected a little swagger into his walk. He knew they were behind him, his senses said so. His simple good sense said so. He knew as he left the bar that they would follow. The beers had gone to his head, affecting his gait and balance, a dislocation that needed to be thoughtfully overcome.

He turned into the alley anyway. To do otherwise would have made him someone else entirely. Which he would never allow. Sidney G. until the end, but this was not the end. It would take a bigger army than this. Besides, he could feel the cold steel against his side. Consider things equal.

“Hey, big man.” A sharp call from behind him, in a voice he knew. A voice that had been in his face earlier tonight.

Hey, she’d been sitting at the bar alone; how was he to know she was with this guy? And also if it had worked, why should he have cared?

But this was a small town, nothing like the real world, and this big, stiff redneck behind him had some other big stiff rednecks on his small-town, small-time team. These fools thought fists would tell the final tale.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.

“I’m talking to you, stupid.”

Sidney G. stopped, wavered slightly, and turned around. There were four of them at the mouth of the alley, backlit by the streetlight, breathing clouds of steam into air left cold and clear by yesterday’s rain.

They moved up, the lady’s sorry boyfriend in front, with his three stooges standing just to the rear, smiling in a sickening chorus.

Gotcha now, trash-talking city boy.

That’s what you think.

“So, big man. Tell me again what you said about my momma.”

Sidney G. smiled. Breathed deeply, expanding his belly against his waistband and its bulge of cold metal. “Hey, you know, dude, that wasn’t really true, what I said about your momma. I didn’t really do her.”

The four men sneered, heavy with their own imagined power.

Got you on the run now, city boy.

That’s what you think.

“I mean, big ugly lady like that? I don’t care how much she begged. Just not into it.” Sidney smiled and pulled the gun out from under his coat. He was drunk, full-on drunk. Drunk enough to make a mistake. A really stupid mistake, like facing four men in an alley, never stopping to look behind his back.

He tried to clear his head too late.

A strong hand grabbed his right wrist from behind, another wrapped around his upper arm. A victim of his own slowed reflexes, Sidney G. sank to his knees under the pressure, felt the sickening, cracking give in his elbow. Thought he was going to throw up from the pain. Thank God he was oiled. Man, that would hurt like a son of a bitch in the morning. If there was a morning.

Bent double with the pain, gun skittering over the pavement out of his reach, he felt the heavy boot dig into his gut, lifting him slightly off the ground.

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