The shift manager rapped a stack of paychecks against the megaphone’s cone and spurred a screech of feedback. He then announced that, effective immediately, the plant was closing, just as Henry’s PO had warned. The two dozen workers circled tighter, huddling into a fearful denim amoeba. Soon shouts of protest and disbelief ruptured the membrane of shock. One man, enraged beyond language, simply spat. The phlegm smacked the very spot on the floor where Lucius had been standing right beside Henry only seconds ago.

When Henry looked up, he saw Lucius at the far wall, cocking his torso and throwing an elbow through the pane of the fire extinguisher case. Glass shattered and heads spun. Lucius toppled the extinguisher to the ground, then reached back to where two fire-axes formed a tall red X. He came out swinging, cracking the axe head against the control furnace with futile pings. When the cops closed in, Lucius sent the axe in wide horizontal sweeps to ward them back. The swings whooshed through the air, and their momentum yanked the old man forward, making him hobble after each of the axe head’s plummets. Between swings, he screamed.

“It ain’t right, y’all can’t—”

A whoosh. A clank and hobbling.

“This our livelihood—our lives.”

Through ferocious sobs, Lucius screamed for justice, dignity, mercy. He chopped and staggered and bellowed. And then, for the first time all year, he cried out Henry’s real name, howling for backup, for his friend’s help.

Henry was paralyzed from the nose down, voiceless and helpless to watch as one of the cops crept up from behind Lucius. The cop was visibly unimpressed, as if bored by the task of waiting for this pitiful geezer to wear himself out, which, after a few more growls and swings, Lucius did. The axe head gave a final toll against the floor’s trough, then bounced into the cop’s ankle. The impact was harmless but physical contact nonetheless—a green light for force.

As Lucius struggled to stand, crutching himself upright with the axe handle, the cop kicked it out from under him and threw him to the floor in a choke hold.

Inside Henry crumbled, but outside he was placid. Another worker charged toward Lucius, who was retching under the cop’s aggravated weight. As ashamed as Henry was that someone else had launched to his friend’s defense first, it didn’t matter. That would-be working-class hero was thwarted almost immediately, frozen midstride when the second cop reached for his holster.

Cuffs locked around Lucius’s wrists. He was either refusing to walk or incapable of getting to his feet. His wiry frame went flaccid as the cop dragged him toward the exit. The way Lucius’s head lolled, strands of tears and saliva draggling from his chin, he looked like a child drained to submission by his own playground tantrum.

A slab of flagstone now wobbled under Henry’s boot.