“I’m not much of a reader,” Jim said finally, sounding a mite apologetic as we walked. I almost said I wasn’t either, but I kept my mouth shut instead. I remember telling myself to be quiet and ladylike; the goal was to get kissed by Guitar Jimmy and who cares if he doesn’t read?

The sidewalk along Texarkana was crowded with strolling Saturday night couples, loud groups of snatch-butt soldiers, and an occasional shoeshine kid. One of them, a local chico de zapato, was ahead of us lugging his kit up to four uniformed men standing around a parking meter. The boy was nine or ten years old, dressed in blue jeans that were rolled up six or seven times but were still too long and he stepped on them with his bare heels as he walked. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. On his head was a fairly new-looking straw ranch hand hat with a rawhide strap tied around the crown. When he got to the soldiers one of them took the hat off his head and put it on his own. The boy jumped for it and of course the men laughed. We were walking by then, Guitar Jimmy on the street side, when the boy hauled off and kicked the soldier in the shin with his bare foot. The other soldiers laughed harder but the kicked one lifted his arm to backhand the boy. Then my date-without taking an extra step-grabbed the soldier’s wrist and held it there in front of the soldier’s face. They locked eyes and Jim took the hat off the man’s head, lowered it to the boy without glancing down at him, looked into the bully’s eyes a moment longer, then let go and began walking beside me again as if we’d never stopped. I remember hearing the snorts and laughter of the men behind us, the swearing of the bully, but Guitar Jimmy didn’t turn around and neither did I and when we got to Locos Caballos to eat, neither of us mentioned it.

But it left a hum in me as we ordered iced teas and read our menus. It wasn’t the strong cowboy part of it-though the soldier was taller, Jim easily outweighed him by twenty-five pounds and that’s what the mean one must have felt behind that grip on his wrist-it was the way Jim had moved so swiftly, instinctively I’d say, to help a street-wise little Mexican. That I had not seen much of in my young years. And my admiration for this sort of kindness left my face feeling wooden with shyness. I looked down at my menu and read the English side of the page even though I’d already decided on a guacamole salad.