Two more boys appear. They land on the ground, dropping from the branches of a tree like rotten apples. They’re not large like the first boy; clearly brothers as they have the same blond hair, the same blunt nose. “Here’s Ned Booth,” the freckled boy tells them, “strolling down the street like he’s the biggest toad in the puddle.”

“I don’t think that. I’m just going home,” Edwin says.

“This won’t take long.” The boy indicates the foils he’s carrying. “Let me see those.”

“They’re not mine.”

“Maybe they’re mine,” the boy tells him. He takes Father’s foils from Edwin’s unresisting hands, looks them over. “What are they? Toy swords? Toy swords for toy soldiers? I don’t want them, after all.” He drops them into the mud. He steps on them a few times, snapping them sharply. “Now you have twice as many. You should thank me.”

Edwin didn’t ask Mother’s permission to take his father’s foils, because she would have said no.

“You should thank him,” the boy on his right says. He has a fading bruise along his flat cheekbone, a peeling scab on his chin. This is not his first fight.

Nor is it Edwin’s. He knows what comes next. He hasn’t yet found a role he can play that carries him through this. If he runs, they’ll catch him and beat him. If he stands his ground, they’ll take it as provocation and beat him. If he surrenders, they’ll see it as weakness and beat him. The large boy takes hold of the back of his jacket and twists the collar so that it tightens around Edwin’s neck.

“I don’t hear you,” the boy on his right says.

“Thank you.” To Edwin’s horror, it comes out a sob though he’s fairly certain he’s not crying. He puts his hands over his face just in time to block the first punch. The second hits his shoulder. He takes a kick in the shin that buckles his leg out from under him. He falls onto the pile of broken foils and remains there, curled up like a dead leaf, his hands over his eyes, his shin a sheet of pain. Someone kicks him in the back.

A sharp, loud whistle. It’s George Stout of the Bully Boys, arriving on the scene, whistling for reinforcements. George doesn’t wait. “Leave him be,” George shouts, wading in, landing punches right and left. The big boy with the freckles hits the ground hard.

More Bully Boys arrive—Theodore Hamilton, Stuart Robson, William O’Laughlen, trailed by his little brother, Michael. Even Michael has more fight in him than Edwin. The battle moves down the street and into an alleyway. The noise of it fades. Edwin doesn’t follow to see how it ends.