The victim would never regain consciousness but would die, of severe brain damage and other traumatic injuries, nine days later.

No other calls to 911 had been reported that night. But the following morning when news of the beating began to spread through South Niagara an anonymous caller reported to police that he’d been driving on Delahunt Road the night before, around 11:40 P.M., when he’d seen a vehicle parked at the side of the road, where someone, it appeared to be a young black man, was lying on the ground bleeding from a head wound as four or five “young white guys” stood around him. It had looked, the caller said, as if there’d been a fight. He’d slowed his pickup then accelerated when the white guys saw him for they were looking “threatening”—“drunk and scared”—and he’d thought he saw one of them with a rifle.

Maybe not a rifle. A tire iron? Baseball bat?

He’d gotten out of there, fast. Hoping to hell they wouldn’t get in their car and follow him.

The caller went on to identify the car as a mid-1980s model Chevy, dull bronze, pretty battered, rusted, and dented—“Especially, you could see that the front right fender was bent all in from where they’d hit the kid. You couldn’t miss that.”

He hadn’t gotten a good look at the boys. Just “white kids”—“maybe high school age, or a little older”—but he’d tried to memorize the license plate number: “first three digits—KR4—something like that.”

Louisville Slugger

IF THE FUCKING BAT HADN’T BEEN THERE.

Because none of it had been premeditated. Because it had just happened—the way fire just happens.

Because it had been rattling in the back of the car, for months. Why’d he carry the bat loose in the car he’d liked to say For protection.

Sort of, he meant it. But it was a kind of joke too.

Because most things, fucking things in his fucking life, were jokes. Which included the bat.

Just his old baseball bat. The label worn off, he’d had for years. Couldn’t remember when he’d played baseball last. But the bat was his—his brothers had to have their own damn bats if they had a bat at all.

Never thought about it. Not much.

Rattling in the back of the car along with some empty beer cans and other shit, he’d stopped hearing.