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First we saw Richard. He was looking across the street at the parking lot of the plaza. He had this wild and excited look on his face. There were other kids too running toward him bigger kids. He didn’t look like he was scared of them so I was wondering if it was a game they were playing, like tag. Like Richard, they were also turning around looking at the parking lot. The way they spread out together in one flowing motion was like they were some kind of spawn brought in by the tide. They looked like the characters running alongside Tom Cruise in the War of the Worlds remake about the future that are being chased down by mechanical robots with guns from outer space.

We told Richard that Jacob was over behind Chat, the Hebrew Day School with two tennis rackets if Richard wanted to go over and play with him. Richard had sweat on the back of his head hairs at his collar. He had sweat on his bangs. Richard always hangs around the park getting in on every possible game he can.

Richard said, sure he was going to do that. He said there was a fight over in the parking lot. He walked toward it to show us where it was happening. There was a guy on his back down on the ground. He was moving his limbs but staying down. Larry was asking Richard who the kids involved were to find out if the guys involved were the same two kids who took Jacob’s baseball glove in the spring because Larry’s still planning to call those kids to task when he gets the chance. Richard stared over at the movement in the parking lot and answered Larry’s questions.

I was calling Jacob on my cell phone to let him know Richard would be coming over to play with him but decided not to because Richard didn’t look like he was ready to go yet.

The kid who was lying down stood up with some of his friends around him. Larry and I started walking toward a girl standing near the outfield foul territory of the baseball diamond. She said she knew the guys who were fighting. We walked past this other kid who was standing straddled over his bike watching the parking lot. A guy playing left field was trying to get his attention because someone had just hit a fowl ball right beside this kid. He was trying to get the kid to throw the ball back to him so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way over to the edge of the field to get it himself.

Larry called Jacob to tell him Richard should be coming over to play tennis with him soon, to stay where he was and not to come over to the park because there had just been a fight but Richard would be there soon.

When we were a few blocks away part way down the hill that goes to the valley Jacob called us from the park to tell us the kid who we had seen lying down had been stabbed. Larry told me he had seen something red on the kid’s back but he just thought it was just his friend had something red in his hand. I told Larry I didn’t notice anything red on the kid’s back. The police were coming and the two kids who had done it were hiding behind the Irving Chapley Community Center.

Larry called Jacob back to tell him if the police ask him any questions to not tell them anything because Jacob didn’t see anything first hand and it was up to people who saw things first hand to let the police know what they saw. Larry said to me Jacob has a do-gooder tendency that could get him labelled as a snitch.

We were going to walk along the path beside the river but right away it was way too full of mosquitoes. I told Larry I couldn’t take it anymore, I needed to turn back. We were running. It took a while for us to lose the mosquitoes even though we were way past where they had first started to bother us.