Troubling Information

On the way out after his last negotiation attempt, he said to me, "Hang in there, buddy. Don't forget Orchard Street." He was talking about the morning in our junior year in high school when a woman sat down suddenly in the grass in front of us, and her grocery bag tipped over. He ran to call an ambulance while I sat with her. She was gray and sweaty and hung onto my shoulder and started telling me about how she had met her husband. How it was because he went back for his sweater, and how for a while she worried she didn't deserve to be so happy. Every so often whatever it was would grab her, and she'd clench my shirt in her hands. The ambulance went to Orchard Drive instead of Orchard Street, so it was twenty minutes getting there. I laid her down, and she kept my shirt in her hands. Chick stayed half a front yard away, watching. I had my hands on both sides of her head. When the ambulance finally came, they went about getting her ready to be loaded in; when they tried to separate my shirt from her fist and I saw her face, I said I'd ride with her. She nodded to them over and over again, and they figured I was family.

-- Jim Shepherd, "The Gun Lobby"