“No Joe!” he squeaked, as the big boy ran at the crazy woman in the golf cart who was ripping down over the green with a fixed set of angry eyes apparently intent on running them over.

Alex was looking forward as if he were flying like Super Man tucked under Joe’s tattooed arm as he was. The golf cart piloted by the insane female adult whined as it gained speed.

“No Joe!” he shouted as Joe dropped him off to the side.

Alex was now rolling away not able to see a thing but hearing a terrible snarling from the devil woman, “Mutherfucker!”

He gained a knee and looked down to the left to see Joe running alongside the cart and shoving it as the woman snarled her obscene words and tried to turn the cart. The cart was tipping and Joe was shoving it and the cart rolled over with the lady spilling out headlong from the front end, as Joe held onto the back end long enough for the lady to fall clear, then, with a grunt let it crash on its side with a little shove.

The little golf lady on the smartphone to his right at the top of the green was screaming frantically into the phone to the 911 operator, “They are abducting us! My friend is being cart-jacked on the course by some big Latino man!”

“Yes, they’re black and Latinos, all over the course, doing a flash mob!”

Joe stood tall and peered down over the cart to make sure the lady was okay as she rolled over and came to her feet in a disheveled mess, as if Varissa’s Barbie doll had dressed up as an NFL cheerleader and then been shaken up in her carry case like a milk shake.

Alex walked down next to Joe as the lady above continued to argue with the 911 operator about what a Latino and a black was. Joe seemed as if he did not want to leave until he was sure the lady was okay so, as she threw her hair back, Alex spoke for him, “Are you okay miss?”

The crazy lady, the evil gleam in her eye turned more far away now, looked at him as if he were stupid, then looked at Joe who was looking at her boobies which had completely spilled out of the tiny vest she had worn, and then looked self-consciously down at herself and began to stuff her lady parts back into the vest. However, seeing what they all now saw, she instead clenched her fists, and screamed, “Aaaaaaihaaah!” for while her one unnaturally large breast was still shaped like the top half of a snow globe the other was smashed beyond recognition, looking like the rubber water bottle that Grandma used to heat up for her aches and pains.

The woman glared at Joe and screamed, “Rape!” and began frantically looking around for her bent golf club, which she soon spied on the green before her. As the crazy woman lunged for the club Joe looked to Alex and Alex yelled, “Run Joe, run!” and led the way up over the green where the man named Jay was still asleep, the nice man who no one listened to was yet attempting to catch his breath, and the little golf lady was frantically declaring to the 911 operator, “We are being gang-raped!”

Joe and Alex were now running side-by-side, and Alex felt good to be able to keep up, running along as quickly as his big lumbering friend. Ahead of them was a wide open golf course.

To the left the course expanded as far as the eye could see. They would surely be caught by police if they went that way.

Straight ahead there was only one more golf hole and the club house and the street, which was surely where the police would come to get them. Alex did not want to be caught by the police. He wanted to find a safe place to use his cell phone to call Mother so that she could leave school and come pick him up. She taught only two miles away at the church school and she would know how to deal with the police and these crazy adults. Mother had always said, “Baby, call me at the first opportunity if you are ever mistaken for a hoodlum. Call me, promise?”

First they needed to get off of this course. It would be best if the police did not see them after the false things the golf lady had told them. Ahead to the right the wooded creek bottom continued to narrow until it came up to the street. He knew this to be the very woods that grew up to the back lot of the shopping center, the right hand path they had not taken after John’s Game.

Alex reached out and touched Joe’s arm and gasped between strides, “The woods,” and his new foster brother changed course as if Alex were the lead bird in the flock banking on his sensitive wings into the state park. He had never done much running and had played few sports. He was thrilled in a surprised way that he was good at this and felt a sense of giddy joy rising in his chest.

He could hear their sneaker-clad feet pounding the green, thrilled to the feeling of a freedom the likes of which he had never before felt.

The whining of a golf cart sounded behind them and the two boys—big and small—responsively looked over their shoulders without breaking stride, which was a good thing, because the insane lady named Arlene was bearing down on them with the other golf cart, her bent golf club still in hand. She was steering with one hand and waving the club with the other as she ‘cursed a blue streak’ as Father would have said.

“Run Joe, run!”

Joe was grinning and responded as his stride began to falter from an uncontrollable laugh that was coming on, “Run Alex, run!”

Joe gave him a wink and Alex, now trusting his new brother with all of his recently discovered heart, continued to run for the woods as Joe slowed up and ducked his head, which was a good thing as the golf club ‘whooshed’ over his head as the lady drove by him and screeched in her wicked way.

Alex now stopped, not wanting to be left out or to leave his brother behind. As the lady turned her cart around and Joe resumed his slow lumbering stride toward the woods Alex skipped in her direction waving his arms over his head, “Hey lady, you are ugly and your hair is messed up!”

The lady’s eyes came to rest on Alex like two pin-points of hate, she let out a furious oath, and drove toward Alex with her golf club raised on high screaming, “Faggot Brat!”

Joe, for his part, ran behind the cart, unable to keep up as Alex skipped on his tip toes and waved his arms and stuck his tongue out at the crazy woman. Within seconds she was bearing down on him and he was skipping out of the way like Peter Pan only to feel a searing pain across his boney shoulder as she cursed a nasty oath which he did not even understand.

“Run for the woods Alex, in front of me!”

Joe was now looming up behind him with his big hands protectively on Alex’s shoulders as they both ran for the woods, now not so far away as they seemed moments ago. Soon the cart was whining and zigzagging behind them. The curses of the woman and her vicious swings were cutting the air, the club occasionally ‘thwacking’ into Joe’s broad back. This continued for perhaps the distance of a football field.

Then they were suddenly ‘in the rough’ and a stone’s throw from the woods, and Joe shoved his shoulders slightly and blurted, “Sprint flat out!”

A furious grunt could be heard and the golf club flew between the two boys who were now running for all they were worth toward the quickly nearing tree line over increasingly uneven ground.

From behind them came a furious oath, “Bastards!” and the golf cart whined as it had not whined before.

Joe’s knee buckled when he stepped on a root that had been jutting up unseen in the tall grass and he went down. Alex stopped and looked over his shoulder to see the snarling woman piloting the golf cart like a demon out of hell intent on running Joe down. Joe turned on his unbuckled knee and dragged himself a little forward. He was going to be run over and possibly hurt real bad and there was nothing Alex could do about it. What was worst was Joe had no real expression on his face, but a lonely emptiness. Alex could sense that Joe had not come to know Jesus like he had, and a great pity welled up in his heart.

Then, with a ‘c-chunk’ sound followed by a startled female grunt and a mechanical whine the front wheel of the golf cart hit the root just behind Joe and the cart flipped forward. Joe was rolling out of the way as the dumfounded lady stared in a startled manner at the onrushing ground. Her face and chest smacked into the ground with a spine-chilling sound that was distantly related, but tragically superior to, the tearing apart of a fried chicken breast. The whining cart followed, smashing into the lady’s back, a lady that was no longer wicked, furious, cursing or glaring, but simply laying still as night with empty eyes of glass staring up at the day from a once pretty face that was pointed at the wrong angle, looking back over one perfectly tanned shoulder.

Alex vaguely felt himself being led away by the hand of a big strong person, and not wanting to be left behind in this terribly lonely place, he went along with an unspeaking urgency, his soul seemingly transformed into an aching hole in his chest.

To be concluded in the novella Fat Girl Dancing, due out in October 2014.