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idea. You don’t back away from a guy like this, you go
toward
him, even as mad as he is. You’re provoking him—can’t you see that you’re provoking him?
So fascinated he didn’t realize that Judy’s hand was no longer in his, listening with a kind of sick foreknowledge as Mr. Middle-Aged Suit, still backing up, blathered about how he was sorry . . . entirely his fault, wasn’t looking, wasn’t thinking . . . insurance papers . . . State Farm . . . draw a diagram . . . get a policeman to take statements . . .
    And all the time Young and Heavyset was advancing, thwocking the end of the tire iron into the palm of his hand, not listening. This wasn’t about insurance or compensation; this was about how Mr. Middle-Aged Suit had scared the shit out of him while he was just driving along and minding his own business and listening to Johnny Paycheck sing “Take This Job and Shove It.” Young and Heavyset intended to take a little payback paycheck of his own for getting the shit scared out of him and all jounced around behind the wheel
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had
to take a little, because the other man’s smell was inciting him, that piss-yellow smell of fear and innate defenselessness. It was a case of rabbit and farmyard dog, and all at once the rabbit was clean out of backing room; Mr. Middle-Aged Suit was pressed against the side of his station wagon, and in a moment the tire iron was going to start swinging and the blood was going to start flying.
    Except there
was
no blood and not a single swing, because all at once Judy DeLois was there, no bigger than a minute but standing between them, looking fearlessly up into Young and Heavyset’s burning face.
    Fred blinked, wondering how in the name of God she’d gotten there so damned fast. (Much later he would feel the same way when he followed her into the kitchen, only to hear the steady thump of her feet descending the front stairs.) And then? Then Judy slapped Young and Heavyset’s arm!
Whack,
right on the meaty bicep she slapped him, leaving a white palm print on the sunburned freckled flesh below the sleeve of the guy’s torn blue T-shirt. Fred saw it but couldn’t believe it.
    Quit it!
Judy shouted up into Young and Heavyset’s surprised, beginning-to-be-bewildered face.
Put it down, quit it! Don’t be dumb! You want to go to jail over seven hundred dollars’ worth of bodywork? Put it down! Get it together, big boy! Put

.

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.

that

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thing

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DOWN!
    There’d been one second when Fred was quite sure Young and Heavyset was going to bring the tire iron down anyway, and right on his pretty little girlfriend’s head. But Judy never flinched; her eyes never left the eyes of the young man with the tire iron, who towered at least a foot over her and must have outweighed her by a couple of hundred pounds. There was certainly no pissy yellow fear smell coming off her that day; her tongue did no nervous patting at her upper lip or her philtrum; her blazing eyes were steadfast.
    And, after another moment, Young and Heavyset put the tire iron down.
    Fred wasn’t aware that a crowd had gathered until he heard the spontaneous applause from perhaps thirty onlookers. He joined in, never more proud of her than he was at that moment. And for the first time, Judy looked startled. She hung in there, though, startled or not. She got the two of them together, tugging Mr. Middle-Aged Suit forward by one arm, and actually hectored them into shaking hands. By the time the cops arrived, Young and Heavyset and Mr. Middle-Aged Suit were sitting side by side on the curb, studying each other’s insurance papers. Case closed.
    Fred and Judy walked on toward the campus, holding hands again. For two blocks Fred didn’t speak. Was he in awe of her? He supposes now that he was. At last he said:
That was amazing.
    She gave him an uncomfortable little look, an uncomfortable little smile.
No it wasn’t,
she said.
If you want to call it something, call it good citizenship. I could see