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nodded.
    “This stuff happen to a lot of Mexican kids or just you?” I said.
    Aurelio shrugged.
    “I’m small,” he said. “I’m easy to pick on.”
    “So,” I said. “How many guys are there?”
    “I don’t know, about ten, I guess,” Aurelio said. “They pick on the girls too.”
    “Mexican girls?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “They ever tease you?” I said to Jeannie.
    “Sometimes,” she said. “When I’m with Aurelio. They call me names.”
    “Like what?”
    “Spick lover,” she said. “Beaner girl.”
    I made a face.
    “So who are these guys?” I said.
    “I don’t know,” Aurelio said. “I don’t hang with any Anglos except Jeannie.”
    “Well, I guess we’ll probably find out,” I said.
    “I wish I was a tough guy,” Aurelio said. “Like you, Spenser. But I’m not.”
    “Everybody gotta be what they are,” I said.
    Jeannie looked at me.
    “What are you going to do?” she said.
    “I can walk to and from school with you every day,” I said to Aurelio. “If you want.”
    Aurelio nodded.
    “But what are you going to do against ten guys?” he said.
    “Excellent question,” I said.
    “Do you have an excellent answer?” Jeannie said.
    “Not yet,” I said.

Chapter 35
    “Let me guess, you took it on,” Susan said.
    “Yep.”
    She smiled at me like a mother at an unusual child. “You never thought about speaking to the school principal?” she said.
    “Oh, God, no,” I said.
    “Not done?” Susan said.
    “Not by fourteen-year-old boys,” I said. “Wouldn’t have done any good anyway.”
    Susan nodded.
    “Schools are notoriously ineffective,” she said, “at the prevention of bullying.”
    “And most other things,” I said.
    “You’ve never been a fan of the school system,” Susan said.
    “True,” I said. “And this was a kind of systematic racial bullying. They would have had an assembly and the principal would have told everybody not to do it.”
    “And all the bigots and bullies would have said, ‘Oh, gee, okay,’” Susan said.
    “And beat the hell out of Aurelio Lopez,” I said, “as soon as class got out.”
    “Probably,” Susan said. “How about the police?”
    “Tell you the truth, I never thought of it,” I said.
    “No,” Susan said. “Of course not. I can remember how hermetically sealed adolescence was.”
    “Even for well-mannered Jewish girls growing up in Swampscott?” I said.
    “Even for them. Life was you and the other kids,” she said. “Adults were remote.”
    “That’s right,” I said.
    “So you decided to protect him,” she said.
    “I did.”
    “Fourteen years old,” she said.
    “Almost fifteen,” I said.
    She smiled.
    “Oh, well, that makes it different,” she said. “Were you reading King Arthur at the time?”
    “No,” I said. “But they read it to me when I was about twelve—the Thomas Malory one, as I recall. Not Tennyson.”
    “And you swallowed it all,” Susan said.
    “Yep.”
    “And you still do,” she said.
    “Yep.”
    “Knight-errant,” she said.
    “There are worse careers,” I said.
    The afternoon was dwindling, and the sun was at our backs. Susan smiled and patted my hand.
    “Far worse,” she said. “Did you have a plan?”
    “Not really,” I said.
    “You were going to just plow along,” she said, “and assume you could handle what came your way.”
    “Pretty much,” I said.
    “Like you’ve done all your life.”
    “It’s worked okay so far,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “Did your father and your uncles know?”
    “Yes, I talked it over with them.”
    “Even though they were adults,” Susan said.
    “Not the same,” I said. “There wasn’t much adult-child stuff going on at my house. I was one member of a family of four. They were the other three.”
    “No wonder,” Susan said, “you’re not quite like other men.”
    “That a good thing?” I said.
    “Yes,” Susan said. “I think so.”

Chapter 36
    “You feel like you gotta do this,” Cash