Titanium Texicans by Alan Black Read Free Book Online

tuechter was, but it sounded like an insult.
    Tasso bit back a retort, knowing it wouldn’t have been much of a retort anyway. He said, “If all you want to do is look, then kindly get out of my way and you can look at me as I walk on past.”
    The boy on the left said, “I don’t think so, cousin. You have to pay the toll to use our sidewalk. What do you have in the bag?”
    Tasso hadn’t seen any notice of toll charges and didn’t see any reason to pay one. He would back up and walk around the toll area. He turned to go, but the boy on the right grabbed a strap on his pack.
    “Whoa there, cousin. You’re on our sidewalk and you have to pay.” He tugged on the pack, but the straps held it tight to Tasso’s back. Tasso shrugged, shaking the boy’s hand off the pack.
    The other boy grinned, “Yeah, let’s see what this upcountry bastard’s got that’s worth carrying around.”
    Tasso felt his rage start to bubble over. He held up his hands in surrender. He took a step back and slipped the pack off his shoulders. The boy on the right held out his hand to take the pack, but Tasso dropped it on the ground at their feet.
    Righty leaned down to pick up the pack. Tasso grabbed the back of his head, shoving the boy’s face into his rapidly rising knee. The boy’s head jerked upward to meet Tasso’s elbow jabbing into his jaw. Righty dropped to the dirt, blood gushing from his mouth and nose.
    Lefty looked startled. He clenched his fist and reared back to swing a roundhouse punch, targeting Tasso’s nose, but Tasso’s blood was on fire. Years of breaking rocks fueled his muscles, dodging swift stobor was like a lit match to his well-developed reflexes, and his anger threw accelerant on the resulting fire. He jabbed a stiff fist four times into Lefty’s face, pushing his knuckles deep into the soft flesh. Tasso quick-punched him once in each eye, once square on the nose, and finally once in his mouth for calling him a bastard.
    Lefty dropped to his knees, crying like a little baby. “Mama, he hit me!”
    Tasso was going to hit him again, but stopped at the word mama. He wanted his mama too, but he couldn’t call for her. He was still angry, but here on the ground was the result of letting his anger loose. These two boys, not much different from him, were now bleeding and hurt because he couldn’t control his temper.
    People started coming out of everywhere, rushing up to the hurt boys, patting at the blood, calling for more help, calling for the police and calling for a doctor. There wasn’t anything in his backpack worth hurting someone over, yet in a fit of rage that had little to do with these two boys, he’d hurt them beyond measure.
    His grandfather was right. Walking away was best. He grabbed his pack, shouldered it, and walked away from the burgeoning crowd. There were shouts for him to come back, but he ignored them and kept walking. He was out of sight and sound of the commotion before long. He kept walking and deviated from his straight path to Uncle Bruce’s, making a few random turns. He wasn’t going to make it easy on anyone if someone tried to follow him.
    He walked more blocks than he could count before his heart stopped racing and his breathing grew calm. He’d hurt those two. All he was fighting over was some spare clothes and Grandpa’s old shotgun. Sure, they’d called him a bastard, insulting his mother, but they weren’t like the Lamonts. These two city boys said it as a general taunt, not spitting it out as a hurtful truth.
    ‘Grandpa was right’ almost became a mantra as he walked away from the damage he’d done to two boys who hadn’t deserved it. The words repeated in his head with each step. Grandpa was right. Grandpa was right. Grandpa was right.
    He hardly noticed when the rundown houses gave way to nicer homes and scattered businesses with concrete sidewalks. He spotted a café and turned in to the parking lot. He knew what a café was from having read about them in