I slid hard into second base and heard a scream. It didn’t come from my lips.
When I looked up, there was Scott bleeding from the nose like a sieve. I had broken it. When he realized the blood was his, he jumped up and began to chase me. The reason he was chasing me was that I was running. Seemed like the thing to do.
I cut through the yard next to the ball field and jumped over a hedge. The house was about six blocks away.
He was gaining...angry is faster than terrified, apparently.
When I cut across the next street, I remembered that Tommy (an older friend of my parents) was home recuperating from knee surgery. He was a block away. I ran around the fence that had the dog, cut to the right, ran two more houses and ran up their driveway.
I slowed down and knocked on the door. “Tommy,” I asked, out of breath, “You there?”
“Yeah, come on in,” he said.
For the next couple of hours I sat with Tommy, talking about things (I skipped the part about the broken nose)…we played a game of Strat-O-Matic Football…and I had lunch with him. About 2 p.m., I very carefully made my way home.
I’ve only broken three noses since. But none since 1988.
