Page 102 of Theo of Golden

The other smirked. “Done. One ugly-as-hell hat coming right up.”

Their banter ceased as they drew near the fountain. Ellen was either unaware of or chose not to acknowledge them with so much as a turn of her head. She was, after all, accustomed to the sight and sound of rowdies and mischief-makers. She had learned it was best to ignore and avoid them.

The daretaker gave a thumbs-up to his friends, crept up on Ellen from behind, snatched the hat, and began to run. He had pulled Ellen’s hair in the process, which both pained and startled her. In an instant, she was on her feet, swearing and fearlessly chasing the thief.

It was an awkward, hopeless pursuit.

She could not possibly match the young man’s speed and had only taken a few clumsy strides when she heard a voice behind her.

One of the other two hooligans, the largest of the three, seeing her bicycle unguarded, had grabbed it with a shout and wheeled it toward the fountain. Ellen turned, realized what he intended to do, and sprinted, as best she could, to stop him. He was lifting the bike to heave it into the Fedder when Ellen reached him from behind. She grabbed his hair, screaming and swinging furiously, scratching, gouging, and slapping the man’s face.

She fought like one who had done so before, flailing with an energy and agility that were relentless and feline. She was a creature out of control. Her shrill voice knifed into the silence of the Promenade, more a war cry than a call for help, but her words were unintelligible, if, in fact, she was speaking words at all.

The bike vandal quickly abandoned his intention of drowning the Noble Invention. His one thought became self-defense as blood filled his right eye and ran down his cheek. Ellen had jumped onto his back, wrapped her legs around his waist, and was clawing viciously at his face as he struggled for balance. He feared she might have a blade in her hand.

Their voices were a cacophony of howls and profanity.

The young man dropped the bike, eventually forced Ellen’s arms from his neck, and freed himself from her grip. All the while, she slapped, clawed, scratched, and kicked as if her life was at stake. When he was finally able to put an arm’s length between them, he grabbed the collar of her dress, bellowed an incoherent roar, and swung full force, striking her with a solid, sickening blow to the face.

And then another. And a third.

The sound of fist on bone and the sight of skin breaking into a scarlet stream aroused an animal fury in the man. He was an instrument of unbridled rage as he drew back to strike her again.

Before he could do so, she fell to the ground in a heap, dazed and unsteady. Blood poured from her nose, her mouth, and a gash over her eye. She gagged on broken teeth and lay barely conscious at her attacker’s feet.

But he was not yet satisfied. The sight of blood, his and hers, had made a beast of him. He was poised to kick Ellen when, out of the shadows, Simone charged, head down, cello on his back, and knocked him to the ground.

Theo was baffled when he first heard the voices.

When he walked through the open doors of the balcony, still disoriented from the stupor of sleep, it took some effort to make sense of the scrum in the median.

A woman on the ground?

A bicycle beside the fountain lying on its side? Ellen?

“No, please. No, stop. Please,” Theo begged, in a voice hardly more than a whisper. He might as well have been talking to himself.

He saw what he believed to be a cello case on the ground near Ellen’s bench as it slowly dawned on him that Simone, too, was involved in the melee.

The breathless old man watched dumbstruck as two of the strangers held Simone while the third struck him repeatedly. When they finally threw him to the ground, one of the assailants slammed a heavy boot, full force, onto the back of his hand.

Simone heard and felt the breaking of his bones. He tried to scream but his depleted lungs could muster little more than a ragged gasp.

The trio concluded their brutality by heaving the gentle young cellist into the fountain.

Throughout the attack, they had spewed a steady stream of curses and slurs. They could not hear Theo over their own voices and mistakenly assumed no one was witness to their violence.

Fueled by conquest, still angry at the old woman’s attempt to defend herself, and emboldened by the absence of any other people, one of the three ruffians opened Simone’s case and removed the cello with another string of invective.

“Stop! Please, please, stop!” Theo shouted with both arms outstretched, his body leaning dangerously across the low balcony rail. Two faces turned to look up just as the third raised the cello over his head. He shattered it against the bench, then threw the remaining shards into the water.

Theo leaned forward to utter a final plea. “Oh, please no! Please no!”

At that, the threesome sprinted away into the shadows, leaving behind a bleeding woman, a battered musician, a splintered cello, and a dented bicycle.

Simone and Ellen were not aware that Theo had witnessed the incident. They were stunned, bloody, and delirious from the attack they had just endured. Simone managed to crawl out of the pool and was simultaneously trying to help Ellen and find his phone — difficult to do with a broken hand and a swollen eye — when they heard a woman scream at the front door of Ponder House.

A young couple, college students, had been walking home from work. Now the girl stood motionless, one arm extended rigidly at her side and the other raised to her face. Her mouth was open but silent after the one scream. Her companion was bent at the waist, looking down with caution at something on the sidewalk, as if the object at his feet might bite or lash out at him. He straightened up, stepped back, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his phone.