That’s when I saw the boots.
Big ones. Scuffed. Coming across the grass from the bench near the lot, and attached to a man who had to be sixty, gray beard down his chest, arms full of ink, leather vest with patches I didn’t recognize.
My stomach dropped. Because I thought, oh God, this is going to be worse. This is going to turn into something and the cops are going to come and Eli is going to be in the middle of it.
He didn’t even look at those boys.
He walked right past them, got down on his knees in the woodchips on the other side of my son, took his vest off, laid it over the ground, and then he started tapping.
That’s it. That’s all he did at first.
He laid that leather vest flat on the woodchips about a foot from Eli’s head, and then he set two fingers on his own knee and started tapping out a slow rhythm. Four beats. Pause. Four beats. Pause.
