A rather loud shout of pain came from Darryl’s mouth as he continued to go over, toppling back onto his shoulders and rolling over. Weston saw blood on Darryl’s right hand as he pulled it around to clutch against his chest. He also noticed jagged pieces of pickle jar standing upright in the midst of spilled green brine, and signs of blood in the brine around the glass, with the brine discolouring the blood so that it looked brown.
Darryl, clutching his hand to his chest, started to get up, looking savagely at Weston.
“It’s not my fault,” Weston snapped. “You’re the one who threw my cart over. You shouldn’t have done that.”
Before Darryl could even utter a retort, however, uniformed police officers appeared behind him and grabbed him with restraining hands. At the same instant, officers did the same to Weston, who startled somewhat involuntarily at their solid grips.
The two officers holding Weston scowled at him disapprovingly, and Weston felt a flash of anger that they were upset at him when he hadn’t even started the whole thing, but before he could let his anger get the better of him, he told himself that it would go best for him if he calmly and maturely cooperated with the officers, in addition to telling them what had actually happened.
“I was just getting groceries for myself and my dad,” Weston said calmly. “He’s the one who started it.”
“And who is he?” one of the officers asked sternly.
“The son of a neighbour,” Weston replied. “He suddenly came up to me from over there looking like he wanted a fight with me. He shoved my cart at me, I think his intent was to knock me over, but I managed not to fall over. I didn’t want to fight, so I was going to leave, but he hadn’t cleared the front left wheel of my cart and it hit his toes, so he chucked that jar of pickles at me, then he grabbed my cart and threw it over, and he seems to think that I know what he was doing all this for.”
“Yes, I saw it,” an older man said. “That boy there was quite angry, and he didn’t even have any groceries. He came up and accosted this boy and knocked over the cart before they argued and came to blows.”
Several other people — to Weston’s grateful relief — also spoke up to corroborate the account Weston had given.
“He is the one who’s bleeding, though,” the other officer pointed out.
“It’s his own fault,” Weston replied. “He’s the one who knocked the cart over and made the glass break in the first place.”
“I doubt this is the first altercation you two have had,” the officer said. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to take you in and ask you some questions in maybe a bit more private of a setting.”
Weston felt a bit disappointed, but he nodded. He was just being questioned, not booked, it shouldn’t be too bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment