“Will someone please go for the police?” I say.
“Let the girl go,” a woman says.” I know her. Know her mother, I mean. She’s a smart girl. Rather, her mother says she’s smart”
“She’s smart,” another woman says. “Go, girl. Call the police.”
“I need the money,” the girl says.
I put my hand in my pants pocket. Everyone watches me go through all my pockets for change. I look at the crowd nearest the girl. “I thought I had change,” I say.
“Sure,” a man says. He gives the girl a dime.
“Give her two,” a woman says. “She might lose the first.”
“I won’t lose the first,” the girl says.” I know who to call and how. I dial. I put the dime in.”
“You put the dime in and then you dial,” the woman says.
“I know, I know. I only need one dime.” She goes.
I get down on one knee. I don’t know whom to help first. Probably the woman. The knifed man looks dead. If the knifed man is dead, and he didn’t by some accident fall on the knife himself, then the man who stabbed him would seem like the last person to help. I’m not sure about that. All I know is someone has to be helped first. So I pick the woman. Maybe because she is a woman. Though if she’s the one who stabbed the man, then I probably should first help the man who I thought stabbed the man in the chest, though only if I’m sure the stabbed man is dead. If he isn’t dead, then I wouldn’t know which man to help first — that is, if the woman is definitely the one who stabbed the man, but not out of self-defense. If she stabbed him out of self-defense or to protect the man who chased and hit her before, then the last person to be helped would be the stabbed man, dead or not, and the first would be either the woman or the man holding his stomach.
“Who stabbed who?” I say.
“Who stabbed who?” a man says.
“Who’s responsible for all this?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“I did,” a woman says.
“Who stabbed who?” I say.
“Why you want to know? You a cop?”
“No. I just want to help these people.”
“You a doctor?”
“I’m a passerby, just like you.”
“No you’re not. You were running after them before.”
“I was running after them because I saw the man chasing the woman, and I thought something was wrong.”
“Something was,” a man says.
“What happened?” I say.
“You’re the one running after them, and all of a sudden you didn’t see?” a woman says.
“No.”
“Like hell you didn’t.”
I decide to help the knifed man first. At least I can find out quick enough if he’s dead or not. If he’s alive then there can’t be much I can do for him except put a support under his head, and then I can go right to the woman or other man.
“Will someone please do what they can to make the woman and that man comfortable while I see to this one?”
“Best medicine and treatment in these situations is to wait for professional help,” a man says. “Real doctors or hospital aides, but someone ignorant of medicine can do more damage than someone not doing anything.”
“He’s right,” several people say in different ways.
“But I know what I’m doing. I’m not in the field of medicine, but I know how to stop someone from bleeding to death.”
“How?” a man says.
“Tourniquets, for one thing.”
“That’s for arms and legs, not the head.”
“I said ‘for one thing.’ Another way is pressure points. The neck. There’s one there. They’re all over the body. Or you stick your finger on the wound or in the blood vessel that’s cut if you can’t find the right pressure point. At least let me try.”
“Sure, we can let you try, and watch you finish off all three of them before our eyes. Just stay off them.”
“I’m sorry, but I still think it’s best I try.” I feel the woman’s forehead. Put my ear next to her mouth. “She’s breathing.”
“We said stay off her,” the man says. “Wait for help.”
“What I think is someone else ought to call the police for help. That girl might have met a friend or someone and just forgotten about it.”
“She’s a good trustful girl,” the woman who said she knows the girl’s mother says.
“I’m not saying she’s bad or distrustful. But younger people — particularly around her age, eight or nine or so — do get distracted more than adults.”
“She’s ten,” the woman says.
“Ten-year-olds probably get less distracted than eight- or nine- year-olds, but still get distracted a lot.”
“So do adults,” a woman says.
“I know. But children more so.”
“Children more so. You’re right. Maybe someone ought to go as he says. You go, why don’t you?” she says to me. “You seem so interested and reliable.”
“I want to stay here and help these people now.”
“I think you’d best be giving help by phoning for it than touching them,” a man says. “And out of all of us, you’re the one who seems more liable to do the most trouble if you stay.”
“I agree,” a woman says.
“I don’t.” I feel the stabbed man’s temple. “He’s alive.”
“Too bad,” a man says.
“What are you saying?” someone else says.
“What I said. Too bad he’s alive. He started it, didn’t he?”
“No, the other man did.”
“It was a woman,” a woman says. “She stole something from the man with the knife in him. That’s why he chased her. The other man just happened to step in. And she took the knife out of his hand, which he only pulled out to protect her, and put it in the stabbed man’s chest.”
“I think the woman and the man holding his stomach did know one another,” I say.
“You know them?”
“I saw them together. They were standing on the corner of this same avenue three blocks away. The man went into a corner store, and the woman waited for him outside.”
“What kind of store?”
“I forget. A jewelry store. I was waiting for my bus. Then the man came out and held the package out for her, or just held it out without any intention of giving it to her. Anyway, she took it and put it in her pocketbook and ran. The man walked after her. She ran faster. He started jogging and then ran after her. She at first ran faster than him when they were both running, and then, because she was tired or her pocketbook had become too cumbersome to run with or something, she slowed down and he caught up. Right here. I was standing over there. Next to the hydrant. The one where the two dogs are.”
I’m still on one knee and now pointing through someone’s legs. Almost all of them turn to look at the hydrant and dogs. “Then the man took the pocketbook from her, and she tried getting it back. He pushed her and she slapped him. Rather, he hit her hand and she slapped his face and he punched her and she went down. That’s when the man who was knifed stepped in for the second time. Most of you must have seen that. The first time he stepped in he was told to mind his own business and he did. This time I don’t remember him being told anything. They just argued. And he pulled out a knife — the knifed man did — after the other man hit him in the face with the pocketbook. Then the other man must have taken the knife away from him and stabbed him with it, though I’m only assuming now, since that’s when you all suddenly encircled them and I couldn’t see what happened.”
“That’s not at all what happened,” someone says.
“Then what really happened?” someone says.
“You didn’t see it?”