542DENNIS LEHANE

That's what I'm trying to tell you. You pick a fight with these boys? Jesus, son, you best be prepared to bleed all night."

He waved his hand in exasperation and left his son on the stoop. " 'Night, Dad."

Marty came around to open his door and Thomas leaned on it for a moment and looked back up at his son. So strong. So proud. So unaware.

"Tessa."

"What?" Danny said.

He leaned on the door and stared at his son. "They'll come after you with Tessa."

Danny said nothing for a bit.

"Tessa?"

Thomas patted the door. "That's what I'd do."

He tipped his hat to his son and climbed into the car with Joe and told Marty to take them straight home.

BABE RUTH and the SUMMER SWOON chapter thirty-two It was a crazy summer. No predicting it. Every time Babe thought he had a grip on it, it slipped free and went running off like a barnyard pig that smelled the ax. The attorney general's home bombed, strikes and walkouts everywhere you looked, race riots, first in D. C., then in Chicago. The Chicago coloreds actually fought back, turning a race riot into a race war and scaring the ever-loving shit out of the entire country.

Not that it was all bad. No, sir. Who could have predicted what Babe would do with the white ball, for starters? No one, that's who. He'd had an embarrassing May, trying to swing too big, too often, and still being asked to pitch every fifth game, so his average found the cellar: .180. Good Lord. He hadn't seen .180 since "A" ball with Baltimore. But then Coach Barrow allowed him to lay off the pitching starts until further notice, and Babe tweaked his timing, forced himself to begin his cuts a little earlier but a little slower, too, not rev up to full power until he was halfway into the swing.

And June was glorious.

But July? July was volcanic.