the banker’s son

Suddenly I was confronted by a fist of guys:
the leader was maybe fourteen: five years
older than I was. He told me I had punched his
little brother. I told him I never did: didn’t even
know his brother. He punched me in the gut.
For months, he and his gang trained me in the
art of quick starts and sudden foxy escapes
through the bush around the path on the way
to school. They were like flies around my life:
I was their honey on toast. As I learned
to run faster when I couldn’t avoid them,
I began to figure out who had hit his damn
brother. I realized it was a kid my mother
made me play with: the banker’s son, a
perfect little snot who had the same color hair
and skin, and pretty well dressed the same
as I did, and always was ready to smile
if he saw me with a fat lip. My Saturday job
was to play with him while my mother and
her friends, including his mother, played bridge.
When I confronted him about hitting the kid,
he said oh yeah he had forgotten about that.
Eventually, we moved away. I never saw him,
but I read in the paper recently that somebody
with his unusual name had been convicted
of bank fraud and sentenced to five years.