Then Copy and Chief talked about a book review. She didn’t normally do book reviews, but this one involved a sidebar, an interview with the author, a woman Copy admired a great deal, so she agreed to it with minimal coaxing. “It’s right up our alley, anti-colonial but not, like, threatening to our readership,” Chief said. “Take your time with it, have some fun, ask her what she has to say for herself.”

We heard noise, we felt a disturbance in the air, we smelled iron on the wind. We’ve been asked a million times exactly how we knew to go to the park, but not a one of us could tell you.

“Everybody out!” Chief bellowed. He pointed at News. “Get a goddamn camera, you!” He doesn’t remember why he ordered us around this way. We didn’t all need to be present to cover what was going down, or for any other story. Marketing, for example, is useless on the scene. He’s never snapped a photograph or typed a print-worthy sentence in his life. At the same time, we know what happened wasn’t Chief’s fault for sending Copy out there. After all, we listened to him.

When we got outside, we saw the counterprotesters, a group that included a few skinheads. These guys looked like old photographs of the Zanitti men, actually, and it may not be kind to say, but there was no mistaking them for anything but Westie. They numbered over a dozen. Dense arms, the same as News would have in a few months from all that time in the gym. Later, when the police asked Arts, he described them as “radiating a toxic masculinity, like you people but without the uniforms.” We all had to apologize for Arts then, and tell them about him and Copy. The officers were surprisingly kind about it.

These knuckle-draggers were going to town on the tent city’s inhabitants when we showed up, or those inhabitants who were left, because most people have the good sense to run when they see a dozen body builder types with shamrock tattoos. Later, the guys would confess they’d come to kill some of those commies we wrote about — so much for townies not reading our stuff! — but when they showed up the black-clad group that had bothered us earlier was already gone. The counterprotesters felt silly driving all the way out for nothing, so instead they just manhandled everybody they could find. Some of the dead boy’s family were there —  the freelancers had spoken with them last week — and these big Westie skins were socking them right in the jaw, yelling the n-word.