Where is it, Bobby?" Marly demanded. She stood her ground, face pink and fists clenched, despite the fact that Bobby and Eb were three years older and three years bigger. Lisa stood behind her, tears still wetting her cheeks, blue eyes swimming with more to come, a comforting thumb tucked into her mouth.
Eb snickered, "Who wants to know? You little babies?" He and Bobby smirked at each other, clearly in high cotton over their little game of steal-the-dolly. "Whaddaya gonna do about it?" he teased.
Marly looked at him defiantly. "I'm going to tell Mr. Herman on you," she said, not allowing her total amazement that she was saying those ridiculous words to show. She built on her threat: "He'll come after you with his big mean dog if you don't give Lisa's doll back."
Everybody knew about Mr. Herman's big mean dog, because even though nobody had ever seen Mr. Herman (well, nobody they knew, anyway), everybody saw Mr. Herman's dog, who would come hurtling out of his doggy door--barking like Cerberus with three headaches--if anyone dared to come near the Herman house.
One thing the dog particularly liked to do was approach an unsuspecting passerby, silent as mist until he reached the fence right beside the person, whereupon he would burst into a roaring cacophony of barking and snarling that always got an immediate reaction. Perhaps, he reasoned, if he could not get through the fence to actually rend someone limb from limb, maybe he could cause death-by-sudden-terror. He was an evil creature.
This threat gave the boys pause, but only for a moment.
"You're so fulla crap, Marly," Bobby shrieked, gleefully noting when the girls winced at the forbidden expletive, "Crap, crap, CRAP!!!"
"You've never even seen crazy ol' Mr. Herman," Eb jeered. "You ain't gonna tell him nothin'."
"Batman!" Marly suddenly exclaimed, eyes widening.
"Geezy, you're gonna tell Batman on us, Marly? You're looney tunes!"
Lisa's eyes had widened, too, as she stared past the boys. Her thumb dropped from her mouth, which fell open. Marly, still agog, found her voice and spoke reverently, looking past the boys and considerably over their heads, "Batman, did you come to save Lisa's doll from these rotten, creepy, jerky boys?"
Eb and Bobby, convinced Marly was bluffing again, refused to turn around.
"We ain't turnin' around," they refused.
So Batman turned them around.
There he stood, hands on hips; about ten feet tall, it looked like, cape and all, in broad daylight, right there on Whitman Street. The boys practically lost their eyeballs out of lids stretched so wide. Their jeering was stilled quite completely.
"Give the doll back," said Batman, in a deep, raspy voice, just like in the movies.
The boys were petrified. They could not seem to work any of their parts, despite desperate wishes aimed at the parts involved in running very fast.
"Give the doll back ," Batman repeated, with a forward thrust of his imposing, cowled head for emphasis. The boys found sudden animation springing to their persons, and the doll, snatched from a ratty backpack plastered with death metal stickers, was offered humbly to the superhero.
"To THEM ," Batman clarified in disgust, redirecting their attention back to Marly and Lisa, who were still standing and staring at the masked avenger. The boys turned back to the forgotten girls and solemnly handed over the doll. Without another word, Batman disappeared.
Strangely, he disappeared in the direction of the Herman house.
Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/batman-car-comic-book-hero-6633/
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