Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Randall and Claire Nathan are going to see the Reds and Brewers play today. It set Randall to thinking about another time they went to a ballgame, to see the Reds v. the Giants.

Several young men in front of them drank beer throughout the game. Some were Reds fans and some were Giants fans. By the time the game was over, they were drunk and angry. As everyone crowded into the concourse to leave, the confrontation got ugly, young testosterone-laden and beer-powered Giants fans and young testosterone-laden and beer-powered Reds fans getting closer and closer, saying things about the opposing team and its fans that were less than kind.

Randall could tell that the lid was just about to blow off that pressure cooker. So he did the obvious thing—he got in between them.

He was recovering from surgery. He was on chemotherapy. He was bald and haggard. He was no longer young, and he looked twenty years older than he really was. Holding the rest of his lemonade up like a torch, he acted like he stumbled, right in between the warring parties. He was a pitiful, stumbling old man. He knew the young men wouldn’t start a fight if they had to do it around a pathetic old man.

He was wrong.

Suddenly fists were flying along with curses. He was hurled up against a concrete wall. One Giants fan had his arms around either side of Randall's head as he choked a Reds fan behind him.

That was too much for Claire. She went into the fray like a lioness saving her cub from a pack of hyenas. Claire is five feet and four inches tall. She threw six-foot muscular young men in all directions.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she yelled, in her best school-marm voice. “What would your mothers think? You cut it out right now, or I’m going to call them and tell them what you’re doing. Do you want that? Huh? Do you?”

Apparently the thought of facing their mothers was too much. They slunk off. Claire pulled Randall off the wall. He looked down at his lemonade. In the melee, the neat long red straw with the spoon on one end had come out and gotten crushed on the floor.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,” he muttered.

“What are you talking about?” Claire said. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You moron! And look what it got you. You loved that straw with the spoon on the end, and now it’s all smashed.”

“Just don’t tell my mother,” said Randall.