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Cover of Time Magazine's May 2008 issue.

James had just moved to the suburbs from the city after living downtown for eight years. It was only then that he was mugged in front of a convenience store only a few blocks from his apartment building. The men that mugged him were black and had, James figured, come from the neighborhood across the street from the convenience store, which was almost entirely black. What the men didn’t know was that in crossing that street, they had crossed a county line and, if they were caught, would be under the jurisdiction of a town with very few black people living there. They would be lucky, Bob thought, if they had a single black juror, and in a wealthy town such as that one, they would assuredly not only be found guilty, but they would get some jail time as well. It frustrated James that the men were never caught. He wanted them to know that he had worked for divestment from South Africa when he was in college. How could they have attacked him when they owed him their thanks?

About the Author
Marco Kaufman has published in several different fields, including literary criticism, medical writing, and Holocaust historicism and currently writes on The Big Book of Grievances, his weblog of short fiction, flash fiction, and works in progress.

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