Buster keeps tossing rocks the size of golf balls at the corner house. A few rocks hit a picture window but the glass doesn’t break.

Predictably, old man Abercrombie comes out the front door shaking his cane in the air and yelling at Buster to stop. Buster and Abercrombie haven’t liked each other since Buster was old enough to walk and he’s almost 11 now. Buster’s mom is always gone and there’s never been a daddy. Now Buster begins throwing rocks at the old man.

Suddenly, Abercrombie’s nine-year-old granddaughter comes running out of the alley beside the house. She’s fire-eating mad at Buster, and worse, she’s got a chrome-plated .38-caliber pistol.

In this neighborhood somebody with a gun in their hand is not an unusual sight, so Buster pays little attention to the little girl. He does begin paying attention when she starts shooting.

The girl fires all six shots in rapid succession, as Buster dances in the street trying to avoid flying lead. This time Buster is lucky. None of the bullets finds its mark.

When the gunfire stops, Buster raises his arm to throw a rock at the little girl, but somebody grabs his hand from behind and there’s a "clicking" sound. Buster’s throwing arm is handcuffed by a D.C. cop who locks the other cuff to a wrought iron fence.

While the cop walks over to see if the old man is injured, the little girl reloads the gun, braces her shooting hand against a tree and fires a single shot at Buster. BLAM! Buster looks like somebody threw him down on the sidewalk. The cop yells: "Girl, you ain’t supposed to do that; not while I’m tending to your granddaddy."

Buster is transported to the emergency room with a bullet in his belly. It’s painful but proves not to be fatal. Clearly, before all this is over, Buster will feel the searing heat of more bullets in his young body. His chances of survival past adolescence are not very good.