to squirm out of his grip, but he tightened it and smiled again. “Look at her, Sal. She’s a pretty little thing. You a lot lizard? Whoa, now. My, my. Feisty. My uncle Buck gave me a hamster just like you. When I was five. Shot himself in the head. Uncle Buck, I mean, not the hamster.” And then he laughed, and then the man named Sal came up beside them, into the pool of light, and it was only now that Savitha saw it was not just alcohol, it was something else that drove them, that seemed a ruthless engine inside them.
“What’s your name?” the baby-faced one asked.
Savitha understood the question, but was too panicked to answer.
“Where you from?”
Savitha shook her head. “No English,” she said.
She realized instantly that it was the wrong thing to say.
Charlie’s smile widened, though his face took on a quieter, sinister quality. “Is that right? No English? Hey, Sal, did you hear that? No English.”
They all three stood like that, looking at one another, and Savitha, for the flash of the tiniest moment, thought the baby-faced one would simply let go of her arm, and she would continue on into town, back to the small park. But it wasn’t true: something glimmered in Sal’s eyes. He said, “Hold on, now. What do we have here,” and then he said, “Lift up that arm, Charlie.” It was her left arm, her stub, and when Charlie twisted it up toward the night sky, they both howled with laughter. “Who was it? Who bit your hand off?” Sal asked.
“I bet it was a tiger,” Charlie said, still laughing, still painfully gripping her arm. “Don’t you all have tigers over there?”
“Shut up, Charlie,” Sal said, his face suddenly serious. “Come on. Get her over to the truck.”
Charlie yanked on Savitha’s arm. She jerked forward; her eyes snapped to the empty road, to the inside of the gas station, the counter. The large man who’d given her the key was turned away. She opened her mouth to shout, but Charlie was quicker: he slapped his hand over her face. Her head came to his chest, and his hand was so big that it covered her mouth and most of her eyes. He pushed her against the truck, and when the long-haired one opened the door, she thought they would force her inside, but instead, he yanked the knapsack from her shoulder. He rummaged until he found the money, then threw the knapsack into the cab of the truck. He then reached for something she couldn’t see, closed the door, and said, “Come on.”
“Where to?”
“You want Mel to call the cops?”
“But the truck.”
“We won’t be long. Let’s go.”
They dragged her to the back of the gas station. By now, Savitha couldn’t breathe. She twisted her head this way and that, until a gap between his fingers let in air. She tried to bite and got the inside of a finger, but he yelled, “Goddammit,” and clobbered the side of her head. Savitha’s ears rang. “Will you shut up,” Sal said, and led them to a clump of cottonwoods, a little distance behind the station. They entered the thickets, and within three or four steps came to a small clearing. Beer cans shone in the moonlight; a fire had once been built—she saw even in the low light that they’d been here many times before. “Let me see it,” Sal said.
“What you going to do, Sal?”
“I said, pass her over.”
It was now Sal who clenched her left arm with his own left arm, bony and cold compared to the baby-faced one’s arm. He didn’t bother with the hand over her mouth. Instead, he reached somewhere under his shirt, and there, in the moonlight, was something black and gleaming. He held the gun to her face. “You make a noise. One fucking noise. You understand that?”
Savitha stared at him, her thoughts stilled, her eyes wide. She was looking into it, but inside her—inside her was the long and dark tunnel.
“I said, do you understand?”
No, no, she didn’t understand, but evil had its own vocabulary, its own language. She nodded.
“And you try to run. You try to take a fucking step.”
She understood.
He let go of her arm; she stumbled back and fell to the ground. She hadn’t even known he was holding her up. “Get up,” he said, and when she did, he said, “Now go ahead. Put it in your mouth.”
She looked at him, no longer understanding, and then she looked at