The redheaded boy put the car in gear and it jumped forward, leaning over as it spun gravel and turned completely around, the wheels squealing, and rushed back up Railroad Street, then squealed again, onto Ash Street and north onto a dirt road heading into flat open country.
Outside through the car windows it was just blue-black. The flare of the headlights pointed forward on the road, fanned out along the ditches on both sides, picking up brush and weeds and fence posts, and beyond, only the blue farmlights in the dark country. In the front seat they were drinking beer. The one boy drank, then turned the window down and flung the can out, hollered and turned the window up again. Ike and Bobby sat in back watching them, as still as country rabbits, waiting, and pretty soon the girl turned around once more and peered at them, then she turned back.
They’re scared, she said. They’re just little boys, Russ. They’re afraid. Whyn’t you let them go?
Whyn’t you just shut up like I told you, he said. He looked at her. Fuck’s wrong with you tonight anyway?
He drove on. The gravel pounded up under the car. They topped a little rise and abruptly he slid the car to a stop. This is far enough, he said.
He got out as the other boy did on his side, and they bent into the back and pulled them from the car onto a low hill in the night. The snow was gone but the wind was blowing, and they were out on a dirt road with sagebrush and last year’s dry bluestem sticking up from the new grass behind the barbed-wire fences on both sides, all of it pale and cold-looking, showing dim and shadowy in the blue light of the high white stars.
Russ, the girl said.
What?
Russ, you won’t make them walk from here.
I’m going to, he said. It’s not even five miles. Now shut your mouth like I told you. Or maybe you want to walk back with em yourself. Do you?
No.
Then keep out of this.
He looked at the two boys standing next to each other against the car, waiting for what was going to happen, their eyes like outsized coins in the night. The car was still idling and the headlights were pointed forward along the dirt road, showing the washboards and the uneven grading.
You little girls know where you are?
They looked around.
That’s town back there, he said. Where you see those lights. Look where I’m pointing at, goddamn it. Don’t look at me. See em? All you got to do is walk back on this road. But you better not cry to nobody about this. I don’t even want to think what I’ll do the next time, if somebody finds out.
They looked toward the lights of town. Then they looked at the girl still in the car. The door was open and the dome light was shining and she was watching them, but her face was blank. There wouldn’t be any help from her. They stood in their mackinaw coats, bareheaded, waiting, their faces ashen and frightened.
You hear what I said?
We heard you.
All right. Take off.
They pushed away from the car, moving in the direction of town.
Wait a minute, the other boy said. I mean, hell. That’s all you’re going to do?
You got something else in mind?
I can think of something.
He looked at the two boys, who started to back away from him, then he grabbed Bobby by the coat arm. This here’s the little fucker that kicked me. He dragged him out into the middle of the road, Bobby was yelling and swinging his arms, trying to kick at him, until the high school boy wheeled him around and upended him facedown in the dirt.
Quit it, Ike cried. Leave him alone, goddamn you.
The redhaired boy grabbed Ike and forced him back against the hood of the car. The other boy bent over Bobby and pulled off his shoes and flung them backward into the darkness, then hauled his jeans down and threw them spinning into the barrow ditch. Afterward he jerked Bobby’s underwear down, disentangled them from his feet and sent them sailing away. Bobby’s naked white legs flailed in the dirt.
Ike pulled loose from the first boy and ran at the other one holding Bobby and hit him in the neck and kicked him before he was grabbed from behind.
You got him now? the other boy said.
Yeah, the redhaired boy said. I got him.
Well hang on to him, goddamn it.
He ain’t going nowhere.