Toward midafternoon, the man stopped in one of the towns and split cheese sandwiches with her out of a cooler he had in the backseat. He handed her a soda, and then he unfolded a paper napkin and filled it with potato chips. She took it and began eating the chips one by one, but he signaled to her and said, “Like this.” She watched as he disassembled his sandwich and placed a thick layer of potato chips over the slice of cheese, and then replaced the bread on top, and then bit into it with a loud crunch. Savitha did the same and after her first bite decided she’d never again eat a sandwich without potato chips tucked inside.
They were in Spearfish by late afternoon. The man stopped at a gas station, and he seemed sad. He said, “You don’t have an address? A phone number? They’ll pick you up, won’t they? This is as good a place as any, I guess. Pay phone over there. Maybe your people can find you somebody going east. Maybe not New York, but east. You’ll get there. You’ll be all right, won’t you?”
Savitha looked at him.
He took out his wallet and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Get you something to eat,” he said, and then he left.
*
It was not yet dark. She stood, undecided, at the gas station for a few minutes. No one pulled in or out, and so she walked to the corner and looked up and down the street. On the opposite side was a car dealership. There was a liquor store next door. There were low hills in the distance, dotted with clumps of trees and dry grass. Was that the canyon? On the opposite side, to the southwest, was more of the town, and so she headed toward it. There were brick buildings here as well, just as in Butte, but these were all open and unshuttered. Better maintained. Some of the buildings were freshly painted, she could see, and people roamed around among them, families, some of them pushing strollers or with older children running ahead of them. It seemed a nice town, one where night fell slowly and comfortably. She thought of staying in one of the hotels, seeking out the canyon in the morning, but they all looked expensive. One had a blinking sign out front that advertised rooms for $79.99.
She only had fifty dollars left.
Savitha turned away from the closed doors of the warm rooms. She was not yet hungry, but she knew she soon would be. With the ten dollars the man had given her, she went into a small shop and bought a banana, an apple, a loaf of sliced bread, and a bag of potato chips. She put her purchases into her knapsack and walked back toward the gas station, hoping to get back on Interstate 90 and to the next big town with a bus station. On her way, she passed a bank and a restaurant and a hardware store. She stood at the window of an art gallery and looked at each of the paintings. There was a sculpture in the center of the gallery of a bird about to take flight; Savitha compared it to the only other sculpted birds she’d ever seen, the sugar birds, and decided that they had been prettier. On the next block there was another art gallery; this one had a display of native Sioux quilts in the window. She studied these even more carefully—the thread, the bold colors, the integrity of the weaving, the patterns and the workings of the loom. So different from the saris made in Indravalli, she thought, and yet cloth just the same. She wondered who’d made them and how far the quilts had traveled to be in this window.
At a nearby park, she stopped at a wooden bench and carefully assembled her potato chip sandwich, making sure there were two even layers of chips, and then she pressed the bread down around the edges so the chips wouldn’t fall out. She ate her banana next. She saved her apple for later.
*
There was more traffic back at the gas station. She didn’t run up to any of the cars; she waited by the door, a little away, and spoke only to those who smiled or looked kindly in her direction. One woman, her short dark hair neatly cut, rummaged in her purse and then looked up at Savitha, smiling. Savitha smiled back and said, “You go canyon, madam? You go ninety?” The woman seemed to panic and slipped quickly into the gas station without a word. A few minutes later, another woman emerged from the station, herding her two children. The children were holding candy bars, and all three were laughing. “Pardon me, madam,” she said. “Canyon? New York?” All three of them—the woman and the two children—stood and stared at Savitha’s face, and then, all of them, all at once, lowered their gazes and gawped at her stub. Finally the woman said, “Sorry. I don’t have any spare change,” and hurried the children away.
Savitha thought she might have better luck with a man, so she picked an old man, his hair white, his face wrinkled and friendly. He looked at her and held the door open, thinking Savitha meant to go inside. “No, sir. No. You go canyon? I come?” The man’s face was confused for a moment, and then closed in some way, Savitha thought, somehow slammed shut, and he said, “Do your business somewhere else, for god’s sakes. Families come through here.”
There was no one else for a long while. It was getting darker. She went inside and asked to use the bathroom. The large man behind the counter, with gray eyes and a suspicious stare, looked at Savitha for a moment, brought up a large block of wood with a key attached to it from under the counter, and said, “Out back,” and then, “You Mexican?” Savitha smiled and took the key. When she came back, the man was busy with a customer, so she set the key on the counter, by the cash register, and left.
Now, along with the falling light, the wind had picked up. It wasn’t particularly cold, but it whipped her hair, her loose clothes pulled taut in the gusts. She stood undecided, watching the road, which was empty, and the hills to the northeast, which no longer seemed low, but towering and severe. A truck pulled into the parking lot, but no one got out. She looked up and saw the first stars; beyond the pools of the gas station lights, there was only cold, unnerving night. She decided it was best to walk back into town and at least find cover in the small park. She gathered her knapsack and started past the gas pumps. The door of the truck opened. Two men got out. Savitha didn’t particularly notice them, only saw that there were two of them as she walked past; she was chilled suddenly, Padma’s sweater hardly thick enough to hold back the night. She’d cleared the farthest pump when she heard footsteps running up behind her.
She turned; she’d nearly passed through the last pool of light, but she turned.
3
The baby-faced one smiled first. His smile so genuine and carefree, his approach so guileless, that Savitha thought he might embrace her, as if they were long-lost friends. “Don’t go,” he yelled out. “Hey, where you going? Don’t go.”
“Let her go, Charlie,” came a bored voice. Savitha then saw the second man, behind the baby-faced Charlie. The second man was bony, with a thin face and long hair, stringy and to his shoulders, and dark hollows for eyes. They came toward her slowly, but with an electric charge in their walk; she had the sudden impulse to run, and she nearly did.
But then, in the next moment, the baby-faced one was beside her. She smelled the alcohol, even before he grabbed her arm. “Don’t go,” he said, the words no longer a request but an order. Savitha tried 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.