scrambled after the head, scooped it up, and threw it with surprising strength over the far fence.
The crowd sprang to action. Children gouged limestone with their trowels. Someone went back to his truck for a baseball bat. A woman beat her husband’s stone with her fists until she was pulled away and given a pickax. They worked in this way until nothing remained.
Two
Western Passage
I knew that man was trouble. He hefted a duffel above his shoulder without seeming to register its size, rubbing his body across each seat he passed. The people behind him had to stop and set down their things, waiting for him to finish fondling the headrests. He was dressed like a young guy but had the white pocked skin of a man nearing middle age. When he smiled at me, I held my gaze one inch into his eyes, not at but in, where he might register my personal wall. This trick took thirty years to master. From there, we had an understanding.
“Hey baby,” he said to the girl beside me.
She ignored him, fussing with an exposed bra strap.
A silver chain strained his neck and another one, linked flat, held steady on his big wrist. Shaved hair stubbled his arms. His nails were groomed and perfect save for the one on his left index, which was missing, the naked nailbed pink as a cat’s tongue.
He repositioned his bag. “You have a great smile,” he said. He smelled like a fresh meatball sub. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“No,” the girl said.
“Who made you so beautiful, though? Did heaven make you that way?”
She turned to the window but her smile was visible in the reflection. Outside, a woman barred from the boarding area lay facedown on the sidewalk and screamed.
The man kept on down the aisle and the girl exhaled sharply through her nose.
I closed the book I was reading and held it on my lap. “That guy’s a loser,” I said.
She turned to see where he had found a seat. “I don’t know anybody in Long Beach.”
“He doesn’t want to be your friend.”
“He was nice to me.”
The bus swayed gently as if we had rolled into a shallow pond and become buoyant. We would be going for the rest of the day, with one meal and two smoke breaks. I picked my book up again.
The girl sat with her back to our shared armrest, frowning as the scenery greened. “Do you think he likes me?” she asked after a while.
“I’m sure he does.” I was reading a story about children with special powers. Their friend had become lost in the forest and when the other two went to find him, they learned of their own nuanced powers of sensation: the girl felt heat in the earth and knew that creatures were nearby, and the boy saw through dense trees and found a congregation of wild animals meeting on the horizon. The children walked bravely toward the beasts, holding hands.
“Do I look okay?” She looked in her compact mirror and handed it to me like it might still hold her reflection.
I caught the sour smell of her palms, which she had licked before smoothing her hair. “You look good.”
With every step the children took, their bravery waned until it was like a tightrope under them. They shivered on the line but kept moving forward, sensing the importance of the gathering of animals.
“Really, tell me.”
I held my page. She was skinny in cutoff shorts. Her polo shirt, likely designed for a child, was snug and ripe under her pits. Her hair was limp as if it had been taped on. Concealer caked around her lips, tinting her blemishes orange, while mascara gave her lashes the look of suspension-bridge cables.
“It doesn’t matter how you look,” I said. “His goal is to take advantage of you, with or without your consent, and he will not be your friend when it’s over. You have to protect yourself from these men.”
I went back to reading, satisfied that I had stopped an advancing storm. The girl sniffed her displeasure and traced patterns in the seatback. “I know what I’m doing,” she