Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Crouch to retrieve the sticky Popsicle wrappers the children have littered. Sense that almost everyone around you is shifting, pacing, pulsing with a communal anxiety as if they’ve all just been aroused from a year-long sleep.

“You take checks, Skippy?”

Say no. Someone behind you will chuckle.

The man with the bloody lip will thrust his hands into his pockets and turn them inside out, revealing nothing. He’ll bow slightly, as if some magic has been performed. Children will have knelt their bare knees on the dirt road behind your truck, slurping at their popsicles as melting streams drip across their knuckles like candle wax.

Tell him that you can’t leave without the money.

“Looks like you’ll need to, Skip. Hey — next time you come around I’ll have it for you, Scout’s honor.”

You will have already decided that no rubber-banded wad of fives and tens is worth offering yourself to those who want nothing less than to beg and steal and tear you open. Think of Czechs bowing their babushkas to the Russian tanks. Notice that every one of several dozen windows at the cold-storage plant has been shattered, and within them is the blackest form of darkness. Feel a raindrop on your brainstem. Mumble a curse.

“What? What’d you just call me?” the man will ask. His beer will splash your T-shirt and his hands grapple your face, thumbs gouging for your eyes. His fingers will stab into your mouth with the taste of oil and dirt. You’ll be pummeled by his wet flesh and your knees will betray you; they’ll drop into the pebbly mud. He’ll groan something wordless as you curl inward, wrapping all of your mind into the blind and silent cocoon you have made.

But you won’t succeed at wishing yourself away from there, no matter how you clench your eyes. Nothing will subdue a sudden impact whiplashing your skull backwards against your own rubber tire. Hear pain screech inside your ears and feel it sear through your cheek and lash within your sinuses. Believe the world itself has slammed to a halt. Then realize that the man with the busted lip has kicked you barefoot in the jaw.

Open your eyes and dark images will fade into white. Watch your blurred assailant crumple onto a cinderblock pile, clutching his own foot, bawling that it is broken. The children will leer at you both. They will shove Bomb Pops like shotgun barrels between their own pursed lips.

For God’s sake keep conscious. Escape through a bleary smog of pain and tinnitus by pattering your hands along the truck until you reach the driver’s door. Hunch into the cab. Grind the gearshift into reverse and lay all your strength on the horn. Watch the children scatter in the rearview. Bleed. Bleed on your own fingers and your neck and your clothes. Bleed starburst droplets onto your lap and the vinyl seat cushion. Ball a yellow napkin from the trash of your Wendy’s value meal and press it into the gash opening the flesh of your cheek; feel it soak as you lunge the truck backwards through divots. Listen to the bell clang and the cooler door slamming like a mute mouth in rage.

Into your headlights a woman will rush, lofting a fan of dollar bills, her head shaved except for a few cornsilk strands. She’ll stumble toward your truck with her loose cellulite all tremors. She’ll clomp sandals through mud and soil, the hem of the T-shirt dangling below her knees. Even as her mouth wrenches, you won’t stop.

Instead, stop later at a defunct gas station three miles away, at the northern outskirts of Hammersport. Park beside a lone telephone booth where the glass will be scratched with a hundred initials, all of them glittering in a street-lamp shine. Let the truck idle while you slump in the driver’s seat and plan a phone call to police, or an ambulance, or Gregor. Dispense one quarter into your palm. Taste the metallic tinge of shock spreading across your tongue, prickling down through your lungs, the flavor of consciousness giving way again.

Sleep.

Awake some time later when a downpour is growling on the windshield. Find yourself draped across the passenger seat. The napkin will have become a red pulp dried against your wound. Forty minutes will have passed, and rain will have pooled in the eroded concrete around the telephone booth. You should call the police. You should let hospital nurses stitch your wound and administer tetanus shots and speculate that your face had been sliced open by your assailant’s sharp toenails.

But you won’t — you won’t call anyone, will you?

You’ll think of Gregor slurping spinach and awaiting your late return, maybe already back in his truck scouring these backwoods for signs of a wreck. You’ll think he has decided that you’ve been swallowed up by the world, and you’ll be desperate to show him your mangled face, prove to him your resolve.