Cooperstown

I don’t know how long we’ve been moving. I’ve never been good at averaging. Time seems to slip right past me, like it’s running away. Tatiana doesn’t say anything, and she moves far away enough from me that she thinks I won’t hear her when she starts to cry. She doesn’t cry for long, and they’re the kind of tears I can imagine congealing in her eyes but refusing to spill over. Somewhere into the journey she says, “Are you still there?” like she’s expecting me to have fallen off the face of the earth. I tell her yes. She sniffs, and says nothing else.

The van brakes hard, and we both slide to the right and pile into the wall with a crunch. I say, “It’s okay.” She doesn’t reply.

The doors open. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Not like I expected they’d drive us anywhere else. Louisiana is one big swamp dotted with civilisation, like it’s still trying to drag itself up out of the ether and present itself to the world. I’m craning my neck, trying to get a face in the right light, but I can barely see anything. The moon is the shape of a cuticle, and I’m half-blinded by a flashlight shining right into my eyes, and Tatiana’s perfume smells fresh and clear like walking through a field of daisies.

“You look like shit, Trig.”

Fuck.

“I feel like shit,” I say. “The hell was in that dart?” Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

The flashlight starts to move closer. Footsteps trip across the metal floor beneath us. Tatiana squirrels closer to me, pushing her heels into the grooves in the floor and pressing her back against my arm. She’s breathing fast and sharp through her nose in quick, jerky spurts. I want to tell her to calm down, but I don’t.

“It’s been a while, huh, Trig? You still remember me?” The flashlight shifts, and I can pick out a face crisped with scars, one milk-white eye looking at something nobody else can see. Fuck.

“Don’t think I could forget your ugly face even if I tried. The fuck is this bullshit, anyway?” I try to sit up properly but Tatiana is a dead weight against my side, and she doesn’t seem to want to relinquish pressure. I nudge the base of her spine with my elbow a little. Her face is turned away from the door, away from the blast of cool night air. Outside it smells like gunpowder and cigarette smoke, and her perfume is a faint wisp on the air, dissipating. I imagine it like the filmy threads of dust caught in the light streaming through a gap in closed curtains, tiny particles turning in the currents, quietly fading.

He crouches down to our level, but he’s not looking at me. His one good eye is squared right on Tatiana, at the curve of her tensed jaw, at the rise and fall of her shoulders. He says, “Hey, honey, what’s your name?” with this sugar-sweet voice, so fake it makes my skin crawl.

I say, “Back off. She’s just a kid.”

He’s not listening. He’s brushing the back of his calloused fingers across her cheekbone, and I can smell a torrent of cheap scotch and tobacco on his breath. He says, “Why don’t you come with me, honey? C’mon. Get you out of these ties. You don’t wanna be sitting on the floor with this hardass, do you?”

He hooks a hand under her bare arm and I can feel her shudder against me, and she says, clearer than I’d have expected, “Get your fucking hands off me.”

There’s not much time for me to do anything – not that I could have – before he hits her, hard. Backhands her clear across the face, and her head snaps to the left with the force of it. Her forehead bounces off the wall of the van and she falls back into me, stunned or passed out. I can’t see her face. I say, “No need for that shit.”

“Shut the fuck up, Trigger. Nobody asked you.” And Patch stands up and calls over his shoulder, gravelled voice raspy, “Grab ’em, boys.”


I am a passenger in the journey outside the van, watching dimly through the bag over my head. My arms are aching, and I’ve kicked myself in the ankles more times than I can count, and the hands on my shoulders are rough and coarse and unapologetic. For a while, my feet sink into cold, clammy earth just watered with rain, and dirty moisture seeps through to my socks even after I stumble back onto tarmac.

I am sitting in a chair, and somewhere behind me water is dripping with a soft plink onto something that sounds faintly metallic. The bag is pulled off, and footsteps recede into silence. I cough, and rub my nose against my shoulder, and in the dim light I can see Tatiana beside me, tied up in another chair. Her head is hanging forwards. She doesn’t look awake.

I try anyway. “You awake?”

To my surprise, she shifts a little at the sound of my voice and turns to face me. Her left temple is already swelling in a bruise, and her right cheek is mottled red and white. She says, “Mr Keyes, you better tell me what the fuck’s going on right now.”

“Stop calling me Mr Keyes.”

“I don’t really think now is the time to be picky—”

“For fuck’s sake, listen to me. I’m not being picky, I’m being safe. Call me James, or don’t call me anything.” I pause, and watch her for a few seconds. “You’re Sarah.”

“Mr K—” She stops herself, sighs, twists her head away. “James. Okay. Fine. Now can you please tell me what’s happenin’? Who was that man?”

“Patch. His name’s Patch.” I sniff. “Technically his nickname, but that’s what everybody calls him. Don’t look him in the eye. Don’t talk back at him. Don’t disobey him if he tells you to do something. Don’t give him an excuse to hurt you again.” For a moment our eyes lock, and beneath the film of anger I know she’s fucking terrified. I say, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. He didn’t hit me that hard.”

“He kinda did, Sarah.”

She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and I glance down at the floor. She’s not wearing any shoes, and her toenails are painted coral pink. She screws them up tight as if she can feel me staring and says, “Is this something to do with what you said at the barbecue? The narcotics thing?”

I’m almost surprised at how quickly she makes the leap. I nod, and she sucks in a breath. I say, “They’re dangerous people, okay? This isn’t a game, and they might have hit you with a tranquilizer but that doesn’t mean they won’t just shoot you if you give them the slightest provocation.”

“Shoot a pretty little thing like Sarah?” Patch’s voice is loud and high in mock offence, and my heart jumps in my chest. I don’t know how much he heard. “I’d never.” The barrel of a gun is pressed against my neck, cool and hard and very real. “You, on the other hand, I’d be quite happy to put a bullet in.”