While waiting for the police, they ask more questions. To each one, Henry shakes his head no, because fuck them. His mouth is shut, his eyes are shut, and he concentrates on transmitting instructions to Junior in the truck cab, willing the boy to do the same—don’t give them a thing, not a word. Shopping cart wheels clatter out of the entryway, and he can feel the shoppers’ stares boring into the back of his neck. He is a specimen. A less-than to be quarantined, dissected for science.

Tires grind up to the truck’s rear bumper. The tissue of his eyelids is illuminated, glowing pinkish red, pinkish blue, over and over. When a car door shuts, the truck’s engine hiccups, stammers. After a few strained chugs, it finally burns through the last of the gas and shuts off. As the engine cools, it makes a ticking sound, like someone snapping their fingers to summon a misplaced memory.

“I know this fella.”

That bucolic drawl. Henry doesn’t have to open his eyes to see the cop’s mustache and ruddy jowls. After glancing at Henry’s license, the cop leans against the truck bed and dips into Henry’s sight line, as if to better share this expression of paternal disappointment. “Say, Mr. Henry. Whyn’t you fill me in on what all’s going on here, how about?”

“Suspect was caught stealing these.”

Pills rattle.

“Tried to flee the scene.”

“And assaulted me in the process.”

“Left us no choice but to apprehend and restrain him on the premises.”

“Refusing to cooperate.”

“Won’t say a word.”

“That sound about right, Mr. Henry?” the cop asks. “Anything else I ought to hear, you know, from your side a things?”

So much to say and even more to ask but no way or where to start. Henry’s tongue is a desert, his mind barren yet bedlam. When his lips part, nothing falls. Not a word, not even sand.

“Okeydokey, then.” The cop flicks the license. “Let me run this right quick.”

Within five minutes, the cop is out of the squad car and saying exactly what Henry knew he would. He makes some dated, buckaroo whistle, then starts telling the guards it turns out Mr. Henry here got hisself a record. Felony drug charge. Boy done five years down-state, only a year or so out on parole, and so, yeah. He drops a recycled campaign-trail catchphrase about recidivism, replacing the v with a second d, before asking if either of the guards has taken a look-see in the truck.

The cop makes a rudder of Henry’s wrists to steer him over to the squad car. Presses the back of his head and then the rest of him into the backseat. The door slams. Inside it’s airless. Burnt coffee and old vomit. Henry wriggles forward, crushes his forehead against the divider’s metal grating to peer through the diamond-shaped apertures.