The cop approaches the truck with a John Wayne gait and an imbecile’s jaw. He steps onto the rear tire and begins sifting through the truck bed. He knocks on the utility case, then turns an invisible key in the direction of the security guards. He reaches under and rummages inside garbage bags, the first one full of Henry’s winter clothes. Then he squints.

The cop lifts the motel iron. He picks at a rusty freckle with his thumbnail and seems to stiffen before setting the iron down. The second bag is full of Junior’s dirty laundry. He unfolds a pair of the boy’s underwear, frowning as if it were a particularly tricky Sudoku puzzle. He peeks into the cab’s rear window then startles back, apparently seeing and only now remembering the sick child. He slaps his forehead and scuttles over to the passenger side.

All this time, since blurting that last word when asked for one, Henry hasn’t managed to assemble and expel another. Even though his silence had initially been the only means of defiance left to him, he can’t be sure he hasn’t actually gone mute for good. Diaphragm drops, lungs swell, vocal cords flex, and tongue cocks, but nothing sounds. Then again, what would he ever need to say now? What good were words if they couldn’t make a day for Junior, could never sing him a morning, golden and true, and for all time?

Then the cop opens the passenger door. Leans into the truck cab.

Henry shatters. He ruptures and floods all at once, and rediscovered language—at least one word—comes blasting out of him: No.

He screams it, bellows it, furiously helpless, over and over in the echo chamber of this squad car. His howls ricochet and gnarl his frame. He rams his shoulder into the door, bangs his forehead against the cage. The entire vehicle rocks, teeters with his anguish, but nobody notices him. Exile. Pariah. Nothing. Nobody. Nobody sees him weeping. Nobody hears him begging, “Don’t touch my son. Don’t you take my baby.”

When the upper half of the cop reemerges, four limbs sway limp from his grasp. The cop presses the backs of his fingers to Junior’s forehead. Cups the boy’s chin, gives it a gentle, terrified shake. The cop’s rosacea cheeks flush redder yet as he speaks into the radio on his shoulder. He hails a security guard, who now hands him the evidence, the Advil. Balancing Junior in one arm, the cop rips the packaging with his teeth and tries palming a pill into the boy’s mouth.

It cannot end like this.