And pushed the lid up his back, swinging the tire iron, yelling at the top f his lungs. Both boys shrieked in fright and recoiled. Merrill’s swing hit the first boy on the hip. The other had the bag, had his hand in it. Merrill’s legs didn’t want to work at all. No lights in view; trees hung over both sides of the road. Merrill grabbed the first boy as a crutch to pull himself out of the trunk, swinging the tire iron again. The end of it caught the second boy on the shoulder. The first boy grabbed Merrill around the waist. The other boy dropped the bag and held his injured shoulder, wincing in pain. Losing his balance, Merrill swung at him again. Everybody went down, the second boy screaming now.

Merrill kicked at the first, hitting him on the spine twice, three times. The boy backed away. The other had his hand tucked under his arm. The second swing at him had caught him on the knuckle. Merrill dropped the tire iron and grabbed the bag. The first kid moved too slowly. A nine millimeter was in his face.

“Don’t move!” Merrill shouted.

“No English!” he cried.

“Don’t move!”

The kid started to blubber. Merrill pushed away and used the lip of the trunk to pull himself to his feet. He felt very unsteady. If he took a step and fell, they would be all over him. The second kid ventured a look at his own hand. That was a hand Merrill didn’t have to worry about. One knuckle was as big as a golf ball. Behind the two boys, a drainage ditch dipped into deep shadow under the trees. He waved the gun. “Move back! Back!” He waved the gun again. The first kid looked behind him.

He wailed something about Chino.

“What about Chino?”

The kid formed a gun with is fingers and put it to his head.

“Move back anyway!”

The first kid obeyed. He pulled at the other, saying something out of the corner of his mouth. When they had gone far enough, Merrill hobbled to the bag and gathered it up. Watching the kids, he returned to the car. He had to slam the trunk lid shut to create a surface for the laptop. The meter on the cell phone showed the battery half-charged. The laptop vibrated on the bare metal. Merrill had forgotten that the engine was running. He wanted to know the time? He had forgotten, too, that there was an analogue clock in the car’s instrument panel. Putting the laptop on the bag steadied it enough. The kids were watching him as they groped their way backward into the drainage ditch. Merrill’s legs were beginning to tingle with pins and needles.