“We’ll be on the ground if we don’t get out of here.”

“Take the wheel, Grayson.”

“There’s a mob!”

“Just do it. Come around and pick me up.” Before he could protest again, I had opened the door. Grayson scooted over the seats to the driver’s side and grabbed the wheel as I ran to the man on the ground.

He was alive: a young man with wire glasses, broken. I recognized him from the holler, vaguely, but I couldn’t place him. Not a customer. Not a man who would spill from a truck in front of the farmhouse, coated in driveway dust, wanting weed. This man was out, blankness coating his face. He looked peaceful, not knowing the chaos around him.

I reached under his arms and hoisted him up. Smoke bleared my eyes. My truck had disappeared into it. Where the hell was Grayson going? The man coughed at being moved. At least he was breathing.

I saw two yellow beams through the smoke. Headlights. Grayson passed us, then backed up and braked. I realized he was driving on his left foot—his cast, his hurt right foot, must have stretched into the passenger side. I dragged the man to the back of the truck and pounded the gate with my fist. The gate stuck. Hitting it was the only way to get it open, and sometimes, even a blow didn’t work. The man still didn’t wake up. I hit it again, and the gate swung down. I hefted the man’s upper body onto the gate.

This was what we did now, I guessed: we found strangers, we saved them. He was heavy, but I was strong. I was grateful for those years lugging bags of fertilizer, rotating heavy plants. I climbed in, then dragged the man the rest of the way.

“Go!” I said to Grayson.

He slammed on the accelerator, and I nearly fell over. I grabbed the man and pulled us closer to the cab. The gate clattered open, bouncing as we drove, but I didn’t have the energy left to reach over and yank it shut. I inched backward, dragging the man like a bag of seed. Only when my back touched the cab, the stranger almost in my lap, did I look up at the scene we were fleeing.

We were leaving the roller rink and the parking lot behind, leaving the body in the woods, the gas station in flames. A cloud of greasy-looking smoke grew smaller down the road as we fled. But out of the smoke came people, still running.

I turned to shout through the open window of the cab, “Why are they chasing us?”

Grayson kept his eyes on the road. “I don’t know!”

Whatever fight had broken out, whatever had caused the fire, they couldn’t get away fast enough from it. Whatever it was they had seen.