Jake brought Starla back, riding on his shoulders, and Jamey went off to smoke. Twilight passed as I thought it would. The men began to wake up, the naked man taking his damn time about it. The crackle of fireworks and the pop-pop-pop of guns echoed through the trees. I heard the squeal of a belt, as a truck got stuck. I heard wheels spinning out and shouts.

The air smelled of gunpowder and ditch weed. Kaylee woke and spent a long time combing her hair. She had a tattoo on her neck of a palm tree. Jamey came back to the shed and did a surprising thing. She sat on the mattress and unbuttoned her top. Starla crawled across the bed and began to nurse. Jamey had a round, soft stomach; it hung over the lip of her jeans. Her breasts were afterthoughts where Starla opened and closed her fists, her eyes drifting shut. I turned away.

There was a knock at the shed door.

“What the fuck?” Kaylee said. “Who the fuck knocks?”

It was strange to hear her talk, after she had been sick or sleeping all day. Jamey’s face gave me nothing, no clue as to what to do. So I opened the door.

Jake stood there.

I went outside and closed the door quickly behind me to shield Jamey, naked from the waist. Out in the cold, Jake coughed into his hands. It was hard to look him in the eye, to be that close to him. Energy poured off Jake, a mania I could feel, like sparks. It was that I had seen when we had first pulled up to the farmhouse.

Jake hopped from foot to foot, his skin red in his flip-flops. His hands were red, too. He had lost his hat, and I saw a bald patch in his hair, a hole in the thatch on the side of his head. Someone had shaved him, or maybe he had been burned. I had seen a scar on Jamey, too.

Jake smelled of beer. His tattoos were everywhere and undistinguishable. They looked like lesions, old and green and formless. “Hey there,” he said. “Sarah.” The name looked strange on his lips. “Wanted to talk to you.”

“What’s up?” I said. I tried not to act surprised at my fake name. “When are we getting back on the road?”

“Well, here’s the thing, Sarah. Your boys have been working hard, but you? You haven’t done shit for me. And I know that’s not who you are. I know you’re special. I can tell. I have a sense for talented people. So here’s what we’re going to do. Sarah. We’re going to have dinner, like a family, real nice. And then you’re going to work for me. Then we’ll see what you can do.”

He pointed his finger at me when he spoke. It seemed like any word, any protest, any answer at all, might enflame him. I concentrated on that finger, red and chapped. I imagined it burning, the skin falling off, the bone breaking. I pictured breaking it myself.