Across the street, outside the sports bar, two men were smoking. They spoke loudly, striking the air for emphasis, and paused often to spit.

A woman was coming down the hill toward them. She moved like an old or injured person but wore bright, youthful clothing. Her hair was soft and orange on her shoulders. When she reached the men, she stopped. One of them spit, then said something to the other. They laughed.

The woman turned away. She stumbled, then walked into the street without checking for traffic. A car approached, braked hard, and honked, but she didn’t seem to see it. The car swerved angrily and sped up the hill.

When she stood in front of us, we saw that her eyes were very blue and loose, and that one hand quaked gently at her side.

You girls, she said after a minute. What have you got?

We held up our crumpled wrappers, the empty bottle, and shook our heads. She nodded. She drew a hand slowly across her nose, which was dripping. When the hand came away, it was smeared with red.

Dark came quickly—a darker dark than we knew. We followed the blue road back from town. We tripped on rocks and bottles on the shoulder. We held our arms up against the headlights that kept coming. We heard the sound of a window rolling down, a voice calling out. But we couldn’t hear what was said, or didn’t understand—and besides, it wouldn’t be them out looking for us—so we didn’t listen. We didn’t think to glance back, didn’t wonder who was speaking or what was wanted, didn’t imagine anything worth stopping for at all.

LINE

I stand behind a woman much shorter than I am. The top of the back of her head reaches my collarbone, though I’m not tall. I’m of an average height. She has a lot of hair, voluminous and curly. Even oiled with some product to cohere it, her hair takes up so much room that I keep an extra foot between us out of respect. Sometimes when I ride the bus or train and I’m wearing my hair down, the person in the seat behind me touches or pulls it, by accident or not, when placing his hands on the handle on the back of my seat. When this happens I feel as though my hair should be tied up and netted instead of floating around for anyone to grab. So I keep my distance between myself and this woman’s hair, but she keeps turning around to talk to a friend of hers behind me in line, and her hair brushes my forearm every time, soft and tickling like a hovering mosquito. When she turns the third time, I read her shirt. She’s wide, with breasts that probably give her backaches, and stretched taut across them, in yellow letters: Prepare to defend your chicken. I glance back at the woman’s friend and the steadily lengthening line. Behind me, a man with firmly folded arms, hands fisted into his armpits, lifts his chin for a better look. A little girl leans against a large box on the ground next to him, her shoulders limp, her face turned to her feet, one hand bunching and twisting the hem of her dress. The man glances sideways at the girl. I turn forward again. He says, Huh? No, says the little girl. No? he says. Yes, she says. No, she says. Yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no.