Dawn Patrol

137

Boone crawls up the edge of the creek bed and looks over at the little clearing where he had his confrontation with the mojados.

Now Pablo's on guard, an ax handle in his fist, ushering about twenty field-workers into a ragged line in the clearing in front of the caves. One of the men who herded the girls walks up the line, collecting money. The workers pull dirty, wrinkled bills from their pockets, and don't look at the man as they give him the money. There are a couple of white guys in line. They don't look like farmworkers, just guys who like to do little girls.

The girls go into the little caves that have been chopped into the reeds. A couple of the girls sit down and just stare into nothingness; a couple of the others arrange their “beds.” Boone crawls to the far edge of the clearing and sees Luce take off her thin blue jacket, carefully spread it out on the ground, then sit down, one leg crossed over the other-a young female Buddha-and wait.

For waves of men to fall on top of her and break inside her and then recede. And then the next wave comes in, and the next, every morning, inevitable as the tide. A perpetual cycle of rape, for as long as her short life lasts.

There's a world out there you know nothing about.

Tammy steps into the clearing.

She comes from the other side, from the road by the motel, the way Boone tried to come before Pablo laid him out.

Luce sees Tammy, springs up, and runs into her arms. Tammy holds her tightly. Then she slides down, squats in front of the girl, and looks her in the eye. “I've come to take you away,” Tammy says. “Forever, this time.”

Good, Boone thinks. Go, take the kid with you.

Give each other some kind of life.

Then Dan Silver comes into the clearing.