RAILROAD TRACKS AND raggedy streets that need fixing make the wheels on the car bounce, and us too. The car slows down, turns left, goes under a bridge. The driver cuts the lights off, but the car keep moving, rolling over bumps, smashing bottles.

Once it stops, the locks pop up. April tells me to pretend I’m somebody else, somewhere else. He say for me to leave my coat and backpack here. We right by the water. So, it’s really cold. Even my long sleeves won’t keep me warm. But I do like I’m told.

The moon give enough light that we see each other easy as we see broken bottles and rocks stuck in the dirt we standing on.

“Here.” I got my fingers in my back pockets. “Sixty dollars. It’s all I got. Please let me go home.”

He take out a lighter, then two cigarettes, and lights ’em both up. “Cigarette?”

I take a long drag. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Of course. No harm, no foul.” He put one foot on the fender of the car. Makes rings with the smoke. “I rarely set a finger on my girls. It’s bad protocol.” April can vouch for him, he says.

She come out the car like he called for her. Standing under a tree, she watches. My hand shakes. So does the cigarette. “I wanna do right by you, Daddy, but I don’t think—”

He grab my arm and twists it behind my back. “Don’t ever—” His other hand hits my cheek hard as a baseball bat. So, I scream. He punch me in the face and my head.

She don’t say a thing. After he push me down on the ground, he bang his knee into my chin. My teeth bite my tongue. I spit blood. He say I better not lift my hands and wipe it. Or get it on his new shoes.

“Yes … Dad … dy.” My voice melts like sugar in water. I look up at April. She look away.

“And don’t move.”

My knees and hands hurt. They shake after a while. When I ask permission to stand up, he grab me by the hair and pulls me like a dog on a leash. Crawling, I beg him to turn me loose. “I’ll … behave. I promise. I promise. Please, Daddy.” Glass and rocks dig into my knees and hands. “Whatever you want. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”

He drag me past the car parked in front of his, past the next one and the next over to a sixteen-wheeler parked with its cab facing us. You can’t see over it so whatever gets done behind it, only us and God gonna know.

“Look up at me!”

He spits in my face. “And don’t wipe it off.”

It slides down my nose. Runs over my lips. Drips on my hand like tears.

“You’re ugly.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“And you too fat, bitch.”

“I know, Daddy. I’ll lose weight for you, Daddy. Don’t hurt me no more.”

Out the corner of my eyes I see her getting closer.

“Did I say you could talk?”

I put my head down so I don’t get smacked. He tell me to moo.

“What?” I look up.

“Moo, bitch—like a cow. You’re a fat-ass cow, aren’t you?” He lifts his foot, stands on my hand, smashes it like a cigarette butt.

Glass bites into my palm, cuts places already cut. I moo anyhow—like them cows I seen off the turnpike. He laughs, takes his foot off my hand, and laughs again after he hear me say, “Moo! Moo! Moo!” I shake, wiggle, and jiggle. “Look, Daddy. I’m a cow.”

He turn my hair loose. Tells her to come closer because this is what she can expect next.

“Charlie. Daddy loves you. Say it.” He unbuckles his pants.

“Daddy loves me.”

Her eyes stay on mine.

“And he’s going to take care of you.”

I swallow. “And you’ll take good care of me.”

“But first you have to learn your lesson. Don’t you?”

“Yes, Daddy.” I back up.

His pants drop.

He don’t see her hand go in her purse. Or seem to care that she getting closer, walking up behind him. The gun is pushed up to his ribs when she say, “Take care of my baby, Char. And tell her I always loved her.”

He laughs.

She put the gun up to his head.

He reach down and pulls up his pants.

She backs up. “Why are you still here, Char? Go!”

I stand up. Trip. Fall down and get up again. Looking over my shoulder, I see the driver coming. And Anthony with that gun pointed at his chest. On the ramp to the bridge, I hear it go off a whole bunch of times. But I don’t stop. I can’t.