They drive in silence. Gabe sits wedged in the backseat between Buddy and Pope, his breathing shallow with nerves. He thinks he has never felt such heat, from the outside in, leg to leg, arm to arm in an airless car on an airless night, but also from the inside out, radiating from his terrified core. He doesn’t dare turn his head to look at either Pope or Mr. Cunningham. What had Gabe been thinking, running out to defend that old man? He can’t explain it even to himself. He was in the car, watching through the windshield, and then he wasn’t, he was overtaken, and he was out in the headlights, yelling. His heart is still pounding.
He watches the men in the front seats, Amos Hicks and Sutcliffe, but he can’t tell from what he can see of them—cheekbones, temples, ears—what expressions they are wearing. Caliber’s voice rings in Gabe’s ear—Grace Sutcliffe, baker’s daughter—but he is too afraid to ask, too afraid to wonder. He looks between the men and out through the windshield, where he sees only dirt and gravel; what he doesn’t know is what’s ahead. He thinks again of Frix Mobley, whose body was found out at the salt mines, dusted white; and Moses Beauparlant, whose body they found inside one of the old kilns. His stomach flips; he does not want to die. He stares, tense and alert, and his eyes play tricks on him; he sees ghostly mounds of salt in the shadows, the rubble of wrecked kilns. He should have listened to his father, he knows. He should have stayed home, but he didn’t and now here he is, exactly where he shouldn’t be, squeezed again as he was months ago in the backseat of a car beside Pope Crowley.
In the front, Amos Hicks takes a long breath, clears his throat as he shifts in his seat. “Seems farther away than it is,” he comments as the car slows down at an intersection. Up ahead, Gabe can just make out a smattering of lights, and he is flooded with relief. Amos looks at the tall man in the passenger seat, whose head grazes the felt of the ceiling. “But we made it on time to your show, Sutcliffe.”
“Mmmmm,” Sutcliffe mutters, as the car speeds up again.
“We here?” asks Buddy.
“Just about,” Amos answers.
At this, Gabe sits back, lets his shoulders drop. He has never been so grateful to arrive at a place. They are here. They are here, here to watch a man be killed, but Gabe is thankful. He is being spared.