Gabe wakes up in the backseat of a moving car, and a moan escapes him, unbidden. He feels a body shift beside his; Pope Crowley is looking down at him.
“He’s awake,” Pope comments. No one in the car responds.
It is not the car that Gabe rode in to St. Martinville, and it’s not the same company. Pope Crowley and Sutcliffe are here, but Buddy is gone, Mr. Cunningham is gone, Amos Hicks is gone. They have been replaced by Montgomery and two other men who are unfamiliar to Gabe, and there is yet another man standing on the running board.
“Where are we going?” Gabe asks, looking fearfully into the darkness outside.
“Shut up,” one of the unfamiliar men snaps.
“I betch you’d like to know,” Pope Crowley drawls at the same time. He shifts again in his seat, knocking against Gabe’s shoulder.
“Ah!” Gabe hollers. He clutches at his shoulder, crippled by the radiating pain.
“Arm’s least of your concerns, boy.” This is the second unfamiliar man, who is driving.
“What’re you gonna do to me?” Gabe asks. He is crying, out of pain, out of fear, out of remorse. No one answers him, and when he looks up at Pope Crowley the man won’t meet his eyes. “What are you gonna do to me?” Gabe asks again, desperately. “Please don’t hurt me! I’ll do anything you say!” He looks desperately from Crowley on his one side to the unknown man on his other side. But neither of them responds. In the front passenger seat, Sutcliffe turns his head, casts a brief, impenetrable glance Gabe’s way.
“I’ll do anything you say,” Gabe repeats, though he doesn’t know what he could possibly do for these men, doesn’t even know what he’s done to displease them, except for being who he is: his father’s son. “Anything you say,” he manages again. He slumps into himself in terrified defeat, crying openly, and then, with the instinct of a child, he buries his face and weeps against Pope Crowley’s thigh.