THEY SPENT hours at Orangepants, a pool hall and fish market, left

I between games for the alley in back of the place. He felt dark, sad, and his eyes watered, and they left him in the alley in the dusk light hung over. He pulled hard on the last of the joint, propped himself at the wall, stayed there and watched the light go.

Noah beat a big man and motioned across the table for his money, ten dollars. The big man was a Lumbee. He put a leg up on the table, yanked the cuff past his ankle, deer knife stuck in the sock. He tapped on it, kept the leg on the rail.

Noah asked the Lumbee to go up front and buy them a box of malt liquor since they couldn’t. He came back and opened the top flap, twelve short green bottles, and then he spoke of his tribe; he was the one that remembered the true name of the big river, but during spring, the water spilled the banks, settled peat black and still, and afterward it was something else, water he couldn’t name.

They ran across Irby with bottles wrapped in their jackets. A few of the bottles fell and broke on the road, and they laughed because the night was cold and blue. They kept a sprint to Noah’s car, drove a few blocks to a red brick church and parked in the lot behind it. Francis knew the place; no one allowed there past dark.

Francis got out. He drank a bottle, two swallows, threw the empty against the wall overhand, like a fastball. The bottle yelled on the brick. Terry and Noah went to drinking theirs, and then Noah broke one, and then Terry did, and then all of them threw bottles three, five, eight. They leapt, arms up, at the cold clear night and the gasoline in their hearts; glass green in the air, busted on the ground.

Then the sirens were all around them.

Terry went to run, and then he stopped.

They stood in a line, held their hands above their heads. Two of the policemen shone flashlights inside Noah’s car, bright as spot lamps for blinding deer at the popped trunk; gun in the glove compartment, under a frayed eastern state highway map, the car title, and lug wrench. One of them dug it out and held it up. It was square, looked like a plastic starter gun. Noah dropped his eyes and wagged his chin, orange hair a kerchief over his forehead. His father left the gun; nights he drove to the bar and hovered at drinks with other men and women who didn’t remember what morning smelled like. On his way home, late, toppled fences, dogs, left the car on the side of the road, skewered on a front yard. Noah nodded to the gun.

Gun’s not mine, he said.

None of this seemed true to the policemen. One asked for other weapons. Francis pointed to the car ten feet off. The one holding his arms behind let go and walked him over. Francis leaned down and reached under the passenger seat, raised back up holding a bundle.

Then the policemen put them facedown beside the car and locked their hands. They laughed, lit a few of the smoke bombs Francis fished from beneath the seat, and dropped them hissing on the lot. Terry lifted his face to see the smoke and the policeman pressed his boot harder at his back.

Stop moving, he said.

This is a bunch of shit. What kind of operation are you running here?

The policeman put a hand to the back of Terry’s head and pushed his face down, gravel spiked to his cheeks.

They put the three of them at the backseat and drove to the sheriff’s department and locked them in one of the two cells for drunks. One of the policemen called them ruffians, and then he called them vagrants. There was a toilet in the cell, benches on two sides, walls painted yellow, names scribbled in black pen and lead. There were chipped places on the slick gray floor like liver spots. They sat, feet down, and none spoke. End of the hall a door slammed, then boots, loud and final, stomped toward the cell. The policeman who put Terry down turned the lock and slid the bars, motioned for Noah and Francis to stand and they did. He pointed them down the hall. Francis moved past the open cell door then stopped. Noah lingered inside the bars and looked down at Terry.

What do we do here? he said.

Terry shook his head and fumbled at his hands set between his thighs, bottom of his forearms close to the bent knees.

Go on, he said.

Noah pinched his eyes and stood mute.

I’ll be alright, Terry said.

They called his house for an hour, and after another hour one of them let Terry from the block with a loud key and led him down the hall, and then he drove him home, when there stayed a few feet back and watched Terry turn the deadbolt. The house was dark. Terry switched on the light and pointed down the hall. The officer leaned his head past the doorframe and had a look.

I told you, Terry said.

The policeman looked again.

If he doesn’t call man you know where I live alright?

The officer nodded.

Here man, if you don’t believe me or whatever.

Terry went to his back pocket and dug out his wallet. He peeled the driver’s license from beneath the plastic and held it to the policeman.