Free Abram's Bridge by Glenn Rolfe Page B

on her face. She didn’t look so pretty anymore. Or very old, for that matter. She couldn’t have been much over twenty.
    Joe’s eyes shifted to the lady at the gas pump and saw how it was more clearly. The little boy belonged to the younger girl. The woman at the pump was the grandma—the very young grandma. Probably forty-three or forty-four, just a couple years older than Joe. Of course, from the way the grandma was dressed, she didn’t much like the thought of growing older. The denim shorty shorts and the tight white top showed so much leg and midriff that the lady could’ve posed for a nudie magazine with minimal fuss. The shorts were so tight Joe worried her female parts might suffer from oxygen deprivation. But she wore them well, there was no doubt about that. Grandma looked thirty or so, until you got to the face. And though it wasn’t a bad face and might even been called attractive, there was a hardness there, a fierceness that suggested she’d seen much of life and wouldn’t put up with anybody else messing her over.
    The little boy in the van continued to wail.
    Joe saw the look on the young mother’s face and felt a ripple of misgiving sweep through him. The young mom, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, was staring daggers at the kid in the overhead mirror now. Joe glanced at the young grandma at the pump and thought, Hurry, lady. Your daughter’s at the end of her fuse. I’ve got a feeling the toddler in the backseat isn’t a stranger to fussing like this, which means his momma’s nerves are as frayed as old wires .
    “You gonna stand out there all day?” Michelle’s voice called.
    Joe blinked, returning to himself, and glanced at the gas pump. Stepping over and leaning into the open doorway of the pickup, he said, “It’s three-quarters full. Can we get Lily home and into her crib without waking her up?”
    “It’s probably better if she does get up,” Michelle said, checking her watch. “It’s five now. If she doesn’t wake soon, she’ll be up all night.”
    Joe nodded. “You’re right. She’ll be cranky th—“
    A flat, solid sound popped in the spring air. Joe felt his guts squirm. Michelle’s face paled. She was staring at something beyond him. He knew what it was even before he turned, knew it yet hoped against hope it wasn’t true. But when he did crane his neck around and peered through the windshield and saw what was happening, it was as though Joe’s internal organs turned to mush and settled in the pit of his stomach.
    “Joe,” Michelle said in a small, breathless voice.
    Jesus Christ , he thought. Jesus Christ .
    The young mother stood in the van’s open side doorway. She raised her hand again, her face twisted in a snarl. She was spitting sibilant words at the little boy through bared teeth. Her eyes were enraged and full of white.
    His whole body numb and shaking, Joe pushed himself away from the pickup, and his view was momentarily washed out by the late afternoon sun glare boiling off the van’s windshield. But he still saw a flash of brown skin as the young woman’s arm whipped down, still heard the sickening, meaty smack of bony fingers on tender pink flesh. His heart thumping, his gorge a bursting mass of heat, Joe stumbled over the concrete island on legs he couldn’t feel. He was distantly aware of the young grandma’s eyes on him as he drifted around the corner of the van. The scene that awaited him was worse than he ever would’ve imagined:
    The young mother, athletic and curvy and all brown skin. Her right palm rearing back like a sledgehammer, her eyes ringed with hideous white coronas, her gleaming teeth those of a Rottweiler with all the gentleness conditioned out of it, who only knows how to lash out, who only knows how to rip and maim.
    Beyond her were the faces of several bystanders. Though Joe wasn’t looking at them, he could make out their faces in the background. Like horrified constellations they stared at the hideous scene, but