9 #4
‘Boys,’ Hummer said, ‘if you wouldn’t mind.’ Several of Nat’s cousins came up on either side of Vulture and grabbed at Nat’s feet, forcing them out of the stirrups.
‘Tru!’ Nat implored.
Tru, standing next to Asta, shook her head. ‘I told you not to lose, girl.’
Nat struggled and kicked, managing to nail Karol right in the cheek before she reached the ground.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ she demanded. She wrestled with her cousins who locked her arms in theirs.
‘Baptize you,’ Hummer said.
‘What?’ Nat shrieked.
‘Fresh start for tomorrow,’ he said, and laughed. It was not a kind laugh. His hands in his pockets, Hummer stalked off in the direction of the cinderblock wall.
‘Come on,’ Tru said to Asta, and they all followed, Nat dragged by her cousin-guards.
Vulture arched her neck uneasily, but Hummer had handed her off to his nephew, who pulled her head down and hooded her.
Asta watched as one Bruce after another disappeared through a door in the wall.
She told Carmine to stay put and followed, downhill through the brambles and across the train tracks.
They kept going, right to the river’s edge.
The riverbank here was held back by a low retaining wall. Extending from the wall was a decrepit old bridge support, the bridge long gone. The cement on the sides of the support was crumbling, and rebar jutted from its top. Below, the river slipped along, dark and rank.
‘No!’ Nat shouted. ‘I’m not going in there! It’s gotta be toxic.’
Hummer and the other Bruces laughed.
‘It’ll be ten times worse once we put you in it, Nat,’ a cousin named Jozefina called from the back of the pack. ‘They’ll have to send a hazmat team to clean it.’
‘Throw her in!’ Karol yelled, his hand massaging his face where Nat had kicked him. It was already swelling and turning a dark reddish color.
The whole riverbank smelled like rotting algae with the whiff of something worse. Hummer gave the signal, and Nat’s feet were scooped up, her arms already restrained. She screamed and struggled, but the Bruces just laughed.
They carried her out on to the crumbling bridge support at the edge of the water.
Asta watched the cousins fight to control Nat’s writhing limbs, the shape of them dark against the massive, still-bright edifice of Horizons Raceway on the other side of the wide river.
Asta considered trying to ambush the mob and rescue Nat, but the two of them stood no chance against the entire gang of cousins.
‘One, two, three,’ they shouted as they swung Nat back and forth.
Asta cringed as they let go, sending Natalia flailing into the river, her scream cut off by the water as she went under.
The river was deeper here than Asta had guessed.
But as Asta had learned off the piers in Port Veracruz, Nat was as tough and scrappy in the water as she was on land.
She would be back on shore in a minute, hopping mad and soaking wet.
Nat resurfaced, splashing and puffing. She was shouting unintelligibly, her fury hot enough to boil the river. She swam against its current and toward the water’s edge.
‘Give me the stick,’ Hummer said. Karol handed him a huge, broken-off branch with splaying fingers that dragged in the dirt of the riverbank.
Hummer tucked the thick end under his armpit and trudged to the side of the river and stood on the retaining wall.
The end of the broken limb reached far out into the current.
He pushed the branch down on Nat’s head, shoving her back under the water.
She slipped downstream, and the Bruce cousins behind Hummer jeered at the churning water, chasing the current with Nat in it.
When Nat came up again, gasping, Hummer submerged her again.
Asta stepped forward, a feeling of panic rising in her chest. ‘Hey, Hummer! Come on. That’s not—’
‘Keep out of it, Ek,’ Hummer growled. ‘You won. This is what you won. You’re not in there.’
He trotted downstream and waited for Nat to come back up, take one breath, and then he pushed her under again.
‘Hummer! Stop it!’ Asta cried, running after him. ‘You’re going to hurt her.’ She didn’t know what to do.
Hummer dropped the branch and wheeled on Asta.
Behind him, Nat came up again and, finding herself unimpeded, swam for the shore.
She dragged herself up on the low wall as her uncle barked at Asta.
‘Hurt her? I can’t hurt her more than losing hurts her.
You think it’s bad being in that stinking river?
We’re all already in that river. We were born in that river. I’m teaching her how to get out.’
‘Screw you,’ Nat said, coming up beside Asta, dripping.
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. There were a few snickers from the others, but Nat kept her eyes on Hummer.
He looked back, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his hat.
At last, Nat turned away and walked back up toward the train tracks, shivering in the cold. He did not stop her.
Asta followed, hot with rage.