Men in the Making by Bruce Machart Page B

then—
Jesus Christ,
she's sliding. She's sliding alongside the car.
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    Before Raul sees the fear on her face, before he braces himself and puts his foot down hard on the gas, what he notes is the purse strap in his hands, the thin band of leather that links him to this woman who only now, when he kicks the accelerator and tightens his grasp, seems to recognize what's happening, her eyes frozen somewhere between surprise and panic. Raul feels the air, hot and solid and rushing in the windows, pushing him back in his seat. He keeps on the gas while Jesus leans in close, taking the wheel, and Raul knows that something's gone wrong. Too much weight on the other end, too much pull, and outside the window, where there should be nothing but asphalt and parked cars and a purse flapping wild in the night, she's there instead—the woman, one shoulder jammed tight against the door of his car, just inches from his hands, hung up in the strap of her purse, her eyes fixed hard on him. He hears it, the sound of her, the hiss of fabric and skin giving way to asphalt.
    She's struggling to get free, but what Raul sees is a woman fighting him, the
pinche gringa,
and he tightens his hold as the car gains speed and the leather bites into the palms of his hands and he thinks for sure he's bleeding. He looks up and Jesus nods, smiling, yes, but only from the corners of his mouth, and then Raul sees the car parked crooked in its space ahead, the way it's jutting out into his path, its bumper crumpled and sharp and coming up fast. And the woman is still there, eyeballing him, begging him with a blank-eyed stare to stop. It's you, he thinks. It's you, puta. Let. Fucking. Go.
    "No," Jesus says, because he hears everything. What's between his ears, vato, but this time he's misunderstood. "Hold on, Raul," he says, and Raul hangs on.
    They all do.
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    They have taken his wife. They have taken her and he's standing here motionless watching them, holding on to his son. Not doing a goddamn thing. He's seen the scowls of their faces and the hint of a smile from the one who reached over to grab the wheel. He's felt her hand clench tight in his back pocket when they took her, heard the denim rip at the seam when it gave and she went sliding away. And now—oh Lord, now as her head is cracked wide by the bumper of that junkyard car, Tim can only imagine what might have been. Not the future and the years they might have had together—impossible now, he knows—but the way he had seen them and the things he should have done. He imagines himself stepping between Natalie and the car, lunging down hard on the driver's arm just as he reaches out for her purse. He imagines hearing the sound of it, not his wife's head hammering hard against steel, but the echo of the driver's arm snapping at the elbow under his weight.
    Raul feels the shock of her impact in the socket of his shoulder, a single jolt of resistance that pulls him out the window up to his waist, and then they're free. He's held on. He's got the purse, and when he pulls himself back into the driver's seat and squeals the tires onto the feeder road, Raul's pulse is louder in his ears than the engine. His fingers are tingling and he can't feel the steering wheel and there's this emptiness opening wide inside, hollowing him out, a kind of hunger he knows he'll never keep fed. "They gonna bring us down, Jesus. Holy shit, man, this is it. They gonna find us. They ain't ever gonna stop looking."
    Jesus lights a cigarette, tilts the rearview so he can look his brother in the eyes. He takes hold of Raul's leg, squeezing him hard above the knee. "They ain't gonna find shit," he says. "Ain't gonna be nothing to find. Swap the plates, ditch the purse, keep our mouths shut. What they gonna find?"
    Then they're on the highway, swerving through traffic on their way back toward I-10 east and their neighborhood just inside the loop, where there are still bodegas instead of Stop-N-Gos, where the