Abram's Bridge by Glenn Rolfe

not one of them moved. Women. Men. A couple children of maybe four and seven. The faces gaped, but they were frozen in that tableau. Some modernized version of a Bosch painting come to life.
    But the worst of it, by an inestimably vast margin, was the sight of the little boy, too young to know exactly what was happening or to understand the injustice of his situation, but old enough to know he didn’t want to be hit again. Old enough to cry and writhe in his seat while the snot and saliva formed bloody whorls on his lips and his chin. The collar of his baby blue T-shirt, Joe saw, was purpled with sweat and other fluids Joe didn’t want to think about.
    The woman was beginning her striking motion again when Joe reached her. Until this moment he’d known people like this existed, but perhaps he’d deluded himself into believing their crimes really couldn’t be as detestable as the papers described. A mother really couldn’t willingly harm her child.
    What he did do was catch her by the wrist. So powerful was her downward swing that her arm descended another few inches anyway, but Joe was a good deal stronger, and he had enough adrenaline sluicing through his body to stay her slap before it landed on the toddler’s already swelling face. For a split second, it seemed she would relent. Her white, deranged horse’s eyes flicked to his and registered what might have been astonishment.
    Then her left hand curled up in a claw and tore ribbons from the side of his neck to the shelf of his jaw. The pain was incredible, but the instinct for self-preservation won out. Before she could get at him again—and she was already retracting her scythe-like talons for another vicious swipe—Joe jerked her sideways, away from the squalling toddler and his heartbreaking tears. She staggered, nearly fell, and Joe almost came down on top of her. There was someone batting at his shoulders, a voice shrilling at him to Let Angie go! Let Angie go! But Joe’s only thoughts were of preventing more abuse to the child in the van and of saving what was left of his own looks by immobilizing those lethal fingernails.
    They were halfway between the pumps and the gas station. A car had stopped about ten feet shy of running them over and sat there idling impatiently. The girl was thrashing in his grip and spouting obscenities at him, words like cocksucker and motherfucker and other things so foul he didn’t even know what they meant. Beyond the shrieking harpy he could make out the pink, full moon faces of onlookers who’d stepped out of the gas station to spectate. On their right flank, the crowd from the small parking lot had closed in, perhaps to get a better look at Joe’s bloody neck.
    The girl—Angie, the grandma had called her—reared back and let loose with a gob of spit that slapped him in the cheek. Meanwhile, the grandma was tearing at his arms, his shirt, now interposing herself between him and Angie to pry loose his fingers.
    “Let my girl go, damn you!” Grandma whacked him across the chest, the shoulder. “Let…her… go !”
    Joe threw her a look. “Tell her to stop carving me up with those nails of hers and I will.”
    The grandma seemed not to hear him. She hauled off and swatted him across the bridge of the nose, and god dammit , did that hurt. Angie was still flailing about, her arms like electrified nunchucks, and now she was kicking at his legs, rearing back like an NFL placekicker and booting him with all her strength in the left shin.
    Joe stifled a cry of pain and gave her a shake. “Stop it, damn you, and I’ll let you go!”
    Angie aimed a knee at his crotch and only barely missed neutering him.
    For the love of God , Joe thought. I’m in the middle of a sordid daytime talk show, the kind where guys hump their sisters and the bodyguards have to work overtime.
    He spun Angie away from Grandma so he could avoid the older woman’s bruising slaps, but she kept at it, revolving with him in an unceasing attempt to