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With his heart hammering and his pulse rushing in his ears, the narrator watches the large man’s muscles ripple and flex as he pushes Jeff off his back, cursing. The narrator realizes that they are all cursing and, for a moment, imagines a detective interrogating a murderer who recalls, in puzzled words, that “something came over me.” Digby, back on his feet, tries a flat-hand blow against the large man’s face with little effect, but then the narrator, overwhelmed with rage, slams the tire iron against the man’s head. The large man falls and lies still, and the narrator realizes that the entire fight has lasted perhaps sixty seconds. The three friends stand over the collapsed man and shake with anger and adrenaline. When the narrator sees a bit of the man’s hair stuck to the tire iron, he drops it in alarm, imagining how he could be arrested and jailed for murder. His fears are interrupted by a “raw torn shriek” coming from the woman who had been in the car with the large man. The fox, as the narrator calls her, wears just her underwear and a man’s shirt. She rushes at the three friends, yelling and trying to attack them.
In the car’s headlights, the fox’s painted toenails catch the light. The narrator blames what happens next on this detail, though he admits that “the gin and the cannabis” probably had something to do with it as well. In retrospect, the narrator thinks that the friends tacitly gave themselves permission to assault the fox because, in their minds, she was “already tainted.” They grab her, intending to rape her. They pull off her clothing and unzip their pants, but before they can hold her down on the car’s hood, another car arrives, the beams of its headlights “like accusing fingers,” and they flee. Without the keys, they can’t drive away, so Digby and Jeff run to the woods, while the narrator hides in the weeds by the lakeshore. The narrator stands in the water up to his waist, thinking that if he has to swim across the lake to escape, he will. He listens as the fox’s screams subside to sobs and hears men’s angry voices. Ready to swim, he dips into the water and bumps into something “unspeakable, obscene.” Although he can’t see it, he knows it’s a body, which panics him even more. At nineteen, “a mere child,” he thinks he’s just killed a man and come across another man’s bloated corpse, in a span of several minutes. Appalled, he thinks of the lost keys that started this entire ordeal as he scrambles out of the water, shouting in dismay despite himself.
