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The men hear the narrator as he climbs onto the bank and the fox sobs. The narrator hears the voice of the large man whom he thought he’d killed, cursing and calling for him and his friends to come out. The men throw rocks into the reeds, but the narrator stays silent even when a large stone hits his knee. When the friends stay hidden, the large man and the two blond guys whose arrival interrupted the rape turn their anger on the narrator’s car. They beat the windshield, headlights, and metal body with branches, boulders, and the tire iron, smashing the exterior. They dump litter from the trashed parking lot on the driver’s seat. Finally, the fox, who is back in the car, tells Bobbie—the large man—she wants to go. He flings the tire iron into the lake, and they drive off. The two blond guys, who were perhaps Bobbie’s buddies but more likely just showed up at the right time to enjoy smashing a car, follow, perhaps worrying that the car’s owners or the police might catch them.
In the ensuing silence, the narrator lies in the cold muck, his mind racing and his body aching. He tries to come up with plausible explanations for what happened to the car and thinks that the drowned man is the only one on Earth in a worse situation. He wonders what happened to the man, likely the owner of the motorcycle. He may have died in an accident or a drug deal gone bad, but in any case, the man is dead, and the car is smashed.
As dawn approaches, the narrator gets up and goes to examine the car, which looks more like a “steel sculpture” than a functioning vehicle. Jeff and Digby come from the woods and watch as the narrator clears the garbage from the car seat. Digby points out that the tires are fine, so they sweep away the broken glass as the narrator remains silent about the drowned man. He sees the lost keys glinting in the sunrise, close to the door, and they get in the car to leave.
Just then, a Mustang drives across the parking lot to the motorcycle, and two women in their mid-twenties get out. They can hardly walk and are dressed for partying, and they begin to call for Al. No one answers, so one of the women staggers over and asks if the friends have seen Al, the motorcycle’s owner. The narrator feels like he could vomit; he wants to go home and get in bed. He says nothing. The woman holds out some pills and asks whether they’d like to “party.” Digby declines and the narrator eases the car away from the lake, which now reflects the sunrise. When he looks back, he sees the woman, slouched, her hand holding the pills out as she watches them drive away.
