“Why?”
The boy looks away.
“To work,” another says.
* * *
—
They breach the mountains late that night, rising into the foothills, crawling the switchbacks there, the Tempo ascending no faster than a mule, its engine straining against the gorge torrent and the pitch dark. As they plateau, a humming sheet of river stalks their side. The moon shows again, waxing to full, the tall sky incandescent. But beneath the gliding fleet of cloud, there’s blackness, grotesque shapes, dead drops, a world of shadow, the lull of the engine. The temperature drops and the boys draw close for warmth, rattling bones in cages, bracing themselves. Then the lava hours of nightmare begin, the ceaseless rise and rise, the sudden fall, hour upon hour wrapping around valleys and hairpins, with air so cold it scars, Ajay holding on for the next bend, for the plateau, for the sun to rise and spread itself on the unseen river, to be returned home, for his mother to wake him up from sleep, to drag dead dogs from school.
Then tendrils sprout and the night is done, the yolk of a sun cracks over the peaks and the blue death that filled the final hours is cast away. Pure light and the victory of dawn. Ajay examines the faces of the blinking boys, stirring dazed within their blankets. Faces older: fourteen or fifteen, a face that is younger, maybe seven. Checking to see if they have changed. They have not. But they have passed through a portal.
There’s no hope of home now.
* * *
—
The truck stops for breakfast at a chai shop cut like a grotto into a sheer rock face high up on a mountain beside a shrine to the local deity, with barely enough room on the road for two vehicles to pass. Across the way, a soft river flows deep inside a gorge. The assistant leaps from the cab, stretches his arms in the air, lights a beedi, and wanders to the edge, where white-painted stones guard against the drop. He cleans his nails with his pocketknife and spits into the void as grooming monkeys hiss their bare fangs and lope off to the next bend.
The boys still sit inside.
The dead engine is the loudest sound in the world.
The thekedar greets the chai wallah as he works the vat on a paraffin stove. The assistant returns from the edge to sit with him, flipping open the cage on the way. The three men gossip, catching up on the latest comings and goings on the road.
The assistant whistles at the boys. “Stretch your legs, go piss. You won’t get another chance soon.”
The men are relaxed, the incident at the dhaba the previous morning forgotten.
There’s nowhere for the boys to run or escape to this time.
So they climb out and mill aimlessly, staring up at the corridor of limestone, taking in cool lungfuls of clean air. Ajay hears the river, out of sight, pouring from the top of the world.
One of the boys, the youngest maybe, the seven-year-old, walks over to the edge.
Ajay watches him stand there transfixed, balancing on the very edge, looking down.
Until the assistant grabs him by the arm and yanks him back.
And they’re on the road again.
By ten the sun is harsh. Blankets worn loosely are turned into shade.
Flashing through the Himalayas.
Free of the night.
Ever more lost.
Now they sleep.
By midday the Tempo reaches a beat-up market town in a hot valley choked with grease and engines, a dumping ground inside the mountains, a bowl of filth. They cross a small rocky river snagged and dammed with garbage, the low metal bridge across woven with prayer flags. They join a new road out of town and follow the river upstream through the pines. Small grassy islands break the river’s flow. North, through the breaks in the resin-scented trees, snowcapped mountains soar. A new colossal range, an impenetrable white wall. Ajay falls asleep again and dreams of his father carrying a basket on his head, his body below completely charred.
In the afternoon the truck approaches a large town wrapped in a forested hillside. It guards the mouth of a long steep valley slashing far ahead through the earth. Waterfalls hang above, splashing and easing through the rocks, joining the meandering river, turning it wild. Villagers wash their clothes a little downstream, whipping the fabric against the boulders. The truck turns a bend and the river is deadened by the heavy pine. They weave past neat wood-clad buildings, pulling into a parking space within the trees.
Just like that, the engine cuts, a new bereavement—the boys blink and stand unsteadily, like men coming ashore after months at sea.
A crowd is already waiting for them. The thekedar jumps out of the cab all businesslike, spits paan, and removes a small pocketbook. He wastes no time calling out names, while the assistant opens the back of the truck and hands the boys over, one after the other. Small disputes flare, money changes hands. Bonds that had barely formed are newly broken. A light rain starts to fall, and Ajay crouches in the cage, waiting. One by one, the boys are taken away. For the remaining three, an auction begins.