And the screaming changed. It didn’t stop. It got lower, and it got slower, and it started coming out in these ragged pulls instead of one solid wall of noise.
Behind me one of the teenagers said, “Yo, what is he doing?”
Nobody answered him. For the first time in ten minutes, nobody was laughing.
The biker finally spoke, and he spoke to me, not to Eli, and he didn’t look up when he said it.
“Stop talking to him.”
I said, “What?”
“The words. He can’t use them right now.” His voice was gravel and cigarettes and about as calm as a man reading a weather report. “Every word you put in the air is one more thing he’s gotta carry. Give him weight instead.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Put your hand flat on his back. Between the shoulder blades. Press. Don’t rub, don’t pat. Just press and hold.”
