What? Roxy heard a soft pop.
Beyond the windshield, Bear’s shoulders shook as he fumbled in front of himself.
“He likes to piss on things,” said Cherry as that mass of flesh and fury turned to storm back to his command chair. “Here.”
Roxy reached to take what Cherry’s closed fist passed her.
An unlabeled pill bottle filled Roxy’s hand. An empty pill bottle she’d just smeared with her DNA and fingerprints.
Cherry locked eyes with her, held the twist-cap Coke bottle out between them, shook it like a rattlesnake.
Bear jerked open the driver’s door, glared at the women, stuck out his paw.
“Don’t look at me,” DezAray told him.
“You bitches all work for me,” he snapped.
“Well, for Luke,” said Cherry as she let Bear and everyone watch her open the Coke bottle.
“Life’s a ladder, bitch.” Bear grabbed the bottle. “And you ain’t ever gonna climb above me.”
Cherry said: “Don’t stress. You’re way too stressed, isn’t he, everybody?”
“I’ll show you stress.” The open bottle of dark liquid trembled in Bear’s paw as his eyes lashed Roxy. “And tonight I’m gonna show you what’s what.”
Cherry said: “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“You got it.” Bear raised the bottle.
Roxy pictured that brown liquid glistening with skimmed and dissolved meth crystals, a hyperdrive solution destined for the hulk who smoked too much, an easy heart-attack verdict for whatever small-town law got the 911 about trouble on the road, highway patrol right there when the call came, nobody to tell the tale except women in the white van whose fingerprints and stories... She pictured herself knocking the bottle from Bear’s hand. Him believing Cherry’s lies and what truth DezAray and Star could tell, his temper exploding, his fists. His promised tonight. She saw herself telling some cop that she’d been hands-on part of Bear’s fate, but I didn’t do it, wasn’t me after the money or because of... whatever.
“Sometimes,” Cherry said straight into the dawning light on Roxy’s face, “you give somebody a chance.”
“What chance’ve I got?” whispered Star.
Roxy imagined stories Cherry’d tell creepy Luke, the chance he had coming, the chances a situation named Roxy would have cupped in Cherry’s red smile.
We all gotta do.
She said nothing as Bear tilted the bottle and glugged down what it held. He burped, wedged himself behind the steering wheel.
Whir went the dented side door of the white van Roxy threw open. She knew the only thing she could count on being there for her was the big sky. She stepped out under its blue forever anyway.
“What the hell!” yelled Bear. “Get your ass back in here!”
“Roxy!” cried DezAray as the escaping woman slid the van door shut. “Nobody will see you out here!”
“Nobody,” sighed Star in the way back. “Cool.”
“Bear!” yelled Cherry. “Drive off, leave her ass! Hell, you’ve already got her stash in the take, covers her tab, nothing to lose but her trouble!”
Roxy stalked to the other side of the highway.
Cherry’s shouts boomed from the van: “Show the bitch who leaves who. Get down the road, make one of us take the wheel while you call Luke, then—”
“Shut up!” yelled Bear.
Cherry yelled louder than she needed to: “You got it!”
I got it, thought the woman standing on the side of the road.
The van spun gravel as it sped back onto the road, a white blur on the gray-snake highway, shrinking, going, gone.
The woman stood watching with only the clothes she wore and the secrets she bore, alone on the side of a two-lane state highway that scarred the golden prairie beneath that massive blue sky. She heard a meadowlark whistle. Smelled the earth, the oil of the blacktop road, knew where she was, the direction of a face and a town where people lived.
She shouted her true name to the wind.
Started walking.
Part III
Custer Country
The Dive
by Jamie Ford
Glendive
Carla “Train Wreck” Lewis bought her whiskey at ten a.m., right when the state liquor store opened for business. Not because she was eager for a breakfast of barleycorn mash, but because she didn’t like to show her face in Glendive anymore, especially since she’d had her nose broken in her last fight. Getting KO’d in an unsanctioned MMA tournament held in the parking lot of some Chickasaw casino had altered her brooding good looks as well as the trajectory of her fledgling career — if you could call getting shinned in the head a vocation.
The Liquor Store Lady raised a concerned eyebrow. “I don’t mind taking your money, honey, but if you keep coming in here every day for a bottle, it’s gonna become a habit.”
The silver-haired woman behind the counter had a good Christian name and probably an interesting life to go along with it, but everyone Carla knew back in high school just called her the Liquor Store Lady.
“And what kind of habit would that be?” Carla asked, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.
“The kind your mother wouldn’t approve of.”
Carla removed her sunglasses to reveal two black eyes — the unwanted offspring of a nose that now pointed ten degrees to the left, the result of fighting a southpaw for the first time. Carla gained new respect for the Liquor Store Lady when the woman didn’t even blink at the temporary ruin of her face.
“My mother doesn’t tend to approve of anything I do,” Carla said with a shrug. “Never has. Lucky for me, the feeling’s mutual.”
The Liquor Store Lady bagged the bottle of Roughstock. “Yet here you are, back in town. When I heard you won a couple of them crazy fights, I figured you’d left Dawson County for good this time. I didn’t think you’d let a beating in the ring send you running back home.” The woman cocked her head and raised a concerned eyebrow. “Or did some boyfriend lay hands on you?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” The words hurt more than the pain in Carla’s blocked sinuses. Especially since her ex-boyfriend, Sturgill Runyon, had also been her trainer and manager. The moment her perfect 3–0 record took a hit, he’d dropped her off at the nearest hospital before skipping town with her show money and the redheaded lefty who’d spilled Carla’s blood all over the canvas. Carla didn’t bother finishing Sturgill’s we can still be friends texted apology. Instead, she deleted all his messages and blocked him on her phone. A final lesson in self-defense.
The irony was that Sturgill said they’d been offered five grand for a worked fight and begged Carla to take a dive. She refused and took a beating anyway.
“And I’m guessing you know why I’m back in town,” Carla said as she grabbed the bottle by the neck. “There aren’t many secrets around here.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” the Liquor Store Lady chuckled. “That being stated, I am very sorry about your mother’s present situation.”