They are flaring off casinghead gases at the refinery tonight. The sky is pale, the stars countable. If Karla closes her eyes, it’s easy to imagine her hometown in another fifteen years, or fifty, or a hundred, or whenever they’ve pulled everything they can from the ground. It’s easy to imagine all the drilling equipment gone, the derricks and pumpjacks packed onto flatbeds and driven to some new desert, or coast. She sees her hometown without the churches and bars and the practice field at the high school, without the stadium east of town, or the car dealers who said they were closing down for good during the last bust, or until the next boom. She sees it without the hospital where everyone she knows was born, and everyone will go to die, quickly, if they’re lucky.
Maybe this year everybody’s talking about the Bone Springs shale and the Delaware Basin, but when the price of oil drops, the parking lots will empty out and the man camps will lie abandoned, nothing but rusting beer cans and broken windows and snakes under the beds. But here in town, curtains or drapes or old T-shirts will still cover the windows of little brick houses, and little wooden houses gone to wrack and ruin. There will still be tricycles turned over in the front yard, empty Dr Pepper bottles and sun-bleached toys, tennis shoes with the laces gone, laundry hanging in the backyard, and windowsills covered in sand. And there will still be a woman somewhere who refuses to give up. Every night before dinner, she wipes sand off the kitchen table. Every morning, she sweeps the porch clean. She sweeps and sweeps, but there is always more dust.
You can leave town, Mrs. Sibley tells her daughter, but if you go, I won’t be able to help you no more.
* * *
How do you walk from Midland to Odessa?
Head west and stop when you step in shit.
* * *
Dale Strickland is plenty drunk when he finally pays his bill and stands up from the booth he’s occupied for nearly three hours. We watch him walk to the little boys’ room, and when he stops in front of Karla, we can hear him from over here. Hey there, Valentine. You look like you just lost your best friend.
One of us starts to head over and tell her she has food up in the kitchen. Like we’ve done countless times before, for other women and girls, some of us for thirty years. Smile, he tells her. Why don’t you smile? You got a piece of coal stuck up your ass?
Karla leans toward him, and we can see her mouth moving next to his ear. We will never find out what she says, but Strickland draws back his arm and takes aim at her face. He swings and misses and staggers. When he draws his arm back a second time, Evelyn starts shouting for some of the regulars to get him the hell out. Karla is still standing next to the hostess stand with her mouth hanging open, like maybe in her seventeen years of living, no one has ever before tried to hit her.
How do you think this is going to go? Old West justice? Those men take Strickland out to the parking lot and beat him so badly that he never again shows his face around these parts? Well, sure. They’ll rough him up some. But we all know how this goes: We will all laugh and say good thing he was too drunk to land a punch, and Evelyn will eighty-six him for a couple of weeks, or until he comes in and apologizes to Karla.
Nobody wants to overreact and make this worse than it needs to be, Evelyn says. We don’t want to let things get out of hand. When things get out of hand, people start reaching for their guns, and we don’t want anybody reaching for his gun. And we couldn’t agree more. But how nice it must be for Dale Strickland and his kind, we say when Evelyn goes into her office and closes the door, to move through the world knowing everything will work out for them in the end.
To Karla, who cannot remember to smile, we say: This is our bread and butter. We don’t have time for this shit. But we promise ourselves that she will never again have to wait on him, even if it means trading for a good table in our own section, and Evelyn slips her some extra money and tells her to take a few days off, as is her custom in these situations.
The rain has already started when we walk to our cars. All night, great sheets of water pour out of the sky, settling the dust and rinsing the smell of the oil patch away. It drops nearly three inches of water before the storm moves out of town at sunrise. When the rain stops, we take a deep breath. We check for broken windows and keep an eye out for downed electric poles. When the birds start to chatter and sing, we step out of our houses and look up to see nothing but blue skies.
* * *
How long does it take a couple of Mexican oil-field workers to get a table at Evelyn’s place on a busy Friday night?
That’s no joke. Evelyn walks over with two menus, all smiles and the new orange tint of her hair glowing like a runway light. You boys got your papers? one of the regulars calls from the bar, and Evelyn shoots him a look. Better start packing your bags, the regular says, and some of us laugh and some of us look at the ceiling and some of us look at the floor, but not one of us says a word.
Our great-granddaddies drove men from their beds with bullwhips and fire, dragged children out of beds by their feet and made them watch their mamas being pulled into the fields by their hair. Some of our daddies and brothers still keep a bullwhip under the front seat. Our great-grandmothers feigned frailty until it was stitched to their hearts. Some of us still do the same. To speak up would require courage that we cannot even begin to imagine.
Are we guilty? We are guilty as sin, guilty as the day is long. If we ever stopped and thought about it for very long, and we try not to, our guilt would be as bright and heavy as sunlight in August. Come sit down at the bar and take a long look around at all of us unrepentant sinners—con artists and liars and dreamers, bigots and grifters and murderers—and know there is still time for every one of us to be saved, bless our hearts. But God help you if you should have the misfortune to cross paths with one of us before that happens.
Hey Evelyn, one of the regulars says after those hungry, bewildered men have been seated at a booth as far away from the bar as possible, here’s a good one for you. Why wasn’t Baby Jesus born in West Texas? Because they couldn’t find three wise men or a virgin.
* * *
Tonight, the lights from several new drill sites keep the stars at bay, but Karla darlin’ stands in the desert and looks upward, watches the harvest moon rise behind the cooling towers at the petroleum plant. She keeps her face turned up to the stars—her mother says there used to be more of them—because there is not much else to look at, because looking at the sky might mean the difference between living and dying. There’s sleet and ice in the winter and tornados in the spring, fires at the plant. But the sky won’t show you a gas leak or a chemical spill in the water table, or how to steer clear of a young man just a couple of weeks out of jail and looking to make somebody pay.
After the men had finished with him, one last kick to the kidneys just because they could, they said Dale Strickland sat on the gravel for a while and then staggered to his truck and drove away. And Karla thought she had dodged a bullet. People think it’s all snakes and scorpions out there in the oil patch, but hell, those are the most harmless things in the county. At least the rattlesnakes let you know they’re coming, most of the time.
Why didn’t she smile at him? Maybe because Diane still doesn’t sleep through the night and Karla is bone-tired. Maybe because she is seventeen years old and already a mother, for now and forever. Or maybe she just didn’t fucking feel like smiling. And what was Karla doing out there in an empty field, all by herself in the middle of the night, when she knows that’s no place for a girl? She was looking at the stars and smoking a joint, killing a little time on her way home after nine hours of smiling so hard she thought her teeth might shatter.
* * *
What’s the difference between a bucket of shit and Odessa?
The bucket.
* * *
He was lit up like a Christmas tree, the sheriff says when he comes in during happy hour to ask us a few questions. Whoever ran over him took the time to hit him twice, once with the front bumper, once with the back. Took h
is wallet, too. Do y’all have any idea what might have happened?
Evelyn looks up from the booth where she’s making the schedule for next week. Maybe he got out of his truck to take a leak and was stumbling around out there in the dark, trying to find his way back—she shrugs—and the other driver didn’t see him until it was too late. Maybe he picked up a hitchhiker and there was an argument over pitching in for gas. Maybe he was pushed. Maybe he finally met someone who was meaner than him, or had more to lose. She shrugs again. Guess it’s just one of those things.
Well, he suffered, the sheriff tells us. He wandered around in the oil patch all night and most of the next day. When we found him, he was covered head to toe in red mud and chiggers. Scorpions got at his ankles, and he has a bump on his head as big as a baseball, and two broken arms. The doctor says it’s a miracle he’s alive.
That’s just terrible. Evelyn takes the sheriff’s arm and leads him to a booth. I wouldn’t wish that on almost anybody.
Y’all had some trouble with him over here recently? The sheriff looks over at us. We all shake our heads. We think about the red mud on Karla’s bumpers and the new dent in her driver’s side door, the bounce in her step. And we are grateful that she has the day off.
Just the usual shenanigans. Evelyn hands him a menu. Probably wasn’t the first time somebody ran him over, probably won’t be the last. Hard to think of that one as a child of God—she laughs—or any of us for that matter.
Well, he doesn’t remember anything, the sheriff says. That’s how hard they hit him.
Maybe that’s for the best, Evelyn says. A blessing in disguise.
When the sheriff leaves, she goes into her office and shuts the door. After closing time, she sits down with us and drinks enough Manhattans to decide she’ll sleep on the cot in her office. Gals, she tells us, I am getting too old for this shit. When we put on our jackets and get ready to leave, she stands in the doorway and watches us walk to our cars.
* * *
What’s the first thing a girl from Odessa does when she wakes up in the morning?
Finds her shoes and walks home.
* * *
Nights, we watch Karla sort her money into piles—one for school, one for baby Diane, one for her mother. When her diploma from the alternative high school comes in the mail, we celebrate by letting her have a glass of wine after closing. When she turns eighteen in November, Karla tells us, she and Diane are heading to San Antonio. Maybe she’ll take a class or two at one of the colleges there.
They have more than one? we ask. How come?
Except for the chandelier hanging above the booth and a thin light shining from under Evelyn’s office door, the place is dark. We have finished the side work and counted out our banks, and now we sit together in the big booth. What do you want to be when you grow up? we ask Karla. Nurse? Teacher? Librarian? Philosopher? Ha, ha! She says she wants to do something beautiful and true, something that will blow the lid off the world. Aha, we think, a dreamer.
I’ve got this, she tells us. I can do this.
And why not, we think. She’s a smart girl.
Here’s a little bit of money, we say on her last day of work. Three hundred dollars, and a grocery bag filled with clothes our babies outgrew years ago. Here’s a hug and a kiss, and a little pistol for your purse. Carry it with you always. You might never need it—you probably won’t—but if you do, shoot to kill.
Good luck to you, Karla darlin’! Just as sure as we are standing here, you are a thief and a wannabe murderer, but we are rooting for you. We will miss you when you go. Keep an eye out for us in your rearview mirror. Watch us grow smaller and smaller, watch us disappear.
* * *
Why don’t girls from Odessa play hide-and-go-seek?
Because nobody would go look for them.
* * *
This place. Flat earth, flat sky. How long does it take for an oil derrick to rust away in a place this dry? How to describe the way home? A ribbon of brown with an asphalt hem, each sewn to the other with a thread of fury? While the wind riffles her hair and a waning moon rises over the oil patch, Karla Sibley stands in her mother’s backyard and listens for the baby. Yesterday, she turned eighteen. Tonight, their bags are packed and loaded into the trunk of a car that Karla already loves as if it were an old grandmother. By the time they return to Odessa, Diane will stand nearly a foot taller than her mother. They will walk from one end of that town to the other, and no one will know who they are.
Glory
Because sometimes she wakes up swinging, knife in hand, her finger already on the catch, Victor has learned to stand on the other side of the room when he calls to her. M’ija, he says, taking care not to use the name she hates. Time to wake up. Sometimes he calls her after the birds he loves most—wren, for the plain gray bird that will build her nest anywhere, even under pumpjacks or next to railroad tracks, or cantora, after the brown-headed cowbird that builds no nest of her own, preferring instead to leave her eggs in those of other birds. Singing, singing, always singing, morning, noon, and night. You would too, Victor tells his niece, if you tricked someone else into doing all your work. This afternoon, Glory is drowsing under one of her mother’s light blankets, her breathing regular and steady, when he calls her phoebe, for the fierce little flycatcher that sings her own name. Phoebe, phoebe, calling faint and far away.
Time to go, his voice is quieter than usual. Time for you and me to get the hell out of Dodge.
They have been planning their departure since the middle of August when Victor returned from court and rapped on her door, hat clenched between his hands, the collar of his best white shirt ringed with sweat. In preparation for the trial, he had trimmed his thick mustache and run the shaver over his head. He had scrubbed his hands for so long that the cuticles cracked and bled. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hands trembled slightly when he walked into Glory’s room and set his hat on the dresser.
Did he pay? she wanted to know. Did he pay for what he did?
Victor listened as the man in the room next door flushed the toilet and turned on the shower. Yes, he lied, Dale Strickland’s gonna pay for this every day for the rest of his life.
Now it is early September, and Victor has returned from a meeting at the district attorney’s office when Glory asks again if Dale Strickland paid for what he did. He pats the front pocket of his pants where five thousand dollars, most of it in Benjamin Franklins, is held together with a rubber band. This is her money, but she doesn’t know it yet. When they get to Puerto Ángel, he will give it to Alma. Here, he will tell his sister, for a nicer place to live and a few pieces of furniture, and school tuition for Glory. He looks away from the small shape huddled under the bedcovers and lets his gaze fall on the single heroic ray of sunlight that has pushed its way through a thumb-sized gap in the curtains. He will let her keep on believing that Strickland is at the state prison in Fort Worth, that he’ll be farting dust by the time he gets out. They’ll have to roll him out the gate in a wheelchair, Victor says, with a new set of false teeth and a bag full of extra underwear.
I hope he dies there, she says and hunkers a little deeper into Alma’s sheets. The heat broke early this year, and although Glory still turns on the air conditioner in the afternoons when she comes in from the pool, it is only for ten or fifteen minutes, just long enough to drive the stuffiness from her room. The recent storms settled the dust and smashed records for precipitation. On the street where Glory and her mother used to live, the Muskingum Draw flooded. Little kids floated on old tires from one end of town to the other, and when the water grew shallow and sprawling, when they could see the buffalo wallow ahead, now thick with mud and water moccasins, they stood and wrested their tires out of the water. Outside town, the flash floods eventually settled into ravines and gulches and cattle crossings. If Glory looks closely when they drive through the desert this afternoon, Victor says, she will see flowers she’s never seen before—butterfly daisies and buffalo bur and cactus b
lossoms the color of fresh snow.
When she was little, maybe four or five, a rare snowstorm passed through Odessa overnight. At dawn, Alma woke her daughter, and they went outside to see the ice crystals that covered the ground and sidewalks and car windows. It was the first time either of them had seen snow, and they stood in front of their apartment, mouths agape. When the morning sun cleared the roof of their complex, the ice began to sparkle and shimmer in the light. Make it stay, Glory begged her mother, but by noon, the snow had turned to red mud and soggy grass, and Glory blamed Alma—as if her mother could have stopped the sun from rising and the day from growing warmer, if only she had tried harder.
Glory rises from her bed and starts packing. I hope he suffers, she tells her uncle again. Victor nods and curls his fingers around the money in his pocket. Take it, you lazy wetback, Scooter Clemens had said, pissed off that Strickland hadn’t shown up to do his own dirty work. He slapped the bills on Keith Taylor’s desk while Keith sat frowning and looking out the window, saying nothing. After everyone had signed the agreement, Victor stood with his hat in his hands and imagined his large thumbs pressed against the man’s throat. But of all the things Victor learned during the war—that living to see another day is almost always a matter of stupid luck, that men who know they might die any minute can learn not to give a shit about who’s the All-Star and who’s the Mexican, or that heroism is most often small and accidental but it still means the world—the greatest lesson was this: nothing causes more suffering than vengeance. And Victor has no taste for it, not even as the sole witness to his niece’s suffering.
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