by Judy Troy
BILLY’S MOTHER PICKED us up from school, looking heavier around the middle than she used to, although if I hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have noticed. She said she would be back at five thirty. “Don’t make me wait,” she said. “I’ll worry.” She had gotten us provisions, as she called them, which we put in Billy’s backpack; that was where the pot was stashed. I left my backpack in the car.
Then we were on our own, hiking down into and out of the shooting range, then across the stretch of open grazing. The sun was hot and fifty yards or so from us a bull was grazing.
“Want to go fuck with it?” Billy said.
“You go. I’ll watch.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
As we walked we talked about what we would do that summer. I would work for my dad at the vet clinic four days a week, and Billy would work at the grocery store for Cy the asshole. That was how Billy referred to him, and it was catching. I had come close to saying it in the car with his mother but managed to stop myself.
We made the steep climb to the ruins, then sat in one of the enclosures and lit up the joint. It wasn’t easy in the wind. There was nobody around but us—weekends were when people came. Cumulus clouds were billowing up over the big rock formation at the southern edge of New River. It was called Indian Head or used to be. There was a new name nobody could remember. We inhaled the pot as deeply as we could and held it as long as we could, coughing as if we were acting out a Cheech and Chong movie; we used to watch them with Billy’s father.
“I don’t know where we’ll get pot now,” Billy said. “I thought about calling Dad’s girlfriend, but I hardly know her. Who knows what she might do.”
“Just ask at school,” I said. “Somebody will know.”
“I’ll have to get used to that.”
“Well, it’s not like your dad was giving it to you.”
“He knew I helped myself to it,” Billy said. “So he got extra. That was how it worked with us.”
He lay back on the rocky ground with his backpack under his head, while I looked south over New River, then west at the interstate, where cars and trucks were going somewhere to do something that seemed a thousand miles away from being important.
“I don’t suppose your folks would let me live in the Airstream,” Billy said.
“They might, but your mom wouldn’t.”
“When’s Nate coming back?”
“No idea,” I said.
Billy closed his eyes, and I got up and walked north through one rock enclosure after another until there weren’t any anymore, and I was standing at the edge of the steep rock face that led into the mountains. The ring was in my pocket, and I took it out and looked at the coral stone and the silver around it. Decisions you make can affect the rest of your life, my father said, but it was only now that I understood what that meant. Like a lot of things, you had to have it happen first. But even if I had understood beforehand, I’m not sure I would have done anything differently. Because the decision didn’t seem to have been made by me. From what I could see, life sometimes told you what to do instead of the other way around. Maybe that was how it was for everybody.
I threw the ring as far as I could and waited to hear the ping of it landing, but the wind was loud, and it was so small. Nobody would ever find it.
acknowledgments
TO JACK SHOEMAKER, Megan Fishmann, Maren Fox, Liz Parker, Kelly Winton, and everybody else at Counterpoint Press, thank you for your exceptional professionalism, artfulness, attention to detail, kindness, and enthusiasm. It was wonderful to work with you.
My heartfelt thanks to Georges and Anne Borchardt for their expertise and unfailing belief in me. I owe them more than I can say.
A thank you to the Yavapai County deputy sheriffs, Dennis McGrane of the Yavapai County Attorneys’ Office, Alabama State Trooper David Jones, and Len Williamson for their invaluable help. Any mistakes in the novel are due only to me.
My continued thanks to the Whiting Foundation. I remain grateful every day. My sincere thanks to Mark Siegert, for all his help and support. And a thank you to La Posada, where parts of this book were written.
Above all, I thank Miller—for his honesty and humor, for his doing more than his share, and for twenty years of married love.