She took a seat, as instructed on a high chair along the wall and watched Casper go toward the fat man. He talked to the proprietor and she saw him give the man some money. The barman brought her a vanilla Coke while Casper spoke about business in the back.
When he returned to her side, he had a root beer bottle featuring a straw sticking out the top. "Who is that man?" she inquired, watching him with his back to them now, speaking into a telephone mounted on the wall.
Casper didn't look at her, but kept his eyes on the customers going about their games and drinks. Most of the patrons looked like farmers to her, though she couldn't reconcile what seemed like the hardest work in the world with recreation of this sort, in her thinking. They wore overalls, anyhow. There were teenagers at the front tables. Tall, angular sticks of boy men, the fattest part of them, impossibly large Adam’s apples protruding from throats that had never been shaved. Five Negro men, dressed like whites in overalls and denim caps, shared a table nearest to the bar. They had given her some consideration, but looking at Casper, knew better than to waste their time making advances.
"Fat man." he answered like it meant something.
"What does that mean?"
"Means he's fat, Mir. Don't worry now. He's gonna hook us up with deep pockets." Over the next two hours, Casper had turned down a couple of dudes who eventually approached them, getting a head shake from the fat man. When a respectable looking one about fifty entered and caught Casper's eye, he triangulated the gaze with the manager who nodded. Casper sucked the rest of his cream soda through the straw and said, "Bingo. Be right back."
He made his way across the room to the man, in the expensive clothes. They conversed briefly, both throwing over the shoulder looks back and bargaining for her. An agreement was reached and Miriam was approached by the man who failed to hide his reptilian nature underneath his expensive clothes and refined manner. Miriam knew the drill, but still felt a shiver getting the go ahead from Casper through the smoke.
He was all of a gentleman meeting her. Called her miss and held out his arm for her to join in the walk out the hall. He had a big black hearse of a car waiting which made her nervous some. Meant Casper would have a driver at least to dispatch of before he could make an entrance, but her love for and trust in Casper had yet to be proved unfounded.
Her concern increased when instead of taking her to some flea bag motel or fuck pad bungalow, he took her to a proper home in a respectable neighborhood and pulled right in to the driveway bold as innocence. She'd heard of such places before, but had to call this a first actually being there. On the television programs she'd seen, these streets seemed common and were home to the best people society had produced and she'd appropriately taken the underlying message speaking at her through television console in the back room at Jem's place to be that this was not where she belonged.
The driver, a big soft Negro with a shiny head and white smile, he wasn't using, opened her door and helped her out. The gentleman had already entered the home and the African instructed her toward a secondary structure round the back of the main house.
"Go on now, make yourself comfortable and whatever you do-" He inclined his head in a conspiratorial manner, "-don't speak to him and don't look him in the eye."
Walking toward the guest house, she tossed a look over her shoulder trying to find Casper's Chevy. Even as she entered, she felt the ink drying on that chapter of her life. She paused internally to consider what was to be learned and what could be taken with her into the next. There were things she knew would not pass through the fire, but she wasn't certain what they might be.
By the next morning it was apparent that Casper had deserted, sold her and their baby to the well groomed monster. She never spoke to another soul about her ordeal that night with the amateur abortionist, but she saw him in her sleep for years, standing over her strapped to a table, reciting from memory, passages of medical texts, poetry and all manner of school learned appreciations while he experimented. She exercised a tight grip on her voice and refused to cry out and send any extra pleasure toward him, though she was dehydrated from the tears flushed silently throughout.
She was abandoned in the woods fifteen miles outside the city with some water and a towel for the bleeding. She was too weak to walk the first day. The void where the fetus had been throbbed, keeping her from sleep. Over the course of the day, though she could not put words to the process, it filled with something darker and harder and colder by far than she'd ever guessed at in her nature. In the dusk that eventually fell, she heard dogs circling her, attracted to the blood in the air, but she passed the night unmolested.
One and counting.
Aunty Jem never betrayed the flip flop her heart did when she saw Miriam again. The child showed up at the doorstep as the last customers of the previous night were making their departures. Miriam was looking like just another starlet deciding to face facts. Aunt Jay's saw them occasionally; the ones that got out of California before dying poorly nearer to the farm they grew up on. She had the costume, but not the posture of that particular breed of prodigal.
Her clothing was gray and frayed and the marks about her where skin showed told stories she'd been warned against. Her face featured dark places beneath her eyes and her teeth looked less white than they had the last time she was seen, but there was never any mistaking her. Jem saw her coming a hundred yards down the road.
"Child." said Jem in her deep, rich voice. It felt to Miriam like hot butter sliding over her face and she imagined it filling in the many cracks and depressions she'd added in her sojourn. She carried everything she could call her own in a single over the shoulder bag, the approximate size and weight of a house cat. The essentials she carried on her person always. Her knife in the top of her boot, any pills or powders she had left in the toe of the opposite and cash concealed in various private spots.
"Hey Jem."
"How long you staying?"
"Just long enough."
"I see. Well come in and get out those rags. I'll have Sugar fetch you something clean."
Betty had talked her through the woods and found them a Salvation Army. She'd told the case worker then about hitchhiking to her momma's home in Portland. Said she'd miscarried and been left in the woods by a spooked driver. She'd let the woman read whatever she wanted into that. They'd fixed her up with a couple nights’ sleep and food as would keep you from starving.
She relayed the same story to Jem, minus the bunk about family while she cut Miriam's hair after a hot bath and afternoon nap. "I'm ready to pull my own weight around here, Jem."
"Says you."
"Taught me good."
"You all gristle and bone, child. Rest up some."
"I'm not around for long, Jem. You know that?"
"Spect as much. Don go till you ready, though."
Miriam did not cry in front of Auntie Jem, but rather waited for the time when she was alone in Jem's bed, to curl up like a baby and let loose some of the hurt and fear she'd kept strapped to her. She gave voice to some of the bitter parts, followed by hushed admissions of scares she'd acquired since leaving home. She'd made them audible, which was as far as it would go. She'd let them out that far, but kept a tight leash on them and kept them close and they licked at her body like hungry puppies until sleep was a fact requiring no acknowledgment or cooperation.
Jem stayed on the other side of the door, joining the child in a tear letting and came in to stroke her hair when she fell to sleep. Miriam slept without dreams for a single merciful night.
She'd asked Jem to style her hair up off of her forehead, but never disclosed where the notion came from; suspecting Jem would worry more than she ought when Miriam took her leave again. The result was something of a disappointment to her, but as she negotiated with the mirror she made something more like agreeable terms when she employed heating instruments.
She found work in the house and yard to occupy her body while her mind resolved whatever it was working around. She lea
rned something about cooking too. As she put on weight, Jem encouraged her toward town, saying there was plenty opportunity for a woman not afraid to work and she could do her proud by carving out a respectable life, independent of the needs of men. She always rebuffed Jem's suggestions by informing her that she had needs of her own that didn't fit any cozy, over the fire place type pictures and leave it at that.
Her needs were not yet in focus, but called to her louder all the time.
One morning, Miriam slipped out while Jem made up the room. This surprised neither. She returned to the highway, plying her trade for distance and sustenance, heading once again for California, because that was where the road ended.
The man behind the bar just wanted to wash his glasses and not give the time of day to the young girl with the short styled haircut and attitude. He'd had her pegged as soon as she'd come in. Sex fell off her like breath and as much as he might like a ride, he knew when he was over his head. So he only attempted to answer her question. "Where you headed?"
Miriam leaned in to savor the sulfur smell of the struck match as testament to the general fragrance of the honky-tonk. When the scent died, she would rely on the cigarette.
"Casper."
"Wyoming?"
Miriam looked the bartender in the eyes. "You know any other?"
"Guess I just never met nobody headed to. Coming from, sure, but headed to? On purpose? Don't come across that much round here."
"Got some kinda high opinion of this place, huh?"
"You don't?"
"Nothin special, far as I can see. Who is it I should meet?"
He indicated a cluster of bearded men hovering over a pool table, great swollen guts hanging over the front of their pants, all covered in once white t-shirts that ran the length and the width and the return trip underneath back to the jeans they tucked into. Suspenders and ball caps rounded out the club uniform. She'd spotted them the moment she'd entered. Knew the look, knew the type. "Anybody particular?"
The bar tender shrugged. He suggested something along the lines of "Bitch." under his breath as she slid off her stool and wiggled her narrow ass at him across the room.
"Who's the fortunate gentleman going to make my acquaintance on the way to Casper this evening?" she offered by way of introduction. This turned heads in the general direction of her feet and she waited patiently, posing while they slowly turned northward.
One of the younger stood up and squared his shoulders, centering his fleshy hands on his cue. He tilted his red cap back on his head and offered "Missoula?"
She took a pouty puff on her cigarette. "Don't even rhyme, now do it?"
She found she needed neither his presence nor advice to have success as was equal to what they'd had as a team. She certainly didn't need his blathering mouth, certain of its own importance and just about full of shit. She also felt no great loss when considering his affections, seeing in a behind her now way how hollow a gesture they had been.
If there were two ways of learning a thing, Miriam would always choose the bloody. This scholarly style had a way of marking her so that every year showed. At seventeen, she made another near fatal mistake. Having set out for California, she'd ricocheted off the coast line and found herself touring Wyoming. She was making a concentrated effort to escape the orbit of the region and spotted a likely ticket elsewhere at the cash register. He was headed south by southeast and she said good enough. Her appetite for wandering not yet replaced by anything else, Miriam continued to work in trucks and that night she hesitated to pull her weapon at the first itch to. The result was she got a detached retina from making the acquaintance of the dashboard with his hand behind her head forcing the meeting to take place rapidly and without time to prepare.
The further result was she took another beating, like perhaps the kind you would like to give a loved one except they aren't there and you wish they were and would read between the lines, understand exactly what you meant. She's not all the way conscious for most of it.
The beating was received after she took off the tip of his pecker with her front teeth when she woke up in a dark place. She felt like her insides were jelly. Sore jelly like a great, single bruise. The pungent smell in the enclosed space was familiar as was the difficulty walking. She had to shut her damaged eye to make sense of the place, such as was available to be made.
She spotted her assailant asleep, without his trousers, on a cot ten feet and as many painful shuffles away. Apparently there'd been a party. He'd had red rimmed eyes and favored her with darty amphetamine glances when he'd first picked her up, and it looked like he'd spent up a year's worth of twitch while he drove. Judging from the all smashed together feeling her guts were reporting, his fornication style was jackhammer and goodnight.
He looked now like every man she'd ever met and had no detail to him at all. In the other direction was escape out the door of his truck, she reckoned herself rightly to be in the back of. The consideration of options lasted not half a minute. She went about it slow and with great care, not wanting to spoil the opportunity presented her. Carefully, she motioned herself, with great pain, till she was kneeling over him. She found it hidden within itself like a woodland creature sheltering in the roots of a tree and used her fingers gently to coax it out. It responded to her mouth and once she had its confidence she bit down.
The grip she employed was not one designed to preamble escape, but held rather a weight that lent legitimacy to the permanence of her claim. It belonged to her now, the way she'd seen terrier dogs lay hold of a toy. She'd seen them lifted off the ground, supported only by their stubborn grip. She knew that there was finality in those clinched jaws.
When he separated her from him, she retained possession of his dickhead and smiled away as he lay into her with his hands. Eventually he passed out and she was not killed that day, though she told herself she was prepared to die. She would be his last victim and decided that it was also her last time to be one. There was a leverage of power in the ability to follow through your intentions with the possibility of death introduced. She felt it for the first time that night, his flesh now hers swallowed and not to return. Let him do what he needed, she'd only done the same.
In the end, she did it because revenge was holding sway over her hierarchy of needs. She'd got away before, but had never taken revenge. It tasted sweet. Revenge, not his pecker.
She woke again near the back of the rig, gray light insisting its way between the floor and swinging doors. There were still stars visible in the pre dawn sky and the cold air ran toward invigorating, though she was not a candidate for walking. She strained her neck toward the draft and breathed what she could of freedom. It was enough.
She felt unconsciousness taking her again, but did not fight. She was ready for whatever came next, on the first page of a new chapter in her life.
One and counting.
The Morning After
Saturday
Terry rooted through the pantry for kibble, but there wasn’t any. Beth hated the dog as an extension of him and she never bought it any food. He’d brought the puppy home the day before she came back from the hospital with their first born. He figured it was only fair.
One for him, one for her.
Six months later, she’d given him the weekend to get his things out while she took the baby to visit her mother in Fayetteville. Layla whined and turned in circles as he pushed aside cans of corn and peas, green beans and Gerber bananas.
He’d collected his clothes from the front lawn and found her note nailed to the front door. Be gone by Monday. His stuff, con- sisting primarily of baseball cards, pocket knives and 8mm stag films, was pretty well picked over by the time he’d come home that afternoon and what was left had been damaged by the morn- ing’s rain. He recovered a print or two that had sheltered under his clothes. Three Orifices of Eve and Bush-War had either been unpopular or undiscovered and would have to suffice for a while.
Ronald and Tink Hodge, the neighborhood moron twins, had a h
abit of going through houses during work hours and had absconded with the lion’s share of his things. The twelve year olds had pilfered his stash before and he’d made no fuss. He figured he was a lot of things, but not a hypocrite. Beth had complained for months about his disinterest in protecting their home and then she had a shit fit when he bought the puppy.
The fuck did she think it was for anyway?
He grabbed the pistol from the closet and his Styx records, left the lava lamp and black light posters. Everything he grabbed would fit in the cab of his pickup. Then he’d got his easy chair lodged in the front door, unable or unwilling to maneuver it any further by himself. Now the dog was going apeshit for kibble and it was ten minutes past Miller time. So he settled on a personal favorite.
“Ready for a treat?” he asked the dog. The whir of the can opener sent her into hysterics until the click of her nails on the linoleum sounded like Gregory Hines on speed. Spaghetti-O’s always gave her diarrhea, but that wasn’t his problem any more. He set the bowl down in front of her and grabbed a longneck from the fridge.
In the front room he collapsed into his chair at an awkward angle, suspended some ten inches off the floor and it gave a couple back. He wrapped his lips around the beer and set to contemplating whether or not it was the sorriest day of his life. Had he misjudged his wife’s moral fiber and pushed her too hard or simply never cared about their union and prepared from the beginning for this inevitable outcome?
The chair creaked, then crashed onto the porch under his weight, leaving gashes in the door frame and tears in the vinyl, but he was out, officially and for good. Layla came scampering in to inves- tigate the sound and leaped into his lap. She sniffed at his crotch and then his face and burped. A Chef-Boi-Ardee and dry cereal cloud hung level with his head. He fanned at it with his right hand.
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