Backseat Saints (2 page)

Thom left early. Before his run, he had to drop Fat Gretel off to get her shots, then go by his daddy’s main store and put
an antique Winchester in the safe. He practically had to drag poor Gretel; she knew a car ride alone with Thom meant the vet.
Thirty seconds after the front door shut, I was butt-up under the kitchen sink, digging my Pawpy’s old .45 revolver out from
the stack of rags behind my cleaning products. We had another .45 and a .38 at the house, both automatics, but they were registered.
Not even Thom knew I had Pawpy’s. A gun this old and unused was off the books even before I stole it out of a shoebox in my
daddy’s closet and carted it halfway across America. It’s the kind of gun a certain type of cop would like to have on hand.
A “drop weapon,” they call it, because they can lay it down by the body of a bad man and say that he pulled first.

The pin had broken off years ago, and since revolvers don’t have safeties, I took the barrel out to travel it. Until I put
the barrel back in and latched it, it was only two lumps of inert metal. I dropped both pieces in a Target bag. Then I ran
back to our room to grab a handful of bullets out of the gun safe. While I was there, I changed into baggy, dark jeans and
a floppy T-shirt, tucking my long dark hair under a baseball cap. Short as I was, in these clothes I looked like a kid. No
neighbor, catching a glimpse of me trit-trotting down the street near school bus time, could possibly think of pretty, feminine
Ro Grandee.

I jogged to Mrs. Fancy’s car and got in. I shoved my gun under the passenger seat, then I started up the car and headed out
to Wildcat Bluff. On the flat land behind me, Amarillo stuck up like an ugly thumb, and I was glad when the rare hills near
the bluff began
to hide it. I parked in a pull-in lot that bellied up to the woods, a mile and change past the lot Thom favored.

Counting the time it would take for him to finish his errands, I was a good half hour ahead of him, but I found myself running
down the trail like he was fast after me. The Target bag banged against my leg, the loose bullets jangling. I made myself
slow to a measured jog and breathe deep, scanning the woods for the right spot every time the trail took a sharp turn.
Ready, Teddy, hands rock steady
, as Daddy used to say when he was teaching me to shoot. He’d started me on .22s when I was so small that the knock back from
a .38 would have pitched me over.

At a hairpin curve near the middle of Thom’s route, my gaze caught on an underdark beneath the waxy leaves of a thicket of
ground ivy. I paused. Peering down, I could just make out the lip of a long ditch, running like a crossbar to the point of
the trail, about a yard past the first row of trees. Perfect.

I slid myself into the woods, easing between the questing offshoots of a honeysuckle vine. I curved my spine to limbo under
branches. I slipped each foot between the high fronds of ground fern to the dirt underneath, precise, like I was stepping
into strappy shoes. Once off the trail, I looked back the way I came and saw every leaf unbent, every twig unbroken. Even
Davy Crockett wouldn’t think so much as a rabbit had passed. Some days it’s good to be slight.

Some days it’s not; I could feel the bruises running in a chain down my back, left of my spine, four in a vertical row. The
purple black bloom in the center of each was the size of Thom Grandee’s fist, and the yellow and pale green mottling was different
around each, like the off-sparks from a firework caught in a picture on my skin. They ached me something fierce as I squatted
to check the trail’s visibility through the green haze of leaves.

Down in the ditch, I’d have a clear view up the slope. I would see him coming. He’d be at the top of the gentle hill, the
rising sun’s light in his face. I’d wait to shoot till I could see the whites
of his eyes. Better yet, I’d watch his Roman profile pass, his short forehead leading directly into his long, straight nose,
his wide mouth set in a line as he pushed himself. His blond hair would be darkened down by sweat. I knew every line of his
face; I loved them all. The beauty of my laying at the hairpin was that I would see him going, too. His familiar face might
stay my wifely hand as he passed, but I could bury two bullets in the anonymous back of his head.

As I lowered myself down into the ditch, motion caught my eye. At the other end, perched on a branch, a long-legged burrowing
owl was swiveling his head around in a perfect half circle to face me. He’d been sitting still, and his mottled feathers blended
with the shadows, so that he’d been invisible until he moved. He was perched on a root, head poked up over the lip. He was
unconcerned, sure that he was not what I was hunting. Still, his round eyes, gold and blank, looked mildly affronted by my
intrusion.

“Leave if you don’t like it. I have business here,” I told him, but I didn’t sound like myself. The words came out pure Alabama,
neglected consonants, long vowels.

If the owl had had shoulders, he would have shrugged. He was a witness, not a judge. I kneeled down in my half of the ditch,
and he stayed in his.

I said, “Lord, I am talking to owls. I might well be crazy enough to shoot my husband.” Now I could hear the sharp, small
twang Texas had given me. Half a dozen years here, and my voice had grown corners.

The owl fluffed himself. He didn’t like me breaking the quiet morning. I shouldn’t be making noise anyway.

I scrabbled in the Target bag, finding the loose barrel by feel and then picking out six bullets. I palmed five and slotted
the last one into an empty chamber. It made a snicking sound, then the whispery rub of metal on metal as it slid home. And
there I stuck, one bullet loaded, as if I were undecided.

“Nothin’ left to decide,” I whispered. Pure Alabama again. I didn’t
sound like Mrs. Ro Grandee, Thom’s cool-mouthed wife whose tongue would not melt butter. I sounded like Rose Mae Lolley, a
girl I’d buried years ago, when I was eight, the year my mother disappeared. She left her rosary and took her flowered shoes,
the ones she seldom wore because the toes were stuffed with money.

Thom knew Rose Mae was there, though. He’d known she was in me from the very night we met. Sometimes I wondered if that bad
girl hidden in the deeps of me was the thing he really loved.

Seven years ago, at three
A.M.
on a warm spring morning, he’d come into the diner where Rose Mae Lolley was working. She was wearing the mask—warm smile,
light step—of the fake girl she’d grown over herself. Rose Mae had worn that face over hers all the time, every waking minute
for almost two years now, since the moment she’d figured she’d taken enough beatings for her long-gone mother and lit out
from her daddy’s house. She’d waitressed her way west down the coast, every few months trading one small town with a bad job
and a worse boyfriend for another, much the same.

She’d yet to find a town or job or man that made her feel safe enough to take that face off. At work, her sweet exterior upped
her tips, and her most recent home was a cheap furnished room with kitchen privileges and no privacy. Her landlady, Kim, claimed
to be a lesbian, but Rose guessed she had given up women in favor of Captain Morgan. Kim would barrel into Rose’s room at
all hours, demanding to know where the salt had gotten to or asking if Rose had taken any messages. She never knocked or apologized,
even the time she burst in on a freshly showered Rose wearing nothing but a sheer white bra.

“You ain’t got drugs in here, do ya?” Kim’d said that time.

“Of course not,” said Rose in her best pep-squad girl voice, picking up her towel. She was trying not to glance at her bed.
A pair of red fuzzy dice was lying beside Rose’s uniform. The dice were Kim’s, and Rose had stolen them out of the coat closet.
She planned to take them to work and sneak to hang them in the short-order cook’s car. He seemed like he was a single pair
of fuzzy dice
away from lighting out for Vegas, and since he couldn’t keep his hands off her ass, Rose Mae wanted to give him a nudge.

Kim didn’t notice the dice. She didn’t seem to notice Rose’s state of undress, either, even though Rose Mae Lolley laid bare
was worth seeing: long waist, tightly curved hips, creamy skin. Kim turned laboriously and began her drunken shuffle out.
Some lesbian
, thought Rose, tossing the towel over the dice in case Kim looked back.

“I don’t do drugs,” Rose called after her, still working the perky, and Kim grunted in a way that could have meant satisfied
or disappointed.

With no safe space, Rose kept her smiling shell on all the time, but some days it felt as thin as the candy pink cotton of
her retro fifties waitress uniform. The uniform had a white Peter Pan collar and a miniature apron. It was cut to fit and
the skirt was short, and when Thom Grandee came in on a double date that first evening, his girl didn’t like that uniform
one bit.

The sign by the door said, “Seat Yourself,” so Thom did, sliding into one side of a four-top booth. His date followed, and
the other couple sat down across. Rose was the only waitress on at this hour. She could tell by looking they were from the
A&M Kingsville campus. She’d pegged them as sports boys, taking their dates for eggs after the victory party.

And it had been a victory. Rose Mae could smell it on the boys as she came around the counter bringing the coffeepot and four
plastic-coated menus, a mix of pheromones and beer and fresh male sweat. The smell of win.

They were both good-looking boys, but her eye went right to Thom. He was six feet tall with a thick, meaty build that said
football to her, and she liked the Roman nose. She also liked the way he eyed her as she swayed toward them. To the other
couple she was a vague pink waitress shape, bringing menus. Thom looked.

Thom’s date had a high ponytail that was beginning to unravel into fronds onto her pretty neck. She had a mound of bangs,
flat
on the back side, teased into a rigid foam of curls that humped over her forehead. This late, her Breck was beginning to fail
her, and the bang puff was listing to starboard.

When Thom spent too long looking at Rose’s face before the inevitable stealthy eye slide down her body, Rose could feel the
girl bristle up. Rose was only twenty-one, but this girl looked young even to her. A freshman with a glamour shot fake ID.
The girl narrowed her eyes, venomous, telling Rose plain that she wasn’t used to chapped-lipped waitrons with no tan stealing
her male gazes. She’d no doubt been the prettiest girl in her high school, but Rose was willing to bet that it had been a
small school.

“Good morning!” Rose gave them her best three
A.M.
cheerful, passing out the menus. “Welcome to Duff’s. I’m Ro. I’ll be taking care of you this morning.”

They all had flipped their mugs right-side up, so Rose leaned across to pour coffee, first for the dark-haired boy, then for
his date.

“Morning,” Thom said back.

He was the only one who spoke to her. She turned to pour his coffee. And then, because he was looking at her face again, not
her tits and not his date, looking at her like she was a person, she found herself saying, “So, what position do you play?”

“Outfield,” he said. “Sometimes third base.”

She shook her head. “I asked what position you played, mister. I didn’t ask what you did in spring to stay in shape.”

He grinned then, giving her an assessing nod, like he was adding smart and sly to the pretty. “Strong-side safety.”

“Oh. Fast boy,” she said, and started filling his date’s cup.

“What the hell are you doing?” his date demanded, bangs atremble.

Rose stopped and tipped the pot upright, smile fading. “I’m sorry?”

“Did I order coffee?” Bangs asked.

Rose said, “I’m sorry. You turned your cup over.”

“Yeah. Because I want hot cocoa.”

“Sure thing,” said Rose. “I’ll get that while y’all look over the menu.”

“What can I get for you today?” the girl said to her friend across the table. “What would you like to drink? Would you care
for a beverage? You’d think you’d get those lines on, like, the very first day of waitress school.”

Rose felt the fever of a blush rising in her cheeks, and she knew it was painfully visible on her pale skin. Dropping her
eyelids, she focused on her feet so that none of them could see the furious deeps in her eyes. She held her hand very still
to keep from pouring scalding coffee over that bang puff. She could practically smell the ashy scent the girl’s hair products
would release, could hear her surprised cry as the hot liquid seared her scalp and ran down to blister that smug face. While
the girl was screaming and clawing at herself, Rose would say, calmly, “You turn your cup over in a diner, it means you want
coffee.” Then she’d call an ambulance.

“I apologize,” Rose said. Her voice was trembling with the effort that it took to stay her hand. She picked up the cup with
the small splash of black liquid in the bottom. Made herself pivot. Forced herself to walk away.

Duff’s was quiet. She heard her every footfall on the floor. There were the two obligatory old drunk guys silently nursing
coffee at the counter, yellow-skinned because they had maybe half a working liver left between them. They hadn’t asked out
loud for their coffee, just flipped their mugs over and waited to be served. A couple in the back had cuddled up on the same
side of their booth, whispering to each other. No one was feeding the juke. She could hear Bangs saying something low and
giggly. She caught the word
Casper.

Her blush was traveling, flushing the backs of her pale, bare legs. The girl’s friend was laughing with her now in a high-pitched
trill that sounded to Rose like a mean pig squealing.

Back behind the counter, Rose dumped a packet of Swiss Miss with minimallows into a clean mug. That girl, Bangs, was wearing
a sundress, crisp green and new. She had a sheer white sweater thrown around her shoulders. It was a frivolous sweater, the
kind a doting mother would buy along with new bedding and a tiny dorm refrigerator. Rose would bet her week’s tips that that
same mother kept Bangs’s girlhood room intact, waiting for Christmas and spring break.