Valentine(66)

It was all over by four o’clock, he says. Simple assault. Probation and a fine to be paid to the Ramírez family. These cases are hard, he says. I’m sorry, Mary Rose. He was out by five o’clock this afternoon. The machine switches off.

Corrine and I sit there in the dark without saying anything, but I can guess what she’s thinking. Because did anybody believe for a minute that he would be convicted? Anybody but me?

I’m sorry, she says, but I’m already on my feet and heading inside to check the windows and doors, and my kids. On my way back, I fetch Old Lady out of the hall closet, check to make sure it’s loaded. When I step onto the patio and Corrine sees me holding the rifle, she stands up with a groan. She pulls two cigarettes out of her pack and sets them on the table.

If you’ve got something to say to me, I tell her, then go ahead and say it. But don’t you dare tell me not to be pissed off.

Hell no, Corrine says. Be pissed off. I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

The wind is picking up, and for the first time, I wonder if there’s going to be some rain in the next couple of days. Corrine puts her hand on Old Lady and gently rubs her thumb across the walnut stock. That’s a beautiful rifle, Mary Rose. Potter had one like this. I sent it up to Alice when he died. Sometimes they’re so pretty, you forget what they can do. Anyway, it’s hard being alone with two kids all day, every day. Ask for help, if you need it.

I laugh. Did you?

Beg your pardon?

Did you ever ask for help?

No, Corrine says. The wind catches several loose strands of her thin hair and blows them across her face. She turns to go home, wobbling against the table and nearly tripping over one of my extension cords.

Grabbing the cord, I tell her to hang on. I walk over to the outlet and plug it in. Light floods every corner of the backyard. Good Lord! Corrine’s hands fly to her face and she blinks hard. It’s like a prison yard back here.

Six white extension cords are stretched across the back patio, each of them connected to an aluminum spotlight. Sterling lights, my granny used to call them. She set them out when coyotes were eating the chickens. My backyard is filled with great circles of light, the darkness barely clinging to the edges. I can see everything.

After Corrine has left, I stand out there with the light streaming through my skirt. I know I can’t fire Old Lady out here in the backyard, not this time of night, so I grab Aimee’s .22 rifle. I line up Dr Pepper cans on the back fence and smoke one of Corrine’s cigarettes. Then I shoot the cans off the fence one by one, listening as each can strikes the dirt in the alley. When Debra Ann’s cat comes along, I sight him through the aperture. He is stalking a locust along the cinder-block fence, batting it with his paw until it falls into the alley. I switch the safety off, and wonder what that might feel like, to destroy something just because you can. After the cat wanders off, I stand out there in the dark looking at the stars and listening to the wind pick up, and when the baby wakes up and starts crying, hungry again, I set down the gun and go to him.





Debra Ann

The sky turns the color of an old bruise, and they can see the dust cloud coming from fifty miles away, blowing through the main streets of towns even smaller than Odessa, places like Pecos and Kermit and Mentone. The red haze seizes tumbleweeds and small stones and sparrows, anything that can be picked up and carried for a while before being flung back to the earth. When the wind comes barreling across those thirsty plains, the sun disappears and the cloud covers everything—water tanks and cattle pens, the cooling towers at the petrochemical plant, oil wells and pumpjacks, the sorghum fields split in half by unpaved farm roads. Outside town, cattle huddle together as wild-eyed cows bawl for calves whose scents have been secreted away by the wind. At the plant, men climb down from the towers and run like hell for the break shack. Roughnecks leave their drilling platforms and cower in their trucks, three men sitting thigh to thigh in the front seat. Or if they are new on the job or the youngest on the crew, or if they are Mexican, they lie beneath a heavy tarp tossed hastily over a truck bed, four or five men crushed together, ass to balls, trying hard not to rub up against each other.

On Larkspur Lane, D. A. stands in the front yard watching a thousand-foot cloud rise up from the earth. Tumbleweeds and newspapers roll hard down the street. Branches tear themselves from pecan trees and power lines jerk as if they are in the hands of a mad puppeteer. A screen flies off Mrs. Shepard’s bedroom window, lands on a bed of pansies next door, then picks itself up and disappears end over end down the street. Debra Ann walks over to Aimee’s house, and they stand in the yard with Lauralee and Casey, their eyes and hair filling with grit, their clothes pressed stiff against their bodies. Later, they will learn that five people died when a tornado tore through a mobile home park in West Odessa. At the plant where Mr. Ledbetter is on shift, a man fell from a cooling tower and broke his neck and died almost instantly.

Dirt blacks out the sun and the sky changes from an old bruise to a ripe plum. The storm bears down on the girls, and still they stand outside in the front yard. Mrs. Shepard opens her front door and shouts, What in the hell is wrong with you girls? Get inside! And still they stand. But when they feel a slight pause in the wind and everything grows still, when they look up and see the sky turning lavender—a sky hand-painted for twisters, Mrs. Ledbetter calls it—when the birds stop singing and the wind begins to sound like a train rushing toward them, they run for Aimee’s house.