Читать книгу Sky Bridge - Laura Pritchett - Страница 8

TWO

Miguel Mendoza is standing out in the middle of the highway, in front of his trailer, waving his arms for me to stop.

“Miguel,” I say when I pull the car over. “I gotta get to work. I’m late.”

“Libby, thank God I didn’t miss you. I got to get to work too. My car’s broke down.”

“Where’s Juan?”

“With his abuelita. I was driving him in this morning and my car just stops, just dies, right there on the highway, and I hiked the last two miles with him on my shoulders—fuck—and left him at his grandma’s and I called to have the car towed in and hitched back here, and now I’m very late for work. Gracias a diós.” When he’s settled in the car, he makes a sign of a cross. “Now I’m carless in the middle of nowhere, híjole, that’s just great. This is just not the right part of the world to be broke in. Good thing there’s you. I figured you’d be heading to work. Shit.” He rubs the sides of his face with his palms. “Fuck.”

“I picked up a lady hitchhiking to Lamar last week. Her car was broke down too. Her daughter had just gone to the doctor for eating pennies.” I have to say this loud, because by now we’re going sixty and the windows are rolled down since it’s burning-hell hot even though it’s early June, and the wind is roaring around in the car, bouncing around and slamming into our eardrums. “The pennies were on the floor because her vacuum doesn’t work. She was working extra shifts to pay for the doctor. She was hitchhiking to work because of pennies, a vacuum, a doctor, a daughter, and because her car was broke down. Hitchhiking all the way to Lamar, that’s crazy. You smell like pot. Do you know anybody named Clark? Because that’s the name of the guy Tess took off with. I don’t know nothing about him. But Tess drove off with him yesterday and now I’m a little worried.”

He looks down at his shirt and lifts it from his body a few times, like that will shake the pot smell away, and then stares up at the ceiling of my car and closes his eyes. “Tess left?”

“Yeah. She just drove off with this guy. I’d met him before, but I didn’t really pay attention, because I didn’t think he mattered. Because I didn’t think he was going to drive off with her, you know.”

“Who’s watching the kid?” He’s talking loud too and he leans way over to me so we don’t have to try so hard, which helps the noise situation quite a lot.

“Right now? Kay. She’s going to watch her while I’m at work. I took care of her all last night, though. She’s mine now, I guess. Can you believe that? I have a baby.”

I’m busy driving but I glance at him sideways in time to see his jaw, which is right next to me, tighten underneath his skin.

“Did Tess tell you she was leaving?”

I bite my lip. There’s a lot of answers to that question, and I don’t know which is most true. Yes. No. Maybe. She used to say she was leaving the minute she graduated high school. But sometimes, when I told her that maybe we could rent a place in Lamar together, she’d agree to that. When I said that maybe the two of us could move to Denver or something together, she’d agreed to that. And after she was pregnant, we talked through other ideas, too. People’ll do that to you, sometimes—agree to all sorts of scenarios, and I don’t think she meant to be confusing, it’s just that she didn’t know.

“I’m un poquito pissed off at mothers who leave their babies right now,” he says after he realizes I’m not going to answer his question with anything other than a shrug. “And no, I don’t know any guy named Clark. He from around here? From Lamar?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’d he look like?”

“I don’t know. Tess told me yesterday, ‘Libby, this fine gentleman is going to take me on a bit of a vacation,’ and he said, ‘Sure thing,’ and she said, ‘You know, I just got to get out of here for a while. I’ll write.’ He looked like a regular guy. He was big—not fat really, but big. He had black hair. They just drove off.”

After a pause, Miguel says, “My abuelita always said that there’s two kinds of people in this world, warm people and cold people. Sometimes they trick you. You think they’re cold but you find out that underneath they’re actually warm. They got a heart after all, and it’s a heart that goes outside itself, into the world. Then you got the people who come across as warm, but underneath they’re so damn cold and empty that it’s just scary. It’s true, you know. The people who seem warm but are cold. That’s Shawny for you. That’s Tess. From now on I’m only gonna deal with people who have some heat inside them—do you know what I mean Libby? Me comprendes?”

He’s caught me by surprise—Miguel’s not the sort to say something like this—so I say something dumb, which is, “I learned a trick, which is that you rub a baby’s lower lip with the nipple of the bottle and that’s how you get her to suck. Probably you already knew that.”

“I can’t remember that far back.” He says it slowly, as if he’s thinking about it.

“Do you remember how a baby takes that bottle like it’s the most serious thing, concentrating? Her eyes are always open, staring at my shirt, but it’s like she’s thinking of the milk, how it feels going down her throat. I think that’s amazing. She’s got the cutest toes. I can’t wait till she starts fitting into the outfits I bought her, especially this one with pastel bunny rabbits on it. I got that one at K-Mart. Kay said to me, ‘Lord, Libby, quit buying outfits because babies could care less what they wear,’ but I said, ‘That’s half the fun, Kay. You’re never wanting to have any fun,’ and Kay said, ‘Honey, it ain’t going to be fun like you think, this isn’t a baby doll to dress up. Save your money for stuff she needs.’”

Miguel smiles. “Kay’s right, for once.”

“Naw. I mean, I’ll save money and all. But I can buy Amber an outfit or two. Or pictures, which is another thing Kay got all worked up about. At the hospital, I got the most expensive portrait package and she yelled at me for an hour. She said, ‘Libby, who are all these pictures for?’ and I said, ‘Lots of people,’ and she said, ‘Libby, there are about four people on this earth that care that this baby was born,’ and I said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Because Amber’s only a newborn baby once, you know. I got some extra pictures if you want one.”

“Sure, okay.”

“One of these days I’m going to get an apartment of my own and I won’t have to put up with Kay hollering at me all the time. Besides, I don’t know if she’s the best person to be taking care of Amber, but I guess it will be okay until I figure something else out.”

“You’re gonna need her. I’d stay on her good side.”

“There is no good side.”

“Then whatever side that gets you through the day.” He tilts his head and scratches at his hair. Miguel is not that much older than me, but already he’s graying near the temples and his eyes are steady and look like they’ve seen a lot, or like maybe he’s lived a long time before in some other life, but it’s funny because his face is round and he looks like a boy, so all in all he looks like he’s caught in a whole bunch of stages of life.

Miguel and I look at the car clock at the same time. It takes twenty minutes to get to town from here and I’ve only got four more minutes till I’m late, plus I gotta drop off Miguel, so I speed up to eighty-five. The wind’s whipping in the car and the noise of it vibrates around my head from a thousand different directions. Some day I’m gonna have a car with air conditioning, mostly so that I can just drive in silence.

Pastureland spreads in all directions, burnt yellow with the sun, and from here it seems like maybe the whole world might be made up of flat land and sky. Everybody’s sold off their herds so there’s a lot less cows, but every once in a while there’s a bunch around a windmill and stock-tank.

I pass a car loaded down with immigrant workers, who are probably heading to some job, and I feel sorry for them, because it’s going to take them a long-ass time to get there in that piece of junk station wagon. Then I pass Mrs. Tribble, who probably shouldn’t be driving anymore, because she goes about fifteen miles an hour down the highway and weaves back and forth across the center line and everyone around here knows to look out for her but outsiders and semi-truck drivers don’t. Then I swerve around a dead cat that’s been left on the highway, and then the road is clear again and it’s just us, zooming through the middle of nowhere.

Miguel is looking out the window too, and keeps on looking while he says, “Stupid Shawny. I can’t do this all alone.”

I glance over at him, at the angle of his face I can see. “I’m pissed at her too, you know.”

“No. You’re not angry like I am.” Then he nods at the building ahead, though I know that’s where he works. It’s right alongside the highway, a low stucco building that’s been about a million things but is currently Lupe’s Diner. The parking lot is gravel and pitted with huge potholes, which I swerve around as I get him to the front door.

“Gracias por el ride,” he says as he gets out. “Juan asks for you. He’s got an opinion on everything these days. He was throwing a temper tantrum because the moon was the wrong shape—he wanted it full instead of crescent. He doesn’t get what he wants and he says, ‘Rompiste mi corazón. You broke my heart.’ As if it’s my fault. I’m not in charge of the moon, man. I wasn’t in charge of his mom’s life.”

I start to say something and then stop. “Tell him I’ll bring him some cookies, cookies with lots of sprinkles.” Then I add, “With moons. Moons that are both shapes.”

Miguel leans over and looks in the window at me. He nods and smiles, like he’s considering something that he wants to say, and he takes a breath and does it. “We’re the ones left behind. To work our asses off, no? Maybe we should have just taken off too, but now we can’t.” His voice isn’t angry, though, it’s just tired. “You know what we got left with? Hope. I don’t know how to get rid of it. I don’t even know what the fuck I’m hoping for. Shawny’s gone. But still, I keep hoping for something. And even now, I look up at the sky and say, ‘Shawny, rompiste mi corazón, rompiste mi corazón.’ And you, you’re going to miss Tess. I know how close you were. I don’t even think she deserved your love, but she got it anyway, because that’s the way it happens. I know you’re going to miss her, and you’re going to keep hoping.” He shrugs at me, and he looks genuinely confused, and that’s the face that stays in my head, even though time moves on, even though I catch my breath and then keep on breathing, and even though I nod, and then shift into gear and leave him behind.

Frank ought to give me hell. I wish he would, in fact, so I wouldn’t feel so shitty for always being late to such a good job. But no, as soon as I park he walks out of the store with a big wave and smile, picks up a box sitting on the curb, and brings it to my car. I open up the trunk and watch him come in his usual bowlegged walk, box balanced on his round tummy and his smile half hidden by his big, bushy, western-style mustache.

“Sarah Price brought the swing—her baby doesn’t need it anymore. And Betty Zigler wants to know if you want a toddler bed, because she’s got one she’s looking to get rid of, though I told her that was years off. She’s the one who brought this box of baby clothes. I bet any storage space you and Kay had is already used up by now.”

“That’s true. You know, people don’t have to—”

“Stuff’s expensive, everybody likes to help. So, I heard Tess left.” He winks as he twists the box into the car. “Word’s already gotten around. Kay called, asking if I knew anything about this Clark fellow.”

We walk back to the store to pick up another load. There’s a bunch of baby clothes in the box I’m carrying, and Frank has three bags of diapers. “Really? That surprises me,” I say. “That Kay bothered to call.”

“Told her I didn’t know him. I know most everybody out this way, but I suppose some escape my notice. I’ll do some checking, though. Just happened to run into Chet Sanders, who knows a big, dark-haired Clark that works in Lamar, and he says he’s a quiet fellow, hauls hay, works as a mechanic. I’ll see if I can find out more.”

“It’s not like he kidnapped her or anything,” I say. “She wanted to go. She asked him for a ride. I’m sure he’s fine, she’s fine. Everybody’s fine.”

“Well, doesn’t hurt to check. With the baby and all, I thought she might stay. I guess I figured she had reason enough to stick around. But before that, I knew she’d be one of the ones who’d go. I can just tell about people. They either love this place or they don’t. And most of you young kids don’t.”

I almost say, Nobody does, Frank, it’s the middle of Nowhere, Colorado. It’s just a matter of whether or not folks figure out how to leave.

I must be making a face that shows all this, because Frank says, “Now, Libby. This place has some real advantages, and you’ll come to appreciate them more now that you’re raising a kid. It’s safe. It’s small. And people look out for each other.” At this, he swings his arm at the pile of stuff in front of us. “If you ask me, it’s the last fine place to be.”

I’d like to say something about how even I’m smart enough to see that it all depends on your perspective, because maybe he doesn’t see it but all my old schoolmates are either doing drugs or working minimum wage or in jail, and for sure they’re all bored as hell, hanging around and letting their lives go by, including stupid fucking me, and anyway, none of my daydreams are here, in this place, and isn’t that my brain’s way of telling me something?

Frank says, “Remind me to call around to see who’s going to supply night crawlers to the store this year. Everyone’s asking.”

“Okay.”

“And Ed Mongers wants to know if anyone with an alfalfa field would be willing to let him keep his bees nearby, because blooming alfalfa apparently makes good pollen, good honey—something like that. I don’t know, I can never figure out what that guy’s talking about. I told him to talk to Baxter or your mom.”

“Okay.”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“Okay.”

“You got a picture of Amber for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. And put one in the back, too, and I suppose Arlene will want one. So, you were out working cows, huh? Kay told me to take it easy on you because you look about as shell-shocked as she remembers feeling, although you’ll never say as much, and that you’re going to need some time to absorb it all.”

“Kay said that?”

“Your mom has a kind heart. She just doesn’t like to show it.” Then he adds, “I been there once, so shell-shocked I felt blasted to bits.” As he says this, his eyes drift away from mine, toward the faint blue outline of mountains, and his eyes hang there long enough that he doesn’t see the surprise in mine, although maybe he feels it, because he shakes himself loose from his thoughts and winks at me. He says, “But that’s worlds apart. Because yours involves wonder, and that makes all the difference.”

Ideal Foods. It’s stitched right there on my blue apron, in white embroidery thread, stitched by Frank himself. Stitched right above Santa Fe Foods, which is what this place used to be called.

Ideal Foods.

Santa Fe Foods.

As Frank likes to tell the out-of-towners, the name of the store is right-on in both cases, because this is the most ideal place to be. And because if you know where to look, you can still see the wagon-wheel ruts of the Santa Fe Trail.

I think he might be making both parts up. I’ve lived here my whole life and never seen any traces of wagon wheels, though I’ve touched the secret petroglyphs that only the locals know about, mostly because those places are also our party spots. Seems like the earth pulls you to places the same way houses do, and certain spots are just good for hanging out, whether you’re an Indian doing a drawing or a white girl getting drunk.

But if you ask me, this apron just looks insane: Ideal Foods Santa Fe Foods, like somebody couldn’t make up their mind.

Sometimes I think that we’re all so wobbly inside, like none of us can make up our minds about stuff, and we spend all this time waffling back and forth, which just confuses everybody. I imagine a whole room of people rocking back and forth, like they’re physically acting out what their minds do all day, and we all look like a bunch of crazies, bumping into each other all because we can’t seem to line up and walk straight, because there’s these other possibilities that must be considered. It makes me a little sad, actually, because I think we’re doing it for the right reasons and it’s hard when you’re trying to do the right thing but you don’t know what it is. And probably it doesn’t matter. People would come in here no matter what the store was named.

I straighten my Ideal Foods Santa Fe Foods apron and scrape the manure off my shoes before heading out front. I love this job. Mostly because it’s just me and my mind and my daydreams, and time gets filled up, and so does my heart, and even though my life isn’t what I pictured, at least I have this, meaning that if I can’t have the life I want, at least I can have a job where I can daydream about the life I want.

Always, I start with the ice machine in the back room, where I shovel ice cubes into clear plastic bags that say ENJOY POLAR ICE! They have these pictures of white bears on the plastic and I have a long tradition of talking with them, though I do it in my head so that people don’t think I’m crazy. I tell the first bear, I hope Kay is taking good care of my girl, and probably she’s not, and what should I do about that, you cute thing? I say to one, out of the blue, You’re a fucker. I say to another one, You think Derek’s going to leave me or what? Because Tess said he would. I say to another one, There’s no way Tess can make it out there, she’s just a girl, well, she’s eighteen, but she’s a girl. I say to another one, I’m sorry I called your buddy a fucker. I’m sure you’re all nice enough. I tell one, You’ll end up in a cooler with beer at John Martin Dam. And you, I tell another, you’ll be packed around some newly dead fish. I say to the last one, What? You think I’m crazy? Not everyone talks to pictures of goofy-looking bears on plastic bags?

After the ice come the milk jugs, which I pull forward so the rows look full and neat. Eggs and butter, pulled forward. Plastic bags and paper bags, restocked. Floor by the cash register, swept. Then I clean the table up front, which is there for people who want a bite to eat in the store. The poker table, it’s called, since that’s what it gets used for, especially when the sheriff comes in with the volunteer EMT guys after a call and they need a game of cards to get whatever crash or drowning or death out of their system. So there’s the poker table, and then I clean the smudges off the glass door, and then more restocking. Then I clean the meat room, which is where Frank grinds hamburger and slices ham. It’s this part that takes so much time—wiping the chunks of bloody meat from the machines, taking the slicer apart and putting it back together, wiping down countertops and cleaning the huge knives in the sink. The chemicals I mix in the water smell so strong that my eyes cry all by themselves and I’m always worried that anyone looking through the window to the meat room will think I’m drowning in sorrow. All this I’ve got to get done before eight, which is when I need to restock and straighten again so that I can start cleaning and mopping at nine, so that everything’s set to go for the morning by the time the store closes at ten.

Just like I figured, Derek walks in right when I’m in the meat room, right before my break, right when I’m smelling and looking my worst. I wipe my face with the back of my hand and straighten my blue apron as I turn around to see him.

His face is burnt red and a farmer’s tan shows around the neck and sleeves of his turquoise T-shirt, which reads C.A.T.S. COLORADOANS AGAINST TEXAN SKIERS. Who knows why he bought that shirt, since he never skied in his life, but he has a thing against rich people, and a thing about outsiders moving to Colorado, and I guess he thinks Texans are guilty of both, so he harbors a special resentment against them. Although not really, because Derek never gets worked up about anything; wearing a T-shirt is about as far as he’ll go.

I can tell he just got off from work at the oil rig—we joke about that, how a guy named Derek works for a rig—because he’s still got on his torn-up jeans and boots and a haze of oily dirt covers his arm hairs and he smells so bad I have to bite my lip to keep from making a face. He looks too skinny, like he’s still a gangly kid or something, waiting to fill in and grow up.

“Hey, you,” he says, poking his head into the meat room. “Take your break yet?”

“Nope.”

He tilts his head toward the door. “Come outside.”

I look at Frank on my way out, and Frank nods, so I take off my apron and bunch it under my arm as I follow Derek out the glass door. We sit on the sidewalk, our feet on the parking lot. My arms prickle as the air-conditioned cool leaves my skin and the warmth seeps in, and it smells like heat out here, like dust mixed with air that’s burning.

I reach over to scratch Derek’s back. “Tess left. Last night, just drove off with—”

“That guy? I knew it. I knew it—”

“Really? I didn’t know it.”

“Like, left, or left left?”

“I don’t know. She had two suitcases. And I don’t know where she got those, I never saw them before.”

He’s silent for a long time, then he says, “She wasn’t kidding, was she?”

“She’ll come back. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m not worried.”

“Wow, she really left you with her baby. Why didn’t you call me?”

“Didn’t want to bug you.”

“You didn’t want to bug me?”

“She just needed a bit of vacation. But I wish she would’ve held Amber more. Like at the hospital. I should have given her the baby to hold more. And I wish she would’ve told me she was leaving. Well, she kept saying she might, but I never took her serious.”

He pokes at his work boots with a stick, jabbing off little bits of dirt from the edges. “He’s dealing drugs. They’re dealing drugs.”

“No way, Derek.”

“Why else would some guy start stopping by the house of a super-pregnant woman every time he got back from some ‘delivery,’ and why would Tess ask you not to mention him to Kay?”

“He delivers stuff, Derek. He’s a truck driver. When he came back from trips, he wanted to see her. Tess is beautiful. He was—I bet they’re—You know, after she feels better–”

“Naw, drugs or wetbacks—”

“You shouldn’t use that word.”

“Drugs or wetbacks, I’m telling you.”

“And you should know better than anyone that it’s best to keep Kay—what’s the word? Uninformed about boyfriends. I tried to keep you apart for as long as I could. And even now, you still don’t like Kay.”

“Your mom introduces me as your no-good boyfriend. ‘This here is Derek, Libby’s no-good boyfriend.’”

“See?”

“She doesn’t like me.”

“She doesn’t like anybody.”

“They’re dealing drugs.”

I press my hand to my forehead. “Derek, sometimes you say the dumbest shit. No way would Tess get involved in that.”

“Then where’d she get that money she left you?”

“From wherever.”

“Five hundred bucks? From wherever?”

“Just drop it.”

“Libby, I’m sorry to say this, and don’t get all pissed off, but sometimes I think you act stupid because it’s easier. You just refuse to see things so that you don’t have to deal with them.”

“The whole world does that, Derek. Anyway, I’m never going to use that money, I’m going to pretend I don’t have it. It’s for Amber. I don’t know where Tess got it, but it’s not from drugs.”

He sighs, meaning we got to change the subject before we get into one of our fights. “Who watched the baby last night?”

“I did. She cried a lot, but that’s okay.” I’d like to tell him more, how freaked-out I felt, or how it’s crazy that there’s always something to do—boil water, change a diaper, feed, burp, walk, and then all of it all over again—and how that keeps surprising me. How I don’t know how to get a onesie over her head, or how tight to pull the diaper around her tummy, or how hard to thump her back to get the burp to come. How I don’t know if I should wrap her tight in the baby blanket, because it seems too claustrophobic. And how I didn’t know about how light and hollow she’d feel, how much she’d squawk, how red-faced and blond-haired and angry she’d be.

But I’m trying hard to do what I promised, which is not get so wrapped up in this new situation that I forget about him. So instead I say, “How was work?”

“Same.” He tucks in a pinch of chew and tilts his head. “Wish I’d get off day shift. I get off when you go on. You going to come by tonight?”

I look up at a car pulling in the parking lot. “I don’t know. Amber and all. Can you come to my place?”

“Maybe,” he says. “I’ll see how I feel.”

I tug at his shirt. “I’ll do my best to seduce you if you do.”

But he doesn’t smile. “I don’t know what Tess was doing anyway, sleeping with Simon.”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“There was nothing better to do.”

“Tess has always been too damn wild. Plus she felt like she didn’t exist or something if she wasn’t using her body. Do you know what I mean? She was never not sleeping around.”

I giggle as I do Tess’s chant: “I like the boys, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like the boys.” I can picture her exactly, her arms above her head, her hips thrusting in a dance, her dark hair whipping around her head, laughing as she teased herself.

“But Simon?”

I shrug, because that is indeed a mystery. Simon was a proud member of the Cowboy Christian Fellowship, organizer of revival meetings at the rodeos. Not because there’s anything wrong with Jesus, I guess, but because Simon never stopped to consider Jesus much; he was more interested in telling people that he was riding broncs for the Lord, and anyone knows that just doesn’t make any sense. And because he’d do things like give us bumper stickers that said GOD ANSWERS KNEE-MAIL. And because he actually asked us to donate money to him so that he could buy a Harley Davidson, and he gave us little cards on which he’d written: “Psalm 18:10 reads ‘He flew upon the wings of the wind.’ Please help me do the same.” Which is just to say, as Kay put it, this religion wasn’t coming out of anyplace true, it was just the worst and saddest kind of dedication, because it didn’t involve any thought.

That’s how it was with Simon. He was the sort whose talk couldn’t be trusted. He was wispy. For example, he sure changed his tune about abortion when it came down to his future and suddenly he wasn’t so against it anymore.

What Simon really wanted was for his parents not to know. In fact, that was the one good thing about having the baby, Tess said—that it kept Simon from getting out of it completely free and clear. At least he had to fess up. Not that it mattered much, because after his parents found out they signed him up for classes at the college in Alamosa and sent him over there early for summer classes. They said he told them he wanted no part of anything. So Tess did what they asked, which was to put that she didn’t know who the father was on the hospital papers, because otherwise the government would subtract money from his paycheck for child support and all and it wouldn’t be fair for a kid to follow him around for the rest of his life, especially since he wanted the abortion too. “They got a point,” Tess had said. “There’s no need for him to get sucked into Libby’s Situation.” That’s what she called it, Libby’s Situation. I said I didn’t care, go ahead and leave off Simon’s name, because we were going to be just fine ourselves. But Derek knows about all this, so I don’t say anything. But then it’s quiet for a while, so I say, “I wonder if he ever thinks of her?”

“Who?”

“Simon. If he thinks of Amber.”

Derek shrugs. “I doubt it.”

“I thought he might come back.”

“You did?” Derek sounds surprised, because this is something I’ve never told him.

“Well, I thought he might come back and hold Tess’s hand when she gave birth or something. I think Tess did too, because those last few days, when she was home and not feeling so great, she kept looking around, like she was expecting someone. Every time a car pulled in our drive, she’d heave herself up and look out the kitchen window to see who it was.”

“Who was it?”

“Well, you mostly. Sometimes it was Clark.”

“Just stopping in to check on his new girlfriend? His about-to-give-birth girlfriend?”

“Derek, shut up. You know what I keep thinking about? How when Tess went into labor she asked the nurse to have me wait outside. ‘She wants to do it alone, honey,’ the nurse said. I thought maybe Tess would let me in. I can see her not asking Kay, because she’d likely get yelled at the whole time, but I thought maybe Tess’d want me there. How come you think she didn’t want me?”

Derek shrugs. “You got me.”

“She was in there such a long time, Derek.”

“I know.”

“Twenty-six hours.”

“Yeah.”

“I had no idea it could take so long, did you? And finally they called me in and someone handed me a baby and said, ‘Here’s a little girl,’ and I looked at Tess and she was sleeping, or pretending to. Her hair was all knotted up and there were bruises under her eyes, and there was throw-up on her nightgown and she smelled like blood. Blood and throw-up. I was so surprised. Because Amber was a girl, and because she was so blotchy purple, and because Tess wasn’t smiling and lit up. I kept thinking, Naw, this can’t be right, this is just not what it’s supposed to be. I’m just realizing that now. How surprised I was then.”

Derek spits his chew out on the sidewalk, then drinks some water from a bottle he’s got near him and spits that out too. “Libby, you’re a mother now. That doesn’t surprise anyone except you.” Then, like I knew he would, he adds, “You just have to agree I ain’t got what it takes to be a decent father.”

“You keep saying that. You don’t have to be.”

“Okay. Just don’t ask.”

“I’m not asking.”

“You and me, we were smart enough to be careful.”

“Yeah.”

“So it doesn’t seem fair.”

“No.”

“She’s the one who messed up.”

“It’ll be okay, Derek. You’ll see.”

“The problem with Tess is that you were always taking care of her and she let you. She used you.”

“No she didn’t.”

“She did so.”

“Drop it, Derek. And anyway, it’ll be okay because this morning I helped Kay and Baxter, they were working calves. Amber slept in her car seat the whole time. Babies can adapt to anything. It’ll work out.”

Derek snorts. At first I think it’s at me, but I look up and see Ed Mongers’ old orange VW bus pulling in the parking lot. There’s two kind of folks around here, as Derek likes to say, the ranching kind and the escape-people-hippie kind, and Ed Mongers is this second kind and Derek’s not mean about it, he just finds those sorts amusing. He nods and says, “Howdy,” when Ed walks by us, but sort of like he’s being ornery, and Ed says, “Hello there,” back with a smile on his face, and he surprises me by winking at me, like he knows we’re all teasing each other just a bit. He’s got on jeans and a T-shirt and so if you didn’t know Ed you’d think he was just like everyone else, but everybody around here knows that he lives in a house that’s U-shaped and made of tires with slanted windows on one side and extra tires piled all around. There’s a crummy-looking greenhouse behind it, and a bunch of white boxes that I guess are for his bees. He sells honey at the store, and I hope that’s not his only income, because there’s just not that many people out here that eat a lot of honey.

“I ought to go back in.”

Derek nods and looks sideways at me. “Want me to take a look at your car sometime?”

“It’s not making that noise anymore.”

“Tell me if it does.”

“All right.”

He hangs his head and rubs his thumb and finger across his eyes. I can tell how tired he is because he winces, like he doesn’t have the energy to keep his eyes open.

I say, “You should look for a different job. Or make them promote you to driller.” He shrugs his shoulders at that, though, so I add, “You going to go home and sleep?”

“Maybe rent a movie.”

I run my hand down his back. “Sneak by later if you can.”

“Amber sleeping in your room?”

“Well, yeah. But I can move her over to Tess’s space.”

“Well.”

“Derek, she’s what, a week old? That’s not old enough to know what’s going on. Believe me.”

“What if she wakes up crying?”

“You’re just inventing something to be mad about.”

“No I’m not.”

“Because you think she’s going to ruin our lives.”

“No, I think maybe it will be hard to have sex with a baby hollering.”

“Just give her a chance.”

“I’m giving it a chance.” He touches my nose, and then kisses me on the lips, a soft kiss, and then his lips are on my neck. He’s smiling as he kisses because he knows I don’t like it when he kisses me that much outside the store but that I do like it, of course, because one thing Derek knows about me is that his kisses drive me crazy, they really do, they send me spiraling in a new direction every time, and he likes to kiss me just to see me change the way a person changes when they go from existing in life to being caught somewhere magical instead.

Finally he stops and hugs me, and then he pushes himself to his feet and walks to his truck. He’s wearing Rustler jeans, since they’re the cheapest kind and they get tore up so much at work. Usually I wish he’d get a better brand so he’d look nicer, but this time the sight of those skinny legs in those cheap jeans just makes me feel sorry. Sorry that he probably won’t ever have any better. Sorry that his life isn’t a little easier, a little more fun. Sorry that he’s feeling bad about us, about something that wasn’t his fault. Sorry that we’re together but that we both suspect it’s not love. Sorry that we were just kissing and now we have an ache that we can’t do nothing about. I feel so sorry that it’s not until he’s out of sight for a good long while that I can turn and head back into the store.

Here’s a smart thing I learned from Tess: If you want someone to keep a promise, you tell the whole world about that promise.

Telling the town about our deal was Tess’s way of making sure I wouldn’t back out. That was smart, because maybe I did want to change my mind a time or two. Then I realized I couldn’t. Not unless I wanted to leave town. Not unless I didn’t care if I ever faced these people again.

“All I asked her to do,” Tess would say at the start of every conversation, “was drive me to Denver for the abortion.”

And I’d say, “Tess, that’s enough now.”

And she’d say, “Libby, I can tell the story if I want to.” She’d rub her white T-shirt, stretched tight over her big belly, and say, “But no, my big sister wouldn’t do that for me. No, Libby had another alternative. She wanted me to carry the baby. If I carried the baby, she’d raise it. Sounds noble, don’t it? But she don’t know what she’s in for.” Then she shot me a look that meant, Now that everyone knows they’ll hold you to it.

My favorite response to this conversation came from Frank. What he said to her was, “Tess, your sister is a noble gal. She’ll be a good mom. Noble.” He kept saying that word over and over, like maybe he hadn’t used it before and wanted to test it out. Later that week, he gave me a raise. That’s pretty much how it went—once Tess was really showing and Kay had been informed, everyone in town found out and after that they were generous with me. They weren’t with Tess, which is maybe why she made plans to hightail it out of here after the baby came. But for me, doors got opened and people patted me on the back. When I mopped the floors, people’d stop to ask how I was doing, had I decorated a room yet, was I pretty excited? They said things like, “Aw, you’re a good kid, Libby,” or, “You got the makings to be a fine mama.”

All that made me believe I could do it. It was nice, you know, making people proud because I’d done the right thing, but also having them sympathize a bit, because the thing I promised wasn’t so easy.

Stupid me. I thought Derek would feel that way too. I should have realized long ago that he wouldn’t, and that anyway, all that attention would never be enough.