In a minute, honey. Suzanne gently closes the door and walks to the back of her car, where she leans against the trunk and waits for practice to be over.

In a few minutes, the boys run into the locker room and the coaches head to their office to watch tape. The boosters climb down from the bleachers and wander to their cars and trucks, still talking about the season, the price of oil, and the concert Elvis played at the coliseum last March. And still her daughter weeps. When three men walk over to her car, one after another, each pausing awkwardly and glancing toward the front seat, Suzanne apologizes for her daughter and then reaches into her tote bag and hands each man a gift bag—one for a wife, one for a girlfriend, one for himself, though she will never, ever breathe a word about it. She smiles and winks and tucks their money into her little white envelope. She shows them the Tupperware she’s got in the trunk.

Someday Suzanne is going to die, and when she does, what will people say about her? That she died owing money to half the town? That she was a mean drunk? No and no. That she died without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out? No. They are going to say that Suzanne Ledbetter was a good woman, a clever businesswoman, that she toed the line. She was an angel here on earth, they will say, and our town is poorer for her loss. She looks at her list and sighs and takes up her pen and then reaches over to pat her daughter’s back. You don’t ever let them see you cry, honey. That’s all I meant.

Lauralee sits up and wipes the back of her hand across her nose. I know.

You have to be tougher than them.

Before she met Jon, Suzanne herself certainly ducked a swinging fist a time or two, or an open hand. She dodged fingers curling around her ass, climbing up her back, rubbing her shoulders. She was twelve years old the first time a boy grabbed her breasts, but she won’t tell Lauralee the details—not yet, she’s still too little. For now, all she will tell her daughter, as they sit together in the car with the air conditioner turned on high, is this:

Some boy tried to grab me once, when I was just a little older than you. He walked right up to me, in front of God and everybody else, and put his hands on me.

What did you do?

Well, I picked up a two-by-four and hit him right upside his head. Knocked him right out. He didn’t wake up for three days. Needed stitches, too—fifteen, or maybe it was twenty, I can’t remember.

Did you get in trouble?

Heck, no. His mama tried to send the sheriff over to ask me what happened, and when I told him, you know what he said to me? He said: Next time, make sure you pick up a board with a couple of rusty nails sticking out of it then get one of your brothers to drag him out there into the swamp and leave him for the gators. Then he gave me a dollar—which is like five dollars now. He patted me on the head and told my mama she needed to come down to the station the next day and talk with him about an unrelated matter. Suzie Compton, he said to me, you are the best thing about this place. And do you know what I did with that dollar?

Bought candy?

No, ma’am. I put it in a box that had a padlock on it, and I wore that key around my neck until I left home for good.

Corrine

When Debra Ann asks if she can borrow Potter’s old army tent, which has been gathering dust in the garage for twenty years, Corrine tells the girl that she and Potter spent many happy nights in that tent, hunting white-tailed deer in Big Bend or stargazing in the Guadalupe Mountains. They took their first real vacation as a family in the summer of 1949, the three of them staring into the Grand Canyon, Potter and Corrine gripping Alice’s fingers until she howled. When they drove back to their campsite, Alice stood swaying between them on the bench seat, and every time they hit a pothole, they laughed and threw their arms in front of their daughter saying, wouldn’t it be funny if Alice went flying out the window? When she climbed down from the seat and fell asleep on the floorboard between Corrine’s feet, Potter turned off the radio and slowed to a crawl until he could carry their daughter to the tent and zip her into the sleeping bag they had placed between theirs.

D. A. yawns and scuffs her feet, rubs her eyes and tugs on her eyebrow. Okay, Mrs. Shepard. Can I borrow it?

That’s what you do when you get as old as me, you remember as much as you can, all the time. How are you doing, Miss Pierce? Corrine asks, and Debra Ann smiles. It is the first honest grin Corrine has seen since the Fourth of July came and went with no sign of Ginny.

I’m doing good, D. A. says. I’m going to help my friend Jesse get back home to Tennessee.

Who? Corrine starts to say, because Debra Ann is too old for imaginary friends, but she decides to leave it alone. Who knows what story D. A.’s been cooking up this summer, what kind of complicated narrative she’s woven? Who can know the mind of a child?

You’re doing well, honey. What happened to Peter and Lily?

They aren’t real. Jesse’s a real person.

Mmm-hmmm. Corrine reaches over and pushes the girl’s hair out of her eyes. Come over tomorrow and I’ll trim your bangs for you.

After Debra Ann has dragged the tent down the street, a butter-and-sugar sandwich clutched in her free hand, Corrine pours herself a glass of buttermilk and makes a fried egg sandwich while she half watches, half listens to the news. Jimmy Carter, gas leak near Sterling City, rig counts up and beef down, not a word about Gloria Ramírez or the trial scheduled in less than a month but tonight, there is a new horror. The newscaster cuts to a reporter standing next to an oil lease near Abilene. A local woman’s body has been found, the fourth in the past two years. What a thing an oil boom is for a town, Corrine used to tell Potter bitterly. It brings in the very best sort of psychopath. And if the prognosticators can be believed, this boom is only just beginning. She switches off the television and heads outside to move the sprinkler.

The summer has been dry as chalk and Corrine has made a routine of turning on the sprinklers in the morning and moving them slowly across the front yard. In the afternoons, she washes down a sandwich with an iced tea and bourbon, or Scotch, then drives to Strike-It-Rich to buy cigarettes. A few weeks earlier she pulled Potter’s truck into the garage for good. Climbing in and out of the cab was killing her knees, and she missed the FM radio and the dark-red crushed velvet interior of her Lincoln, the sensation of feeling as if she were steering a yacht down Eighth Street. Sometimes she puts a mixed drink in the cup holder and drives around town with the windows down, facing off with out-of-state drivers and equipment haulers who cut her off when she tries to change lanes. She might hate the oil, but she loves the heat and the land, its spare beauty and the relentless sunshine. It was something she had shared with her granny, along with her fondness for having a cup of coffee and chocolate doughnut for supper.

And this, too, is part of Corrine’s routine: Every night after nine o’clock, when it finally gets dark out, she sits in Potter’s truck with the keys in the ignition and the garage door closed. For an hour or longer, she stays out there, wishing she had the nerve. When she goes back into the house, she leaves the keys in the ignition. She fixes another drink, lights another cigarette, and heads to the front porch. Nearly five months since Potter passed—and oh how she hates that word, passed, as if he just drove a little too far into the desert, as if he would soon realize his mistake, and turn around, and come back to her.

Alice calls every Sunday and talks about coming down to check on her. She wishes Corrine would think about moving to Alaska. I’m worried sick about you, she tells her mother in late July.

If I come live in Alaska, will you come to my funeral?

Mother, that is so unfair. You have no idea what my life is like up here.

But Corrine is not going to let this go for a long time, maybe even years. Guess not. Bye-bye, honey.

*