Keep them on. Please.

She looks at him for several seconds and then takes another sip of bourbon, her throat moving a bit as she swallows. We might get carried away and forget to look for headlights.

Maybe you need another little sip of bourbon, he says. Liquid courage.

Again she drinks. She hands the bottle back to her husband. To courage.

Courage, he says. He sets the bottle down and takes her hand, pressing it first against his heart and then against the front of his jeans. You couldn’t be making this any harder.

She giggles and he pulls her legs gently apart, running the flat of his hand along her stocking, his eyes widening when his finger finds her bare skin.

Why don’t you stand up, Corrine, and show me those black stockings?

She walks out onto the plain, her face and hair lit by the moon, black heels and a half smile, fingers pulling gently at her skirt.

Jesus, honey. Come here. He sets her on the tailgate, the backs of her knees bumping lightly against the steel, and he pulls her to the edge of the tailgate. Lean back, Corrine.

*

Jon hasn’t had a cigarette since he was overseas, and he promised himself he wouldn’t ever do it again, but when he pulls the smoke into his lungs he can feel his chest expanding, growing larger, and it is so goddamned good, it is such a fucking relief, he thinks he might cry. What do you say to a man who is dying in your arms? Do not be afraid. You are not alone.

The album stops playing. Jon and Corrine listen to the click as the stylus lifts from the platter and settles into its stand.

He says, Corrine, would you like to listen for a little longer?

To the music? she asks.

Yes.

Will you turn the album over?

When Jon tries to stand up, he stumbles in the dark and falls against Corrine’s shoulder. He tries to right himself, but she grabs his shirt and pulls him to her, as if he is a child who slipped and fell off a fishing dock, or she is a ship about to go down, or they are poor swimmers in rough seas. Corrine takes his hand and presses it to her face and after a pause, he does the same. They sit together and watch the last of the stars go out. Sun’s coming up soon, one of them says. Better get home.

*

On the drive home the next afternoon Corrine takes Potter’s warm hand from the gearshift and presses it gently against her skirt, then guides it up and under, past a tiny bruise on her right knee, to rest on her bare inner thigh. They are worn out and hung over and sore as hell—and they never did make it to the mountains. Corrine crooks her neck and sticks her head out the window, trying to see herself in the rearview mirror. When they get home, all their problems will still be there. They will still be a young man and a young woman with the worst war of their lives just a few years behind them, with worries and fears and a little girl to feed and love. They will fight over money and sex, and whose turn it is to mow the yard, wash the dishes, pay the bills. In a few years, Corrine will threaten to tear it all down when she falls in love with the social studies teacher, and a few years after that, Potter will do something similar. And each time they will grit their teeth and wait to love each other again, and when they do, it will be a wonder. On this morning, Corrine’s hair blows wild about the truck’s cab, and a slight rash marks her lovely throat. Honey, he says, you could not be more beautiful.

Debra Ann

Jesse’s stories are so much better than hers. He was in the army and he served overseas. When he came home to eastern Tennessee, he tells her, he kept his discharge papers in the front pocket of his shirt for a time, as if somebody might demand to see them, as if maybe just coming home alive made him a criminal. He said they fixed his teeth when he joined the service and after his mama saw him for the first time, she started to cover her mouth when she laughed, her big hands marked with scratches, knuckles twisted and raw, scarred from hammers and meat hooks and industrial sewing machines.

At the welcome home party, Jesse stood in his family’s trailer and watched people smile and shake hands. He tried to keep them on his right side, but he still missed a lot of what they said. He nodded and grinned and let them fill his cup, and when somebody asked where Jesse had been, he said, Hell if I know, I never did learn to pronounce the name, and he thought about the two boys he had killed. The aunts talked about picking cotton or working in textile mills. The uncles talked about driving to eastern Kentucky for jobs in the mine, their eyes going soft when they saw Jesse watching them. You picked a hell of a time to come back to Belden Hollow, they said. There ain’t nothing going on here.

And then here came his cousin Travis, pulling into the yard in a brand-new Ford F-150 that he bought in Texas. Paid cash for it, too, he said. He wore new boots and had a new nickname—Boomer, he said, because he nearly blew himself to kingdom come his first week on the job.

Because she’s a kid, and a girl, Jesse doesn’t tell Debra Ann what his cousin said to him next. You don’t need to know jack shit about petroleum. Just do what they tell you and collect your pay every Friday. Three hundred a week, and all the West Texas pussy you can handle. Pack your rubbers, brother. Get ready to party.

Instead, Jesse tells D. A. that he drove away from Tennessee in January, with his gear on the front seat of his truck and Boomer’s phone number in his pocket, and a particular kind of noise in his head, a Jesse-get-your-act-together kind of noise. He tells her when the trees disappeared on the other side of Dallas, he wondered how on earth any place could be so dusty, and brown. Even the shining blue sky turned the color of dirt when the wind blew hard enough. Sometimes, he could hardly tell which was which, sky or land, dirt or air.

And you came to Odessa, D. A. says.

Yes, I did. That foreman at Boomer’s worksite took one look at me and started laughing his butt off. You don’t mind small spaces, do you, Shorty? he asked me. When I said I’d been a tunnel rat overseas, Mr. Strickland gave me a twenty to go buy some boots and he told me to bring a change of clothes the next day.

My daddy used to muck saltwater tanks, D. A. says, right after I was born. He says the first time he climbed into a tank with his respirator and a broom, and a metal scraper as tall as him, he almost had a heart attack, it was so small and dark in there.

They are sitting side by side at the mouth of the drainpipe, both of them with their knees drawn up to their chests, trying not to let any bare skin touch the scorching concrete. When I climbed into that tank, says Jesse, I looked like a man. When I came out, I looked like one of them onyx statues I used to see in markets overseas. I was covered head to toe in oil. It took me twenty minutes in the field shower to get it all off my skin.

My daddy hated it. He said it made him sick to his stomach.

I guess so, Jesse says and falls silent. Back home, there wasn’t anything to do but fish the Clinch River and look for agates at Paint Rock or Greasy Cove. Maybe drive over to the VA hospital once a week to see if his hearing had improved. But here in Odessa, he works. Like a man does. Jesse picks up a small piece of chalk and uses it to draw marks on the concrete.

I’m saving nearly everything I make, he tells Debra Ann, thanks to your hospitality. I’ll have Boomer’s money in another month or so, and he’ll have to give my truck back.

He sees Boomer at the strip club now and then, sitting at the bar with the same men who threw Jesse out of his truck. They drink and watch women, and when they see Jesse sweeping up broken glass or running a mop through some vomit, they put their hands over their mouths and laugh, but they don’t ever talk to him, they don’t ever ask where he’s living.

D. A. shows him the postcard that arrived just after the Fourth of July. They pass it back and forth, turning it over in their hands. A plaster cowboy, his hat pulled low over his eyes, leans against a sign that says GALLUP, NEW MEXICO.

But the postmark is from Reno, Jesse says.

I know it, says D. A. I don’t have any idea where the hell my mother is, and she plucks the card out of her friend’s hand, takes off running up the steep embankment without saying goodbye. She is rushing to leave him behind, to get somewhere private, where nobody can see her grief.

*