Corrine presses the accelerator and tries to close the gap between her car and Mary Rose’s. At ninety-five, her Lincoln shakes and roars like a jet. When Mary Rose slows down to make the sharp turn onto the access road and then guns the engine, what feels like an acre of dust is thrown onto Corrine’s windshield. She slams on the brake and slides onto the dirt road with one last look in the rearview mirror, and for the first time in her life she wishes that a state trooper would put down his newspaper or lunch and pay attention to her for one blessed minute.

It is nearly three o’clock, less than an hour since Corrine stepped into her garage and well past the time of day when she mixes up her first whiskey and iced tea and heads for the front porch. When her hands begin to shake, another reminder that she has absolutely no business being out here, she laughs and beats her fist against the steering wheel. She should have driven directly to the police station, or stopped by the 7-Eleven and asked if their phone was working. All she wants—all she has wanted since Potter died—is to be left alone, to slowly drink and smoke herself into the sweet hereafter. But here she is, an old lady with busted lungs and a dead husband, driving all over hell’s half acre in a Lincoln Continental, going to save the world. It is so ridiculous that Corrine knocks her fist against her forehead and laughs until tears draw streaky lines through the dirt on her face. Well shit, she thinks. Here I am.

*

Corrine is right on Mary Rose’s tail when they roar through Penwell, a fusty little town on an otherwise empty stretch of earth interrupted only by pumpjacks and railroad tracks and a single row of telephone poles that looks as if it stretches to eternity. There are seventy-five or so permanent citizens, many of them living in trailers they hauled from Odessa and parked among the remnants of the original pecan-wood oil derricks. All that remains of the old gas station and dance hall is a stack of lumber and broken glass, and piled-up tumbleweeds against a rusty sign lying on the ground. DANCE TO-NIGHT.

Two little boys are standing on the side of the road, and they cheer as the women blow through a traffic light that hasn’t worked in forty years. They pass the gas station without seeing any sign of Potter’s truck. On the other side of town, the road veers south and starts running alongside the railroad tracks. The asphalt disappears and the road deteriorates to a dusty mess of ruts and tumbleweeds. The dust cloud is still ahead of them, mostly, but the wind is unreliable. It dives and dips, seizes the cars and shakes them fiercely before letting go suddenly. When Mary Rose swerves to miss a piece of pipeline that has fallen across the road, Corrine does the same.

Mary Rose hits the brakes a second time, veering madly and leaving Corrine to stare down a mama armadillo ambling across the road with her four pups. She slams her foot against the brake pedal and jerks hard to the right, her face hitting the steering wheel with enough force that stars swim at the edges of her vision.

The two cars careen toward the edge of the road and come to a stop. Potter’s truck is parked up ahead, and a second, older pickup truck is next to it. Corrine taps her horn and tries to pull up next to Mary Rose, but the road is narrow and Mary Rose will not look at her, so Corrine reaches across the wide expanse of her front seat, opens the glove box, and sets her pistol next to her cigarettes. If they get out of this situation with everybody still alive, she is going home and smoking that whole pack. She is going to drink herself half stupid, and then sleep for three days.

Mary Rose’s car rolls slowly down the road until they are only a few yards from the two trucks, and it is only then that Corrine spots the man and girl walking side by side along the railroad tracks. He is small and thin with stooped shoulders and black hair, nothing at all like the man whose pictures were all over the news in the wake of the attack on Gloria Ramírez. Debra Ann’s bangs are in her eyes and she is wearing her favorite terrycloth shorts and sparkly pink T-shirt. In one hand the man holds a jug of water and oh, what Corrine wouldn’t give for a little sip of that. His other hand is gently folded around D. A.’s grimy fingers.

Corrine rolls down the window and leans out to shout at them, but she sees Mary Rose’s car door swing open and lays on the horn instead. It is a long unbroken wail, not so different from the plant whistle, and it gets their attention. Jesse and D. A. stop and turn around, and after a brief pause, he bends down to say something to her. The child shrugs and rubs her eyes, and looks at her feet.

Mary Rose jumps out of her car and runs toward them, the rifle bouncing against her shoulder, bullets spilling onto the ground behind her. Corrine’s heart jumps as if she’s just grabbed an electric fence. She has been living across the street from this young woman for months, watching her grow thin as a mesquite leaf, noticing the dark shadows under her eyes when she sits on the front porch and watches her daughter as if she might disappear at any moment.

A few weeks before the trial, while the girls were giving the baby a bath and the women were having a cigarette on Mary Rose’s back patio, Corrine thought she saw in her neighbor’s eyes, ever so briefly, something that might have been despair.

Do you need anything? she asked Mary Rose.

No, Mary Rose said, I guess I don’t.

When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep? And Mary Rose let loose with a laugh that was more snarl than anything else. Well, she said, I’m one of those women who has to get up and pee every ten minutes, pretty much from the day I get pregnant, and the baby’s three months old, so I’d say it’s been about thirteen months since I slept through the night, give or take.

Honey, what about Robert? I know he’d come into town and help out, if you asked him to.

Robert’s busy with his cows. Mary Rose looked out at her lawn and kicked at one of the half dozen extension cords that were spread across the patio. And I don’t want him here anyway.

She walked to the edge of the porch and stepped on a large black spider. Keith Taylor was over here the other day helping me get ready for the trial, she said, and he asked me about living here in town, if I didn’t miss being with my husband, and I didn’t know how to answer him.

One of the girls shouted inside the house and both women stopped talking, ears pricking in expectation of being needed for one thing or another, being asked to solve the next domestic situation, however large or small, but the girls chattered for a few seconds and went quiet.

Because when I ask myself what is lost between Robert and me, Mary Rose paused and looked at her hands, turned them over and over. Well. How would I even know? Shit, I got my first cheerleading outfit when I was still in diapers. All of us did. If we were lucky, we made it to twelve before some man or boy, or well-intentioned woman who just thought we ought to know the score, let us know why we were put on this earth. To cheer them on. To smile and bring a little sunshine into the room. To prop them up and know them, and be nice to everybody we meet. I married Robert when I was seventeen years old, went straight from my father’s house to his. Mary Rose sat down on a lawn chair and leaned her head against the patio table and began to cry. Is this what I’m supposed to do? she said. Cheer him on?

Corrine stood and waited for the crying to stop, but it went on and on and after a while Corrine, embarrassed for her neighbor, touched Mary Rose’s shoulder. Call me if you need anything, she said, and let herself out through the side gate.

Corrine has run less than ten feet when her lungs seize and tell her no, no ma’am, should have thought about this twenty years ago. She doubles over in the desert, breathing hard, then stands up and takes a few steps. Her whole face aches from hitting the steering wheel, and a knot is rising on her forehead. She vomits a little into the sand, nothing but bile and water, and wonders if she might have a concussion.

Mary Rose is far ahead of her now, and Corrine begins to shout Debra Ann’s name again and again, each word a new challenge to her aching lungs, her parched throat and bruised head.

D. A. and Jesse watch the two women, one far ahead of the other and moving fast, the other lumbering behind like an old heifer, wishing she’d listened to Potter all those years when he said haranguing teenagers all day long wasn’t real exercise, no matter how many hours a day she was on her feet.

Let her go, Strickland. Mary Rose’s voice is a steel rod, and it pierces Corrine to the core. That’s not him, Mary Rose, she yells. It’s not the same man.

Mary Rose stops running and looks at the young man. Corrine knows her friend is close enough to see him clearly. They both are. See there, Corrine calls. That’s Mr. Belden.

Debra Ann frowns up at Jesse, and they see him stoop down a bit to gently take her by the arm. He stands up straight and waves toward the women.

Thank God. Corrine takes a step toward them.

No, Mary Rose says quietly. She lifts the rifle she calls Old Lady and snugs it against her shoulder and squeezes the trigger.

*