Maggie brakes for a tumbleweed the size of a small pickup. The giant weed rolls across Highway 87, bouncing off a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS sign before resuming its course south. In the rearview mirror, the New Mexico sunset is a Technicolor backdrop to the zombie chorus line the dead bush and its brethren form on a barbed-wire fence. They’re like the display of coyote carcasses Maggie’d seen a few miles back. If the hanging coyotes are a warning to predators, what are the tumbleweeds warning? By the brown, barren look of things, the fauna thinks the message is for them.
She rescues a whipping strand of hair from her ChapSticked lips. Lipstick and a headband had been out of the question when she left Colorado Springs without sleeping, in a hellfire hurry to get back to Giddings. Home. Her home.
She turns to the panting border collie–corgi mix in the passenger seat. The dog’s black-and-white hair is levitating, but the wind is hot. “This is as good as it’s gonna get, Louise.”
Louise whines, circles, then sticks her nose out the window.
Maggie’s phone plays a portentous series of chords on the seat beside her. She’d set new notification tones last night, as soon as she was out of Wyoming. Time for change, across the board. This sound is for a text, and it tells her two things. First, she’s back in the land of cell service. Second, her phone survived being thrown at the door of the bathroom stall in Raton, after flaunting a text from Hank, the love of her life and breaker of her heart.
Hank’s text had read: Was it something I said?
Something he said. Funny.
Defying death now, she presses the phone for his contact information. His picture pops up, and she enlarges it. He’s in profile, smiling and showing off his delicious dimple. A Stetson covers his dark hair. His shirt is open at the neck, right where she used to like to kiss him.
Well, not anymore.
She puts the phone down, stretches her eyes wide, and rolls her neck. With another vat of coffee, she can make it to Wichita Falls for a few hours—she prays—of sleep, leaving her an easy five hours tomorrow. Driving outside the hot hours is appealing, due to her broken air conditioner. And pretty much any hours the sun is out are hot in Texas in mid-September.
Maggie switches feet on the accelerator to give her aching right foot a stretching break. No air conditioner and no cruise control. Worst of all, her tush doesn’t appreciate the long hours driving. When a thirty-seven-year-old woman gets bucked off a muscle-bound draft horse six feet at the shoulder, it isn’t pretty, and Maggie had bitten the dust only the day before, courtesy of Hank’s Percheron Lily. A sad pang takes her by surprise. It’s not only Hank she’s going to miss. She’ll miss Lily. The mountains. The wildlife. Everyone at Piney Bottoms Ranch.
A lone woman walking on the shoulder of the highway catches Maggie’s attention. A long gray French braid hangs down her back. As Bess and the trailer pass her, she turns and makes eye contact with Maggie. A shiver runs up Maggie’s arms. The woman’s face is ghostly white. A blue scarf encircles her neck. Maggie takes her foot off the gas. Should she stop and offer her a ride? But the pale woman wasn’t hitching.
Maggie powers on, regardless, restless dog beside her.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, the speed limit drops as she enters Amarillo. Maggie switches off Lucinda Williams, who’s rasping about why she “Changed the Locks.” She scans for radio stations on the new stereo in Bess, her vintage pickup. Magenta vintage pickup, a color never intended by the Ford Motor Company, Maggie is sure. But it suits Bess, and Bess suits Maggie. She loves every rusted spot on the underbelly and dent in the hide of the truck’s close-to-seventy-five-year-old body.
Maggie catches the tail end of a commercial that doesn’t sound like it belongs on Spanish-speaking, Christian, or talk radio, so she stops. The commercial ends, and a pop song with a hip-hop edge comes on. There’s something else to it, too. Steel pans, maybe?
Maggie groans. Her finger hovers over the scan button.
Louise makes retching noises.
“I know. It’s not my thing either.”
Over the wind and highway noise, Maggie recognizes the song and the singer. A hit from last year: “Bombshell” by the It Girl of the moment, Ava Butler. Maggie was the It Girl once upon a time, too, before she pissed it away. Maggie hates Ava Butler, and not just because Ava’s success makes Maggie feel like Jennifer Anniston reading an Enquirer article about Angelina Jolie’s perfect Brad Pitt babies. No, Maggie hates her because the two women costarred in a cheesy musical in Waco, Texas, and Ava stole Maggie’s part.
And Maggie holds grudges.
Louise retches again. Her sides begin to heave, and her legs quiver.
More than just good musical instincts? “Oh. Oh no. Louise, wait. Stop. No!”
Leaving the station as-is, Maggie puts her blinker on and veers across three lanes of traffic—setting off a barrage of horns—toward an abandoned building with a buckled blacktop lot. When she’s pulled in far enough that her trailer isn’t sticking out in the road, she grabs the leash and snaps it on Louise. She doesn’t want Louise blowing chunks on the driver’s side, so Maggie scoots across the bench seat, maneuvers over the stick shift and sick dog, and opens the passenger door.
“Ouch.” Her sore tush complains about the sudden activity. She gives the leash an awkward tug. “Come on, Louise.”
Louise doesn’t budge. Before Maggie can make it past the line of fire, Louise deposits two cups of soggy dog food and cheeseburger across the seat, the floorboard, and Maggie’s hobo bag, boots, and jeans.
In a voice more empathetic than angry, Maggie says, “Oh, Fucker.”
Louise wags her tail. In their one week together, Louise has decided that Fucker means “I love you” in Maggie-speak.
“Quit smiling at me.”
The dog flops down in the vomit, like she’s just too weak to stand another second.
“Oh no, no, nooo.” Maggie shakes her leg to dislodge vomit from her boot. She counts back the days since she’s slept. Three, maybe? She can’t take this. “So much for Wichita Falls.”
A police cruiser pulls up behind her truck, lights wigwagging.
“Perfect.”
The cop takes his time running her plates. Given her recent problems with the law in Wyoming, Maggie decides to sit tight and wait for him, half in and half out of the truck, instead of cleaning up like she wants to. A few minutes later, a stocky officer with red hair and a full but not bad-looking face saunters to the passenger side. Maggie doesn’t have to roll down the window, at least, which is good, since she’s managed to get dog barf on her hands.
“Good evening. I’m Officer John Burrows, Amarillo Police Department. Are you having a problem, ma’am?” The cop bends down to peer in the door, hand on his holstered gun. His voice is small-town West Texas. Give her five more minutes and she’ll place the county, ten and she’ll peg his town. Sound and Maggie are friends, and she’s great with accents, especially Texas ones.
Maggie points at Louise. “My dog just barfed all over the place. And me.”
He coughs and steps back. “Are you aware you made an unsafe lane change before you exited the roadway?”
Maggie sighs. “I used my blinker.”
“You cut off traffic.”
“Louise had just done her Linda Blair-in-the-Exorcist impression.”
His expression is stony. Maybe he hadn’t seen the movie. The vomit scene. Or maybe he has zero sense of humor. “License and insurance, please.”
“Do you have a paper towel or something? My hands are covered in dog puke.”
He lowers his Ray-Bans and squints friendly green eyes over them at Maggie, Louise, and the vomit. “Sorry, no.”
“The longer I sit here, the worse it’s going to smell. I have dirty laundry I could use for cleanup, but it’s on my utility trailer. Can’t you just write me a ticket while I get out and start scrubbing?”
“That’s not protocol, ma’am. I need you to hand me your documentation and remain in the cab.” He slides his aviators into his shirt pocket.
“Of course you do.” She wipes her hands on her thighs and slips open her bag, trying not to transfer barf from the bag to her person while she does. The officer’s attention is on a flip pad of ticket forms. She swipes her license through the vomit before she holds it out to him. “License.”
He takes it without looking up. When he notices the vomit, he grimaces, pulling one finger at a time away from the license. Then he glares at her.
She pretends not to see him as she rummages in the tiny glove box for her insurance card. When she finds it, she manages to leave a perfect set of puke prints on the paper. Her lips twitch. “Here you go, sir.”
He pinches it by one corner. “Wait here.”
“Can I please clean up now? I know my license matches the registration you pulled on the truck, along with my clean driving record and up-to-date insurance. Please?”
Louise wags her tail, each sweep stirring up wet chunks and sending them flying.
“Fine.”
Maggie retrieves dirty laundry and wipes down the interior, the dog, and herself—not that it does much good—while still maintaining the presence of mind to flip off two truckers and a carload of teenage boys who honk and shout at her as they pass. She rebags her dirty laundry and tucks it under the trailer tarp, then fastens the bungee cords.
The officer reappears by the truck bed as she’s walking toward the cab. “I’ve written you a warning.”
“Really?”
“Really. Sign here.” He taps his ticket pad, handing it and a pen to her.
She verifies that everything on the ticket is correct, then signs her name.
He tears off the ticket. “Please be more careful.”
“Yes, sir.” Maggie salutes as she takes it.
“Also, my sister and her husband own a hotel. The Sundowner. They take pets. You can clean yourself and the pooch off better.” He offers her a business card. “Tell her I sent you.”
“Thank you. I might do that.”
“It’s downtown. Right next to Pumpjack’s. And tonight is karaoke night there. It’s a big draw. Fun.”
“I’m not feeling much into fun.”
His jaw flexes, eyes sparkle. “I know who you are. Maggie Killian. You’re famous for fun.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Lies, all lies. I promise.”
“Think about it. Seriously, it’s the place to be on Thursday nights in Amarillo.”
It hits her. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
Finally, he grins. “I am. And I would really love it if you’d sing ‘Buckle Bunny.’”
Her music seems a lifetime ago to her. A really long, hard lifetime. “Maybe. And thank you. For only giving me a warning, and for the info about the hotel. I’ve had a really bad week.”
He nods in sympathy. “I read the article online.”
The “How the Mighty Maggie Killian Has Fallen” article posted on an entertainment blog last week had made her sound like a train wreck. Correction: an even bigger train wreck.
She doesn’t bother telling Burrows that the article isn’t a fraction of what made her week bad. That she spurned a Unabomber-type fan—Rudy—in Wyoming, where she’d gone to win Hank back, under the pretense of shopping for junk at estate sales. That the fan then used a tire iron to bash in the head of Chet, the cowboy she’d had a one-night oops with after Hank introduced her to his much younger, Sunday school–teaching girlfriend, Sheila. How Bess broke down, leaving her stranded at Hank’s ranch, where the police zeroed in on her as the murder suspect and basically put her on house arrest in Wyoming. That meanwhile in Texas someone vandalized Flown the Coop, her antique shop, at the very same time the crazy fan invaded her Wyoming cabin and stole Hank’s rifle and her two most treasured possessions—Hank’s Frontier Days bull riding champion belt buckle and a guitar strap embroidered by her mother. That the same rifle was used to kill a neighboring rancher—Patrick, who had taken her out to dinner—and to shoot Hank while he was out riding with Maggie. How Maggie managed to run for the crazy fan’s cabin, find the rifle, buckle, and guitar strap, shoot the crazy fan, leave him for the sheriff, and get help for Hank in time to save his life. Then, just when Maggie thought she and Hank might have a chance, Sheila announced a baby on board and her engagement to Hank.
Yeah, it was a sucky week.
Maggie parts ways with the officer and takes his advice on the Sundowner.
An hour later, Maggie strips out of her vomit clothes and puts them in a tub of hot water. She scrubs them with the thin bar of hotel soap. After she rinses the laundry and hangs it to dry, she drags Louise into the bathroom.
Maggie tries to lift her. The dog turns herself into something like a cruise ship anchor. “Come on, Louise.”
The dog shrinks heavily into the floor.
Maggie jerks Louise up and into the tub. She washes the dog’s long fur three times. After a thorough rinsing, Maggie pitches the soap into the trash and grabs the remaining towel. She’s already used the other one—plus the hand towels and the tiny tube of shower gel—on the interior of the truck. The squatty dog leaps from the tub and shakes, flinging water from her body.
“Lew-eeze. Thanks a lot.”
Maggie buffs her dry. When she’s done, Louise poses at the door, throwing a look over her shoulder at Maggie like a short-legged model on a catwalk. Maggie shakes her head and opens the door for her. Louise beelines for Maggie’s open suitcase and rolls in her clean clothes.
“I’m shipping you back to Wyoming.”
Louise settles into the clothing, her chin on the edge of the suitcase, her tail wagging like a fan above her.
Maggie retreats into the bathroom. It smells like wet dog and barf, and she’s out of hot water. Still, she has the shampoo and conditioner she’s saved just for herself, and clean is clean. When she’s done, she drips onto the bath mat and blow-dries her wettest areas.
She’s utterly exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
After cranking up the air conditioner, she pulls back a thin coverlet and flops naked onto the sheets. She stares at the popcorn ceiling. Bed sounds so good, but so does a couple of drinks. Because she not only wants to sleep, she wants to be numb. She rolls over and does a visual search for a minibar. None. She elbow-crawls on her stomach to the phone and presses zero.
“Front desk.” The woman’s voice makes desk into a two-syllable word.
“Do y’all have a bar?”
“A what?”
“A bar. With liquor.”
“Yes, ma’am. Our restaurant serves Miller Lite, Coors Light, and Budweiser. And a house white and house red. Wine, I mean. You can even get them with room service if you’d like.” Her tone is one of pride, and Maggie wonders if she’s speaking to Burrows’s sister. She’d been in such a hurry at check-in that she hadn’t mentioned him.
And she’d forgotten she’s in the damn Bible Belt. Maggie rolls on her back and closes her eyes. They want to stay that way. “Thanks.” She doesn’t explain to the woman that wine and beer aren’t liquor.
“Do you want me to transfer you to room service?”
“No, that’s okay.”
Louise hops onto the bed and licks Maggie’s cheek with tiny tongue darts.
Maggie hangs up the phone, ducking her face away from the squatty dog. “You know I hate that.”
Louise stares at her solemnly.
“And if you think I’m feeding you anything tonight, you’ve got another think coming.”
Louise lowers her nose and gazes at Maggie with contrite eyes.
Maggie groans and levers herself off the bed. She’s held out since Raton, but she finally reads her messages. Hank’s texted twice since her phone-throwing meltdown, which brings the grand total since she left the hospital up to ten.
His latest: Gene gave me the belt buckle. What’s up with that?
Gene Soboleski. Hank’s best friend and business partner in the Double S, a bucking stock contracting business. Brother of Michele, Maggie’s best friend.
Maggie doesn’t answer.
She dresses in a rush, feeling naked without the buckle—she’s had it the entire fifteen years since Hank won it bull riding in Cheyenne. She’d thrust it into Gene’s hands the day before, then fled the state. Maybe Hank will give it to Sheila. Maggie doesn’t care. She’s done with Hank Sibley.
Another text comes in from Hank. I’m worried. Please call.
She doesn’t answer him. Worried. Yeah. She’s worried, too.
She’s worried about where she’s going to stay when she gets back to Giddings. She’d stuck her toe into the whole vacation-renting-by-owner craze and rented her house. Now she’s returning earlier than planned, and she can’t freaking remember when Leslie—the short-term renter—is due to leave.
She’s worried that someone will steal the trailer of Wyoming junk out in the hotel parking lot.
She’s worried about how she’s ever going to whip all the new items and her shop into shape in time for the massive Warrenton–Round Top fall antique show her livelihood depends on. That she’s worn out her welcome with the friends and family who’ve been covering for her while her life was falling apart in two places at once, fourteen hundred miles apart. Shit. Note to self: check in with Michele for an update on the investigation and insurance claim.
She’s so worried, in fact, that she knows the Sundowner beer and wine selection aren’t going to cut it, no matter how wrung out she is. In the bathroom, she paints her face and diffuses her long, curly dark hair. She pulls a tiered blue-jean skirt, red tank top, and long, laced vest from the suitcase. They’re wrinkled and smell like Louise, so she doubles up on perfume. She adds gypsy hoop earrings and her favorite high-heeled cowboy boots.
In the bathroom, she sets a full water dish on the floor. “Here you go. I’ll be back in an hour to take you out. No more barfing.”
Louise doesn’t lift her head from the pillow she’s claimed on the double bed. A week ago, Louise was a stray sponging off the ranch dogs at Piney Bottoms, the site of Hank and Gene’s business. Louise adopted Maggie, maybe drawn to her because Maggie was a lonely stray like her—or maybe Louise just sensed Maggie was an easy mark—and Hank had made it official. Before Louise, Maggie’d had two golden retrievers, Janis and Woody. She’d thought she’d never open her heart to another dog after their deaths, yet here she is, heart definitely cracked.
From the hotel, Maggie takes a right, toward bustle and bright lights. Immediately she comes upon a bar with an orange-and-blue neon sign that reads PUMPJACK’S. The entire front of the establishment is glass, giving the place the look of a repurposed Rexall Drug. She enters, and off-key singing and loud backing music assault her ears. On her left, a DJ is working from a karaoke station beside a small stage where a large man is slurring his way through “Strokin’.” Scrawled in white marker on the glass of the window behind them is THURSDAY KARAOKE SEVEN TIL MIDNIGHT, which she reads backward from the inside. She looks at her watch. It’s already ten o’clock.
For a second, Maggie considers bailing.
A man leans close enough to be heard over the bad singing. “Maggie Killian. You came.”
In body if not in spirit. She barely recognizes redheaded Officer Burrows without the Ray-Bans and uniform. “Hey.”
He guides her farther into the bar. The décor is primarily antique metal signs from oil and gas companies, stuff that would resell well in Maggie’s Flown the Coop. Even away from the speakers, Burrows has to talk close to be heard. “Did you get a room at my sister’s place?”
She nods.
He smiles. It makes wrinkles around his nice green eyes. “I already checked the song list. They have some of yours on it.”
Maggie shakes her head vehemently. “Not happening.”
“Want a drink? Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
She glances toward his hand. No wedding ring. Booze electrifies her sexuality, and she doesn’t allow her switch to be flipped around an inappropriate partner, just in case. Not that she’s choosy. Availability, safety, and ability, those are her criteria. She nods at Burrows. He beckons her to follow him to the bar where he orders a Corona for himself.
The bartender, who doesn’t look old enough to drink or legally obtain the tattoos all over his body without his mommy signing for him, motions for her to order.
“Koltiska Liqueur on ice.”
“Strike one.” He holds up a finger.
“Balcones Whiskey on ice.”
A second finger goes up. “Strike two. Will you swing for the fences or play it safe?”
“Jack.”
He claps. “And she’s on base. Sorry we don’t carry the others.”
“I’ll believe you if you pour a double.”
He shrugs as he pours, and keeps pouring. “Not my bar.”
Maggie downs her double Jack like it’s sweet tea.
“Thirsty?” Burrows asks, eyebrows up.
“Did I mention my week sucked?” She holds up a finger and nods to the bartender.
He slides one to her then throws his hands up when she catches it. “Through the uprights.”
She rewards him with a smile, and he winks. To Burrows she shouts, “Ladies room.”
Burrows gives her a thumbs-up. She returns to find a third drink waiting for her and hears her name blaring over the speakers.
“Next up is Maggie, with ‘Buckle Bunny.’”
Maggie slits her eyes at Burrows. “Not cool.” She remembers standing in the Occidental Saloon in Buffalo, Wyoming, a few days before, telling a psycho fan that she wouldn’t perform in public when he demanded she sing a song she’d dissed him on years ago. She would have traded a yes then for Burrows’s ambush now, in a heartbeat.
Burrows puts a palm on his chest. “I put you on the list before you came. Just in case. It fills up fast. Don’t do it if you don’t want to.”
The DJ is watching the crowd, looking for his tardy performer. “Is that her, John?” The DJ points their way.
John nods.
“Hey y’all, it looks like Maggie has stage fright. Let’s give her a little encouragement.”
The crowd cheers. Maggie wonders if it counts as assault on an officer if she punches Burrows. She’d rather turn back to the bar and let the bartender show her his tattoos than sing here. But with everyone looking at her, Maggie is afraid she’ll be recognized. One picture to TMZ and she’s labeled a snotty bitch too good to party with the locals. Out they’ll trot all her failures again, for her mother to obsess over with her church friends.
The drunken crowd chants at the DJ’s urging, mob-like. MAG-GIE, MAG-GIE, MAG-GIE.
She holds up a finger to the DJ and downs her drink. Warmth flushes her face and her body buzzes. By the time she finishes the song, her drunk will have caught up with her and she’ll be on her way to fast forgetting. She glares at Burrows one more time. His return smile sticks in her craw. She balls her fists, and stalks to the stage.
“Here she is, folks. Maggie, doing ‘Buckle Bunny.’”
Conversation noise continues unabated in the bar. Inspiration strikes. She’s performed the wrong songs for the wrong crowds too many times to risk her own beloved material here. She stops at his monitor. “How about ‘Bombshell’ instead? The Ava Butler song.”
“No problem.” He presses a few buttons. “Make that . . . Here’s Maggie, doing ‘Bombshell.’”
The crowd whoops. Apparently “Bombshell” is more popular than “Buckle Bunny.” Louise has better musical taste than these rubes.
Maggie’s never sung Ava’s hit other than in the privacy of her own truck, and then with a healthy dose of sarcasm. But she knows she has more talent in her left pinky than Ava has in her whole body. She’s going to give herself the gift of blowing Ava’s version out of the water, even if the only witness will be the few Pumpjack’s patrons sober enough to listen.
She launches herself into it. No warm-up. No run-throughs or blocking. Nothing like the old days. Just her instincts and what Rolling Stone once called the voice of a wayward angel on a three-day bender. By the time she reaches the end of the song, the crowd has gone from surprised to shocked to raucous. Burrows is doing a Magic Mike impression while people around him jump up and down and sing along to the chorus. When Maggie finishes, she lifts a fist and drops her head. The crowd raises the roof.
Okay, so sue me. I have a voice and I ain’t afraid to use it.
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