James Burke - Bitterroot

"Who paid for this?" Maisey said.

"Some guy at the bar," the waitress replied.

"Which guy?"

"Honey, this is a dump. One of these bozos buys you a drink, marry him," the waitress said, and walked away, her short skirt swishing across the tops of her fishnet stockings.

Maisey slid another cigarette from her pack, then realized she didn't have matches to light it. Her face was hot, her ears humming with the noise in the room. The electronic feedback in the band's speaker system was beginning to affect her like fingernails on a blackboard. She took a long swallow out of her glass and felt the coldness of the vodka flow through her like wind blowing across snow.

One more drink and she would call her father. By that time his silence and the depression he would wear like a mantle on the long ride home, the acknowledged failure of their relationship that would almost form a third presence in the car, the echoes of all the insults they had hurled at each other earlier, would be lost in fatigue and the ennui that always followed their arguments and the residual numbness of the vodka that now nestled in her system like an old friend.

A boy in his early twenties, in beltless khakis and a pressed, long-sleeved denim shirt with a pair of glasses in the pocket, was standing by her chair now. He held a green and gold can of ginger ale in his hand, and the wetness of the can dripped through his fingers. His eyes crinkled at the corners.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked.

"I heard you talking and I knew you were from the South. I'm from North Ca'lina. So it was me bought you the drinks. Did you mind I did that?" he said.

She tried to sort through what he had just said. Behind him, on a revolving bar stool, sat a man in a white, wide-brim Stetson and a cowboy shirt that rippled with an electric blue sheen. He was watching her and the boy with the naked curiosity of an animal. "Say again?" Maisey said.

"I didn't want to offend you by buying those drinks without asking, but you're really a pretty lady," the boy said.

"Who's that man watching us?" she said, then realized her anxiety had made her seek reassurance from a stranger whose features disturbed her for reasons she didn't understand, like someone who belonged inside a drunk dream.

"That's Wyatt. He wants me to rodeo with him, but I think I'm gonna study aeronautical engineering at the university."

"Aeronautical engineering at the University of Montana?"

"I haven't made up my mind. I might study religion or forestry instead. You want to dance?"

"I have to go home."

"Another vodka collins is coming. You got to stay for the drink. It's bad manners if you don't stay for the drink."

"Your friend is using his hand for a codpiece. Who are you?" she said, her head spinning.

"I'm the guy bought the drinks," he replied, and wrinkled his nose.

She gathered up her purse and rose from the table and walked toward the front door, realizing, as the blood rushed to her feet, that she was drunk.

Outside, the air was cold, the wetness of the street glazed with yellow light. She walked toward the main thoroughfare, although she had no idea what she intended to do. The door of a parked car opened in front of her, and one of the football players stepped out on the sidewalk and grinned at her.

Then he was joined by his two friends. They towered over her, like trees. No matter which direction she turned, she could see nothing but the size of their chests and arms, the necks that were as thick as fire hydrants, the tautness of their grins.

"I want to catch a cab. Can I get one on Higgins?" she said.

"We'll take you home," one of the boys said.

"No, that's all right. I have money for a cab," she said.

"Come on, get in back. You shouldn't be out on the street by yourself," the same boy said.

His face seemed to come into focus for the first time. He had bad skin and his crewcut hair was peroxided. A tiny green shamrock was tattooed on his throat.

"I'm going now. Let me get by," she said.

But one of the other boys placed his arm around her shoulders. He inflated his bicep against her, like someone spinning the handle of a vise to show its potential, and the testosterone smell of his armpit rose into her face.

"Let go of me," she said, her eyes looking between their bodies at the backs of a couple who were walking in the opposite direction.

"There's a lot of street people around here, Maisey, guys with dirty things on their minds," the first boy said.

How did he know her name? she thought. They were pressing her inside the car now, not all at once, not in a violent fashion, just with the proximity of their size, almost as though they were her attendants, as though they knew her and what she thought and what her history was and what she deserved from them.

She was halfway in the car now, and the boy with peroxided hair leaned close to her face, blocking out all light from the street, his breath sweet with mouth spray.

He raised one finger to his lips. "Nobody's out here. Just us, Maisey. Don't act like a kid," he said. She got her hand inside her purse and felt it close on a metal nail file. His right eye suddenly looked as big as a quarter, as blue and deep as an inkwell.

But a pair of high-beam headlights pulled in behind the boys' car. The three boys stood erect, their heads turning. A car door opened, and a figure walked out of the headlights' glare, and Maisey could see the physical size of the three boys somehow deflating, like air leaking from a balloon.

"That's my friend. Y'all shouldn't be bothering her," the boy who had bought her the drinks said.

But the football players, if that's what they were, were not looking at the boy who'd said he was from North Carolina. Instead, they stared at the man in the wide-brim white hat and blue silk shirt who stood behind him, his hands curled inward, simian-like, toward his thighs.

"We got no quarrel with you, buddy," the boy with peroxided hair said.

"That's right, you don't," the man in the hat said. "That's why you little farts are gone."

Maisey looked on in disbelief as her three tormentors walked away.

"We'll get you home safe," the boy from North Carolina said.

"I can get a cab," she said.

"Those guys will come after you when me and Wyatt leave. They're always causing trouble here'bouts. Is your name Maisey?" he said.

"How did you know?"

"I heard that guy use your name, that's all," he replied. He held the door open for her, his face suffused with goodwill. Maisey looked back at the nightclub. One of the football players stood just inside the entrance, cleaning his nails with a toothpick. She got into the car.

The man named Wyatt sat in back and the boy, who said his name was Terry, started the engine. The car was red, low-slung, high-powered, with a stick shift on the floor, and Terry drove it full out, tacking up on the curves as they headed toward Bonner and the Blackfoot River, dropping back in front of a semi so abruptly the car shook on its springs.

But even though he drove too fast, she began to feel all the evening's fear and apprehension and self-condemnation go out of her chest.

"What'd you say your last name was?" the man named Wyatt said.

"Voss. Maisey Voss," she said.

"You related to a doctor by that name?" Wyatt asked.

"He's my father."

"I read about him in the paper. Man named Holland live with y'all?"

Maisey turned in the seat. "Billy Bob Holland does," she said.

"I declare. Now that's a fellow I admire. He was the lawyer for my sister, Katie Jo Winset. Ain't this world a miracle of coincidences?" Wyatt said.

"I don't understand," Maisey said.

"A sweet thing like you don't have to." Wyatt leaned forward, his arm propped on the back of her seat, his eyes close to hers. "You like Terry?"