Richard Ford: A Piece of My Heart

He could smell foulness drifting out of the first cage. “Don’t think so,” he said.

“Yes I will,” she said, looking at him professionally.

“I’ll buy that rabbit,” he said.

“Ain’t for sale,” she said, and looked out across the empty road and slowly bent her line of vision toward the truck sitting in the dead sunlight. “That your truck?”

He studied the truck. It looked like it had been dropped out of a passing airplane. “Yeah,” he said.

“Can’t you fix your own truck?”

“Lady’s car needs fixin. Ain’t the truck.”

“Lonnie won’t be back here before tonight,” she said. “But he won’t work on nothing. Be too dark. He won’t have the right light.”

“Who else is there?” he said, feeling put off.

“Nobody,” she said. “He’s in Tucumcari. Be roaring drunk when he comes back. Won’t work on nothin.”

He looked at the sun, cerise and perfectly round, pushing a porous shadow from the raccoon cages over the tips of his toes, and thought it might be two-thirty.

“Is that the woman in the truck?” the girl said.

The back of the woman’s head was visible in the oval window. She was working on her face in the rear-view.

“That’s her,” he said.

“You’ll have to spend the night then, or go to Tucumcari,” the girl said, turning back to the cages. “There ain’t no mechanic from here to there. There ain’t nothing up that way.” She pointed up the road into the desert. “Lonnie’ll be good in the morning. He’ll fix it. He ain’t but twenty-two, but he ain’t a fool.”

“Where’s your daddy?” he said, looking up at the desolated back side of the house. A white tub washer was set outside in the dirt with one leg bent up.

“Gone,” she said, and pursed her lips.

“Are they dead?” he said.

“They gone to Las Vegas. They ain’t come back.”

“Do you expect them?”

“I guess,” she said, and looked at him indifferently.

He was getting nervous. “What time is it?” he said.

The girl consulted her wrist watch, a thin silver strippet with a face as small as her shirt buttons. “Three o’clock,” she said. “We got a room. Got a fan in it if Lonnie ain’t sold it.”

A breeze lifted off the desert and passed through the cages and carried the raccoon foulness back in his nostrils.

“I got to clean that empty cage,” the girl said, wrinkling her nose to let him know she could smell it.

“What was in there?” he said.

“That there rabbit,” she said, moving a strand of her yellow hair from across her temple where the breeze had left it.

He looked back at the rabbit hied up against the wire, studying the bobcat strangely. A tiny vein of panic opened inside him. “Lemme buy that rabbit,” he said quickly.

She frowned. “Leo gets hungry when it gets cool,” she said. “That rabbit don’t know that, though.”

“I bet he’s figured it,” he said.

She giggled and let him know it didn’t make any difference what a rabbit knew. The breeze worried the stray short hairs above her forehead and made her look grown.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Mona Nell,” she said, wagging her shoulders and forcing her hands down inside her pants pockets. “What’s that woman’s name?”

“I believe she said Jimmye.”

“That’s my daddy’s name,” the girl said, and laughed.

He looked at the truck and the woman sitting high up in the seat, her back facing him, teasing her hair in the mirror. He felt like he ought to get away, and at the same time felt helpless to maneuver a way to go about it.

The girl giggled again and squatted and began teasing the raccoons, who were piled up against the chicken wire.

He walked back to the truck feeling as if the girl had applied pressures on him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but that had him whipped.

“Where the hell is everybody?” the woman said, scowling out the window, her hair plumped up and her eyes purple as a bruise.

“Gone,” he said softly. “Won’t be back till night.” He leaned on the window sill and looked back at the girl, squatting in the dust.

“That’s the shits,” the woman said. “What the hell am I supposed to do if I got to get Larry at six?” She fattened the corners of her mouth.

“Looks like two things,” he said, staring at the ground. “Ride to Tucumcari. That kid said there’s mechanics there. Or stay put and call somebody. You can get Larry to come get you.”

She frowned at him as if she didn’t like hearing him say the name. Her eyes got small. “They got a telephone?”

He looked at the eave of the house and saw a trunk line strung to the road. “I guess,” he said.

She looked at the wire. Perspiration had formed in the roots of her hair. “Son-of-a-bitch, Larry Crystal,” she said.

It occurred to him that she had just said her last name.

“He’ll be off with his piss-ant brother drinking beer quick as he sees I ain’t coming. That’s the trash he is.” She lowered her brow as if she could see all that was coming.

The first truck to pass the station hissed through the curves and ground out into the road — a tandem hauling diesel smoke into the desert. There was large writing on the sides through dust and coagulated grease, WHACK MY OLD DOODLE, and below that, TAKE ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MY HEART, as though one line followed on the other and made good sense. He looked at the writing and scratched the back of his neck and wondered what that meant. He thought about asking her to have a look at it, but she looked mean and he decided against it.

“What time is it?” she said.

“Something till,” he said.

The girl was down at the far end of the row of cages and was cooing to the bobcat, saying his name over and over in a sweet voice.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“Where we going?” he said.

“A tourist court up at Conchas. You and me is staying in it. Let’s git.”

He looked at her to let her know he was considering it. “What about the car?”

“Shit on it The car ain’t going nowhere.”

He rested his forehead against his wrists and stared at the dirt, trying to think about what to do. “I thought you was worried about it,” he said.

“Let’s get out of here, all right?” she said. “Worry about that tomorrow.”

“What about. .?”

“What about shit!” she said. “Leave my business to me. If I need any advice, I’ll ask your little cunt you’re so hot about.”

“I ain’t hot,” he said, keeping his head sealed against his wrist and spitting in the dust.

She got quiet, and he decided to let things be quiet awhile.

“I’m waitin,” she said.

“What’re you waitin on?” he said.

She glared, and her eyes darkened in the middle, and he understood it was the way she looked when she wanted to seem angry.

She sat staring straight out at the long curve in the road, breathing deeply. The breeze switched and came up from behind the building. The girl sat on her haunches, making a high-pitched hooting noise like a dove. He figured the woman needed time to figure out he wasn’t going to have himself ruled by somebody that didn’t mean anything to him, no matter what the reward was, or even if it meant giving up the reward.

“Ain’t no need being mad,” he said into the hollow of his arm.

She looked away.

“Ain’t no need to go somewhere else.”

“I’m past the point of carin,” she said, letting her shoulders relax.

“They got a room right here,” he said.

She looked at the long red building, then at him and back down the road.

“The boy can look after the car in the morning,” he said, feeling things sliding away from him.