John McManus - Fox Tooth Heart

She gestured to the map, shuddering to think she’d nearly used the skillet the way her ma had. “There’s Tennessee, and there’s Kentucky.”

“I’m named after Texas.”

“That’s a different map.”

“You think I’m a retard?”

“Well, Tennessee ain’t Kentucky.”

Austin went wandering into the night. Alone, Betsy measured thumb-lengths south from the middle until a shadow fell over the display. She swiveled to face a pretty woman whose straw-blond hair touched the collar of her dress.

“Hello, how are you?” the woman said.

“Okay,” she replied with a gulp.

“When you were pacing, your gait caught my eye.”

Betsy looked around in the dark. Unfamiliar with the word, she had heard its homonym, and she didn’t recall pacing.

“How you walk,” the woman explained. “Like you’re depressed.”

“I ain’t,” said Betsy, sheltering her hands in her coat pockets, which was when she realized she had Wendy’s gun.

“So you’re headed south? What’s your name?”

Betsy was mulling over an answer when Wendy charged out of the ladies’ room, Helen in tow, and said, “What’s yours, bitch?”

“I’m Claudia Quillen. My husband and I are Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“My name’s piss off, and we worship Satan.”

“Is that why you wear black?” said Claudia, as a handsome man in a corduroy jacket came over, holding the hand of his tow-headed young son. Flanking the man’s other side was a pig-tailed girl who called out, “Mommy!”

“Sweetie,” Claudia said, “I’m talking to these young women.” To the Satanists she asked, “Do you know Jesus?”

“We ain’t been introduced,” said Wendy.

“In that case, I’ve got something to show you,” said Claudia Quillen, pointing to a minivan parked beyond a picnic shelter where Zacky and Austin were kicking a hacky-sack.

To Betsy’s surprise, Wendy followed Claudia into the night. Keeping pace, Betsy trailed a few lengths behind. Trucks were roaring past on the interstate, too distant for any driver to see them looking so shabby, even ugly, beside Claudia and her radiant family. At the van Claudia opened the hatchback, unzipped a suitcase. She took out a book. Austin caught up and held Betsy from behind.

“‘If any man come to me,’” Claudia read, “‘and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.’”

The strange verse seemed tailor-made for the Satanists. It was like she could see into their minds. “So you hate your husband?” said Wendy.

Claudia glanced at Mr. Quillen, who had stopped some distance away. He was smart to guard his children in the shadows, Betsy thought, fearing for those kids herself even as she envied them.

“Daniel and I were loathed by our families.”

“Why is that?”

“Honey, strap in the kids?”

“They don’t want our help,” said Mr. Quillen, but he came and opened the sliding door. As their daughter climbed in, he turned on the stereo. A chorus of children began to sing “Do Your Ears Hang Low,” and Claudia kept reading, or reciting, given the path of her eyes from Satanist to Satanist.

“‘If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.’”

Yes, thought Betsy, it does, but what place was this where mild-mannered strangers gently said so? She was still scouring her mind for memories when Wendy said, “The world doesn’t hate you.”

“Child, who cares for you?”

“So now I’m a child?”

“You’re all children. You’ve been wounded.”

“Ma’am, we care for one another,” said Wendy, which was when Betsy knew that the Quillens were in danger. Wendy didn’t call people ma’am .

She opened her mouth to warn them, but found herself as mute as when she’d passed by the school. “There’s only five of you,” Claudia said. “A child needs more than four other people to love her.”

“How many people loving her does a child need?”

“That’s the wrong question to ask.”

“Because I’ve dealt with a lot.”

“Just come in the van for a bit.”

“That’s what I was fixing to do,” said Wendy, reaching into Betsy’s pocket for the revolver, which she pointed to where the Quillen boy was squirming in the middle seat.

As hysteria broke out around her — Zacky chasing Claudia onto her luggage, Helen running for the driver’s door — Betsy counted the times her heart prodded her lungs. She’d picked up some ways to suffer through dread. While the kids were in panic, shouting along with their dad, she measured her pulse. Eighteen per breath. I don’t know how the gun got there, she thought in rehearsal, before she was pulled in the side door to crouch by the seat. “Drive,” Wendy commanded. Immediately they were bouncing into each other. The girl was shrieking. The tape segued to a chorus of children’s voices that sent Betsy to the verge of every lost memory as she heard Claudia beg, “Where are we going?”

“Your song,” Wendy said.

She could barely hear it over the engine, the girl, the whistling air, and the whirring of Helen’s swerves across the rumble strips. “You know this one?” asked Daniel Quillen, softly, distant, at the far end of a tunnel.

“I don’t know any songs,” Betsy said, which felt like the truth until the girl fell silent and she could make out the familiar upbeat ballad.

They soon reached the desert where Betsy gave out

And down in the sand she lay rolling about

While Ike in great tears looked on in surprise

Saying Betsy get up you’ll get sand in your eyes.

“She knows it,” Wendy said. “It’s about the county she comes from.”

“You’re from Missouri?” asked the girl, speaking for the first time.

“I’m from Pike County, Kentucky,” Betsy said, confused. It had to be a trick; Jimmy couldn’t have sold her song to the radio.

“Sweet Betsy comes from Pike County, Missouri.”

“It’s Olivia’s favorite song,” her father explained. “She researched it.”

“It’s about Pike County, Kentucky,” said Betsy, sensing that there might not be a song about her after all.

“It’s about the California Gold Rush. They leave Pike County to pan for gold but they never find it.”

“Kentucky didn’t have a gold rush,” said Austin, to whom Betsy might have snapped back, Do you even know what a gold rush is, except she felt even stupider than Austin. Because if the lover was called Ike, not Jimmy, how had she never realized?

They had left the interstate. On a two-lane road high above a moonlit valley, Betsy felt a touch, and turned to see Claudia Quillen balanced awkwardly on the luggage. “God put you at that rest area,” she said, echoing something Betsy had heard before.

It was Austin’s notion about the three-legged dog.

“He did it to wake us up. We may be giving our kids a good home, but so many kids are without parents at all.”

“We’ve got parents, fuckwad,” Wendy said, as if she too felt affronted by the idea of fate. The euthanasia shot, the fire, Irene, Jimmy, all of it meant to be.

“I don’t blame you for hating God. What do your parents do?”

“My dad’s on a construction crew,” Wendy said.

“And your mother?”

“Ain’t talking about Mom.”

“Tell me about your mom.”

“Ain’t nothing worth telling.”

“If your parents don’t love you, that’s unfair,” said Claudia, louder, seeming to speak to everyone at once. “You can’t feel God’s love until you’ve felt normal love.”

“I didn’t say they don’t love me.”