“Unemployment compensation. My boss says I quit. It’ll take two months for me to get a hearing.”
“Did you get the envelope I put under the door?”
“Yes, that’s nice, Aaron. But I can’t take it.”
“You have to.”
“No, I do not.”
When I entered puberty and the problems that go with it, my father gave me a brief admonition on the subject and never spoke about it again: “Women are God’s greatest creation. So are young girls. No matter what they do, never show them disrespect. When you find one who won’t give up her principles at gunpoint, never let go of her.”
“When can I see you?” I said. “I have to be back at the farm by tomorrow evening.”
“Aaron, I hope I haven’t misled you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, my heart sinking.
“I have ties to Henri.”
“What if I drop by his office and tell him he’s untied?”
“That’s not your choice to make.”
“I think he’s a bum. Not like the bums I’ve met on freight cars, just a bum.”
“I can’t believe the way you talk about people.”
But I could tell she was on the edge of laughing, and I felt like flowers had just bloomed all over my motel room. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey, what?”
“You’ve got to have dinner with me tonight. I bought a car. A scavenger special.”
“A what?”
“I’ll cruise by at six.”
* * *
I CHANGED THE OIL in the Chevrolet and filled the tank and wiped the inside clean and drove to the Mexican restaurant from which Jo Anne had been fired. The lunch crowd was just drifting in, the owner guiding them to tables and handing out menus. He wore a dark blue suit with stripes in it and a soft lavender dress shirt and a plum-colored tie and a red carnation in his lapel. His teeth were small, like kernels of white corn, his black hair shiny and swept up in a pile, his eyes feverishly attentive to his waitresses, his fingers snapping when need be. I walked up behind him. “Could I speak with you, sir?”
His eyes locked on mine. “What do you want?”
“Jo Anne McDuffy didn’t quit her job. Why do you want to mess her up with the state employment system?”
“I’ll call the police,” he said.
Over his shoulder, I recognized a familiar face. Darrel Vickers was eating at the bar, one cheek puffed with food, chasing it with a Lone Star, a big bubble of foam swelling against the inside of the bottle. He was wearing striped pants tucked inside hand-tooled multicolored Mexican stovepipe boots. He shot me the bone.
I looked back at the owner. “Why didn’t you call the cops when Darrel Vickers and his friends attacked us?” I said.
He went to the counter and picked up the phone and dialed zero, his eyes never leaving me. Then he turned his back and began talking into the receiver.
I went out the door. The day was cool and bright, the wind blowing the way it does on the Southern Colorado Plateau at the end of summer, a passenger train dipping into Ratón Pass, its wheels locked for the long, screeching ride down the tracks into New Mexico. Behind me I heard someone coming across the gravel, but I didn’t turn around. “Wait up, asshole,” a voice said.
I kept walking.
“Hey, dipshit, want to save yourself some trouble?” the same voice said.