together.”
At the far edge of the field, Micah’s yellow T-shirt and orange shorts flashed like banners against the brown earth as she started to run.
“Who’d Ernest buy this place from?” Miss Honey asked.
Charley wiped her eyes, watching her daughter approach. “Some family named LeJeune.”
Miss Honey looked surprised. For a moment, it seemed as though she might say something, but she just nodded and let Charley collect herself.
“Look at these,” Micah said, panting, as she reached the car. She handed four Polaroids through the window before she saw Charley’s face. “Mom? Why are you crying? Miss Honey, what’s wrong with my mom?”
Miss Honey opened a bottle of water and offered it to Micah. “Quiet,
chère.
You mamma’s having a bad day.”
2
In twenty-four hours he would be a fugitive; twenty-four hours, and the Chevy Impala would appear on the Phoenix Police Department’s list of stolen vehicles. Ralph Angel considered his new identity as the car glided over the highway. He tugged at his collar, remembering the crisp white dress shirts he wore as a college student all those years ago; white shirts with natural shell buttons that cost most of his monthly allowance. But fingering his collar now, all Ralph Angel felt was the frayed cotton of his thrift-store button-down.
Behind Ralph Angel, his son, Blue, six years old, kicked the seat. “Can we go to the plaza on Sunday?”
“Why?”
“I want a churro,” Blue said. “I didn’t get one last time.”
“So?” Ralph Angel stuck his arm through the window. How many times in the last four months had he and Blue walked to the plaza on a Sunday morning? He’d scrape together enough money for four warm churros wrapped in newspaper and a six-pack of Dos Equis, and they’d sit on the shaded grass listening to the mariachis play. They stayed all day and into the evening sometimes, Ralph Angel nursing his beer, Blue nibbling the long ropes of fried dough, the two of them watching red-lipped women dance with men in cowboy hats and boots. Those trips always ended the same way: back in the rented room, Blue asleep in his street clothes, the two of them sharing the soft mattress while Ralph Angel stared at the TV, waiting for sleep that rarely came. By midnight, he’d give in to the craving, slip out for a drink at the Piccolo Club or cruise Fifty-ninth Avenue to score some junk.
“When we get to Billings, maybe we can find a new treat,” Ralph Angel said. “Something better than churros.” But Blue was absorbed with Zach, the Power Rangers action figured he treated in mysterious and punishing ways. Ralph Angel heard Blue say, “Once a Power Ranger, always a Power Ranger,” and make exploding sounds as he smashed Zach against the door hardware.
“Easy there, buddy,” Ralph Angel said. “Maybe we’ll get you a buffalo burger.” Cowboys and buffalos, wasn’t that what they had out there in Big Sky country? He imagined frontier towns, white men dressed in flannel and spurs. He imagined life in Billings: he’d stick out like a fleck of pepper in the salt.
Blue unfastened his seat belt, sat forward, and walked Zach across Ralph Angel’s headrest. “Mystic source, mystic force,” he said.
Ralph Angel heard clicking noises near his ear as Blue pressed the light on Zach’s Dino Fire; heard Blue say, “Power ax,” as he pressed the tiny weapon into Ralph Angel’s cheek.
“Zach wants to know what else we’ll eat,” Blue said.
Ralph Angel thought for a moment. “How about huckleberry pie?” Cowboys always ate huckleberry pie.
Blue laughed. “Zach says we can eat huckleberry pie every day when you come home from work. We can have huckleberry pie for breakfast if we want.”
“Sure, buddy. Whatever you say.”
Billings, Montana, according to the article in
Money
magazine that Ralph Angel read in the emergency room last month when Blue jumped off a wall and sprained his ankle, was the seventh-best place in the country to live.