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320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2020
Hey there, Valentine. His soft drawl marked him as not from here, but not that far away either, and his words took the ugly right out of the parking lot. Her mouth went dry as a stick of chalk. She had been standing next to the lone picnic table parked in the center of the drive-in, a shaky wooden hub in the middle of a few cars and trucks, doing what she always did on a Friday night—hanging around, drinking limeades and begging smokes, waiting for something to happen, which it never did, not in this piss-ant town.Not until tonight.
A local woman’s burned body has been found, the fourth in the past two years. What a thing an oil boom is for a town, Corinne used to tell Potter bitterly, it brings in the very best sort of psychopath.What is it like to be a woman, a female, growing up in a place where the land is sere and cold-hearted, the attitudes antediluvian, and where the opportunities for things to go bad far outweigh the chances for some actual self-realization, a place where good-old-boys tend to look after their own, regardless of their crimes, and crime victims are expected to shut up and somehow conclude that they had it coming. It is pretty tough to stand up when the local winds blow dark and hard and encourage one to dive for shelter. Yet, in this flat, miserable landscape there are glimmers of hope. Maybe this girl, this young woman can find a way to a better life. Maybe that woman can make something better out of a marriage gone stale. Maybe some people will be able to communicate meaningfully with some other people to stave off the darkness of solitude. It is these flashes of light that give us, that give any of the characters here, hope.
Every August for the nearly thirty years she taught English, in an overheated classroom filled with farm boys and cheerleaders and roughneck wannabes reeking of aftershave and perfume, Corinne would spot the name of at least one misfit or dreamer on her fall roster. In a good year there might be two or three of them—the outcasts and weirdoes, the cellists and geniuses and acne ridden tuba players, the poets, the boys whose asthma precluded a high school football career and the girls who hadn’t learned to hide their smarts. Stories save lives, Corinne had said to those students. To the rest of them she said, I’ll wake you when it’s over.DA and Glory both loved the stories their mothers told them. DA gets more from her friend, Jesse. It is one of the things that binds them.
Tonight the wind blows like it’s got something to prove. [It] moves from window to window, a small animal sharpening its claws on the screens. Out at the ranch you hear this sound and you think possum or maybe armadillo. Here in town you might think of a squirrel or somebody’s cat. Lately the wind makes me think of animals that have not been here for a hundred years, panthers and wolves, or twisters that threaten to lift my children impossibly high in the air, only to fling them back to earth.Small animals dash across the stage from time to time, almost always toting some smaller creature in their mouths. It is a red-in-tooth-and-claw place, and not just for the people. Danger also comes in the form of dark-intentioned telephone calls. Mary Rose is not the only woman who gets them.
The harvest moon has come early this year, blood red and beautiful against the darkening sky. Try floating with your ears under the water, Tina had said to Glory as they drifted across the swimming pool that afternoon. Listen, she said, the sounds from the highway will blend together—a truck hauling pipeline or water, a flatbed turning onto the highway, the drill on a rig slowly winding itself up, they will all start to sound alike. You can tell yourself you’re hearing anything, Tina said, her large white arms floating next to her like buoys. And will you look at that sky? It’s a wonder, a damned wonder.