She was sitting next to the kerosine lantern her Uncle Jeremia had given her for Christmas. Her pride and joy. She was using the kerosine her husband had found down by the train yard. She didn't hafta use it, she coulda bought some, but, there it was and for free. He never did say what he was doing there. Anyway, it smelled funny, but a person could get used to it and it kept what mosquitoes managed to find the one tear in the screendoor that she tore when she was moving the stove at bay. Not exactly moving, you understand, it was more like wrestling, pulling, and pushing. It's a propane stove, so it's not that heavy, just bulky. The screen got caught on the oven-door handle. She almost cried. All that work. She planned on repairing it, but she's learned to expect things like that around here.

Billy Bob got it as far as the porch, and he hooked it up after she got it in place. He's like that. It would've been nothing for a man his size and strength to bring it into the house, but he feels that sharing doing things brings a married couple closer together. He put our old stove out back, called it yard art like the rich folks in town do with old machinery and whatnot. She once saw an old John Deere tractor, a small one, sitting on a huge lawn. You can tell it's a lawn because the grass is cut real low; otherwise, it's a field. Now you know that woman who put it there ain't never done any farm work with it, or any other kind, for that matter, in her life, so what's with that?

Mary Elizabeth was occasionally rocking for the thrill of it, reading an old magazine she found under her husband's shotgun collection. She was alone this night listening to the frogs croak in the swamp nearby. The smell of rotting logs and rank from old moss filled the air. Mixed with the wild azaleas and calla lilies a person could relax all the way.

She was alone, did I mention that? Billy Bob had gone into town earlier looking for Johnny Pringle. Word was he'd said something bad about Billy's pick-up and so Billy was determined to find him and beat the crap out of him. She figured he might be gone a long time so she just waited, and read, and listened to the frogs, and sustained her strength with occasional sips of something she and her husband were rather famous for making. A whiff of memosa caught her up in mid-sentence. It reminded her of when she was a little girl and had just heard about trolleys that rode on rails and ran by electricity from her Uncle Zeth. He'd recently got out of prison and rode one to the bus terminal. He was just visiting on his way to Texas for a job he was offered by a prison friend taking cars apart. He was a gifted man with lots of stories to tell.

She went back to the advertisement for hip-boots she was reading, it was a good thing she used her finger to follow the words, when she heard a creak on the back porch. She hadn't heard Billy Bob's truck pull up, you can hear that thing a mile away, so she figured he got drunk after beating up Johnny Pringle and drove off the road. Not the first time. But why come in the back way? she wondered.

With effort, she pushed herself up and out of the well broken-in rocker and tip-toed to the dresser. She opened the top drawer, picked up her .45, shoved a clip in, loaded one into the chamber, grabbed the flashlight, and proceeded into the unlit back room.

After two short, painful steps--her lower back had been bothering her ever since she brought the stove in--she heard another creak. She stopped. That ain't Billy, she thought. He'd be inside by now. A bear? A cougar? No, ain't been a cat around these parts since Tyrone's four-year old was carried off two summers ago. They found him easy enough what with all the crying. He was sitting against a tree trunk, the cougar dead at his feet with a heavy tree branch sticking out of his chest that had chosen that moment to fall. Ever afterwards, Tyrone's son was treated like a prophet and went on to become a politician spreading the word. Still, could be a cougar just the same. Or some other heavy-footed critter. She didn't care. It was trespassing and she had her .45 her momma had given her when she turned 14. When she asked why such a heavy gun as a birthday present, she remembered momma had looked around the room at the male relatives and friends present and said simply, "Just keep it handy, sweetheart." And she has.

Another creak. She'd had it. With the flashlight off, she quietly stepped through the doorway into the utter blackness, careful to remember just where everything was. When she got to the back screendoor, the one she was proudest of and should've put on the front so visitors, what there was of them, could marvel at the workmanship, she stopped dead in her tracks. A smell, a bare scent of swamp sludge filled her nostrils, almost choking her. She pushed the button on the flashlight, but it didn't work. It was one of those models where you had to shake it or slap it to make it work. Just as well, she thought, quiet was more important than light at this juncture.

She was certain now that it wasn't Billy Bob or a friend. No friend would sneak up the back way when it was easy to see her sitting in the front room next to her Uncle Jeremia's kerosine lantern. She held the gun level at her waist and took another step. A crescendo of frog noise, each apparently taking turns, washed over her like a stunami of amphibian rage, or joy, it was hard to tell with frogs.

She knew exactly where she was. Another two feet and she'd be at the door. There was no hook on it to fasten it shut, but then, there was no reason to have one. Their nearest neighbor was twelve miles away on the other side of the swamp.

The frogs stopped abruptly and all at once like they do when an intruder passes through their territory. She listened. The sometimes thumping of a june bug and buzzing of a wayward mosquito was also absent. Another strong smell of swamp mud and she'd had it.

She shook the flashlight alive, kicked the screendoor open, held the .45 at arm's length, turned her head sideways, and squinting against the imminent noise and recoil, fired off two quick and extremely loud shots. If it was scare-able, she surmised, that oughta do it.

She shined the light around the back porch and the yard beyond. It was difficult to see everywhere what with the old refrigerator and stove parked out there. The bags of trash were scattered about, nothing was going to hide behind them big enough to worry about. She yelled, "I don't know who you are, but if you're lookin' to get gutshot, you come to the right place." Her daddy taught her to say that, even if you didn't have the means to follow through on it.

A bat flew by, and then another. The light had drawn lots of bugs. Mosquitoes were beginning to swarm around her sweaty arms and neck as well. Just then, she heard the front screendoor bang.

"That you, Billy Bob?" she yelled, trying to sound calm and in control. She marched back into the house letting the back screen slam. She'd insisted on strong springs. They wear out so the tighter they are, the longer they last. Her Aunt Thelma taught her that. She used to work in a screendoor factory in town and probably still did. She knew everything there was to know about screendoors and especially springs. Hadn't seen her for a long time. She got into the habit of stopping by a favorite bar after work and liked it so much she even went there on her days off. Must be the stress of making screendoors for all those years. The responsibility.

She walked across the floor, flashlight revealing what she had miraculously tip-toed around. When she neared the opening--couldn't really call it a doorway cause there wasn't a door--something told her to turn off the light and stand still. She listened. The frogs still hadn't started up again. It was terrible to be scared, she thought. She spent a good deal of her childhood being scared what with all the arguing and fighting going on. She never knew when her mother was going to pack a suitcase, grab her by the hand, and stomp out the door heading for town. She'd learned every swear word there was by the age of eight.

Adrenaline mixed with anxiety triggered that part of her brain she kept secret, that part that thought thoughts in a way no one else she knew did, unless, of course, it was their secret too. It made her head throb at first, not being her usual state of her mind, but once there, a remarkable calm would come over her. Ideas and ways of seeing things would surface from somewhere, and although she had no words for them, they caused her to understand what was going on in front of her as though a veil had been lifted. She could see clear as day inside another person's mind and know by their body what was true and what was not. It was like the whole world was the background and the people in it the foreground. If the two didn't match up, she could see where.

Her wits sharpened, she decided to steel herself and confront whoever or whatever this was that had contemptuously entered her house, uninvited. Obviously, whoever it was knew she was there and that she wouldn't hesitate to blow whoever to hell and gone. So why bother being quiet? "If you're here to rob..." She stopped short. Why risk getting shot with a .45 to steal from people who clearly didn't have anything, except for a bunch of old guns, to rob? He must have a gun too. And suppose he's hiding? Suppose I come around the corner as quick as I can to start blasting away but he's so horrible to look at that I freeze?

She rememberd when Billy Bob and two of his cronies took the truck into town to get drunk. She decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do a little shopping, so she squeezed in with them. Thank God Billy fixed the passenger side window so it rolled down. When they got there they drove by the movie theatre, they were featuring some movie about a creature who came from a swamp, Swamp Thing she thought it was called. Not interested in drinking with a bunch of people intent on raising hell, she decided to treat herself. It scared the bejesus out of her, especially as she lived next to a swamp.

It was called a marsh, actually, she recalled the man from the county she ran into one day telling her that. He was canvassing the area, checking up on the health of things and they got to talking. She remembered how pleased he was when she told him about all the frogs who lived here. Some people like frogs. So, being a marsh, maybe it didn't have scary creatures. Who'd be afraid of Marsh Thing?

She knew it was all in her head anyway; that was a movie, for God's sakes. So she shook it out and decided if necessary she'd close her eyes and spray the entire room until the clip was empty. She placed the flash on a bench next to her; the gun was too heavy to get an accurate shot with just one hand. She's liable to shoot the lantern and burn the place down. So, holding the .45 with both hands, her index finger on the trigger, crouching low she crept to the near wall where it met the opening, then hurried around the corner, the bright, kerosine-inspired light right in her eyes, blinding her.

That's when things got weird. A man stood before her, about six feet tall; short, combed hair; clean shaven; wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a tie, a blue one. She'd never seen a tie in person before, it was startling. Nonetheless, she raised the .45 to point at his chest eight feet away on the other side of the lamp. She was unsure what to do. She hadn't heard a vehicle approaching. She was alone, it was the middle of the night, miles from any help, and an intruder had entered dressed most peculiarly for these parts. He was standing perfectly still, looking her right in the eyes as though he was trying to weigh his chances, when he made a gesture with his right hand. In the bright light of the lantern, she couldn't tell if anything was in it, so she closed her eyes and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The gun froze. He smiled boadly, not a mean smile or even a friendly one; it looked like the kind politicians wore when they came to town to rub shoulders with their constituency, that's the folks who voted their sorry asses into office.

"Please," he said in a voice that sounded like crushed gravel under a tire. He looked surprised. "Please," again, only this time it was warm and cordial. "I mean you no harm," he said in the same voice. She was confused. After all, she was the one holding the gun and he was unarmed. She tried pulling the trigger again but to no avail. "Your weapon won't work, I'm afraid. Its mechanism is encased in a time bubble." A what? she thought.

"I am not from here." No kidding, she almost laughed. "My ship lost power nearby and I had to land." Your ship? In spite of the frogs, june bugs, and mosquitoes, she's sure she would've heard the noise a small plane makes. God, those things are awful. "I need your help."

Somehow, she found her voice. "We ain't got no phone," she said. "We've been meanin' to get one but the fellars at the phone company said it would cost an arm and a leg to run a line way out here."

"An arm and a leg?" he asked, wide-eyed, looking her over.

"It's an expression," she replied dryly, wondering how someone dressed so well could be so dumb. "Where you from? France? I heard people from France ain't all that smart when it comes to savvying such things. Ole man Jackson was over there in the war. Said he had the darnedest time trying to get through to those people. He's dead now. Fell off a barstool and cracked his head on one of those..."

"You have a building in the back," he interrupted "I detected, I mean, I was drawn to it. There's something in there I need."

"That's just a tool shed, mostly we stack firewood in it. Whatdoya mean, you were drawn to it?

"There's a mineral, a rock, several, somewhere in there that gives off the kind of energy I need to power my engines."

She looked him up and down, then lowered the gun to her side. She wanted to be brave and in control, appear confident, so she invited him to sit. He chose the wicker chair and she returned to where'd she been sitting before the creak. She couldn't help but notice how icy calm he was. He did seem a little stressed, however, but that was because he wanted something, something important enough to risk getting shot. But why not just come to the front door like regular folks? Peculiar people behaved in the most peculiar ways; her momma told her that. She ransacked the shed in her mind, searching for what he might be referring to.

"There's a canvas bag of rocks way in the back. Billy Bob, that's my husband who no doubt is on his way here as we speak, found them in a cave down in Nevada one summer when he and Luke got wind of an undiscovered gold mine they wanted to prospect. Because they was as heavy as gold almost, they thought they found something worthwhile. They was gone a month. Peace and quiet reined supreme for a whole month. I remember when Gracie used to come visiting during that time. Boy, did we get snockered. And laugh."

"Please, I need those rocks."

"Well," she leaned back, narrowing her eyes. Those rocks have been sitting out there gathering dust for years. They were heavy as hell, she recalled, having dragged the bag across the dirt to get it out of the way. She had questions. "How'd you know they was there? You a friend of Luke's? He's got some too, you know. It was the color and the weight they found intriguing." She'd been wanting to use that word for the longest time but didn't know anybody to use it on. A man who wears a suit and tie must know what it means.

"I have an instrument." He reached into his coat pocket.

"Careful," she warned, patting the gun resting in her lap, uneasy that it was jammed. He pulled out a small device the size of a pack of cigarettes and showed her the dial. "These rocks have something in them, they can be used to power my ship. I can process them onboard and, hopefully, rejoin the main fleet-ship in orbit."

In orbit, she thought. She'd heard of this. City folks doing drugs that made their brains crazy. They hallucinate something until they start believing it to be true. She sized him up as best she could. He was tall but thin. He didn't appear to have a weapon else he would've showed it after hers seized or had it out when she ran in. She decided he was harmless. If nothing else, she could rap him in the head with her heavy .45, that should do the trick. She didn't much care for city folks and their reckless, selfish ways, always preening and trying to impress one another. Well, she thought, it looks like this fella has gone off the deep end. He probably has his car parked out by the road and decided to explore our driveway. But what's with that weird device? It can find her rocks way out on the road? But it's so small.

"Please," he leaned forward awkwardly. "I will pay you."

Now she was interested. Real money for a bag of useless rocks from a nutcase out here in the middle of nowhere. Could life get any better? "Fine," she said, reticent, trying to look serious. She didn't want to appear too eager. She learned that from her momma. You let a man know you appreciate what he's done for you too much, and he takes advantage, sets up a homestead in your heart and maybe even in your house. They're always trying to work an angle, and there's only one thing their angling for. She never did say what that was. But eventually, Mary Elizabeth found out on her own.

He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a thick wad of bills. Her eyes and other parts of her lit up. She immediately tried to suppress it, but it was hard to do staring at a stack of hundred dollar bills. He handed it over. "Here, please, take it all." She did. He sat back, smiling that face smile, and said, "Now, the rocks, if you would." She put the stack of hundreds and the useless .45 in the drawer and made a motion towards the back door. "This way, sir." Nothing she respected more than a well-mannerd, good-looking, well-dressed man with lots of money. And he's wearing a tie.

She grabbed the flashlight on the way out and waited until he was beside her to continue on. Not a smart idea to let some strange man walk behind you. He was close and it was hot, yet he had no discernable aroma, something she was used to noticing around the other men she came in contact with. He just trudged through the swamp, at night, without a light to see, unless that device was also a flashlight, wearing what he's wearing, and no sweat? There was more than the abnormal about this character, she thought.

They reached the shed, the two doors wide open. She shined her flashlight around, trying to recall exactly where she dragged the bag of rocks. The man had his device out and put it under her light. The arrow on the display pointed towards the far corner behind a work bench cluttered with pieces of tools Billy was determined to fix, some day. They went over to the bag and the man reached in and retrieved a rock. He held the device near it, pushed a button on it and it started making a real fast ticking noise like a wood fire crackling.

"Low grade," he said, "and quite raw, but I can distill the ore to its basic properties. I think they'll do short term; I don't have far to go." He turned it off, put it in his pocket and smiled. "This is it. Thank you, ma'am. I'll be on my way now."

He grabbed the bag. She was about to warn him that it weighed close to a hundred pounds when he picked it up with one hand like it was a bag of feathers. She was amazed and stood back, carefully eyeballing him and reassessing her judgement as to his defenselessness. Again he smiled briefly, then turned towards the doorway and walked out and down the drive.

"Well, so long, mister," she called afer him. "Good luck getting your ship going with them rocks." She laughed. She couldn't help herself, it sounded so ridiculous. Momentarily, he was out of sight, lost in the blackness that even her flashlight couldn't penetrate. How can he see where he's going? she asked herself.

Feeling light-headed due, mostly, to the large wad of hundred dollar bills sitting in her dresser drawer, and partly due to what she'd been drinking, she made up her mind to follow him a ways. She was sure his car was waiting at the bottom of the driveway where it met the road. It was a long, curving, rutted and potholed dirt strip that was a poor excuse for a driveway and another project on Billy's list. However, having walked it many times to get the mail and for the exercise, she knew it by heart and so didn't need the light.

She could hear him walking ahead about 50 yards or so. He was clearly not concerned about bears or cougars, but then, he probably didn't know about them. She'd lived there most of her adult life and had gotten used to it. Whenever she'd seen a bear it usually ran away or just ignored her, which is what she did, the ignoring part.

She stopped to listen as his footfalls became fainter. He went off the drive to the right, into the marsh. Now she was curious. She followed, cutting a path through above his. The marsh was dense with cottonwoods and moss-covered vine maples at its edge, so it was easy to conceal herself. The canopy was thoroughly entangled, so she dared to turn on her flashlight, but kept it at ground level. About an eighth of a mile, he came to a clearing of sorts. The ground was hard. She hid behind a Juniper tree and in the pale light of the crescent moon she saw a vehicle of some kind laying on its side, apparently. It was a good 50 feet in one direction and perhaps 30 in the other. It was obviously not a single-prop puddle jumper.

The man approached it and raised his other hand. A door opened and a short walkway descended bathed in a blue light. She could see now that it wasn't on its side but had a narrow pyramid-shaped top cut off about 20 feet above the main circular hull. The man entered, the walkway withdrew and the door closed, enveloping the ship in almost total darkness.

Mary Elizabeth was transfixed. She wasn't going anywhere. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before and she saw no reason to leave. She felt secure behind her tree. She kept her eye out for snakes and other creepy crawly things and did her best to fend off the rising tide of mosquitoes. The word was out in mosquito world, fresh blood at so and so location, don't be late.

She tried to tell time's passage by the moon. It was one of those things you told yourself you were good at, assumed as much, but when the time came you found out that it was a hopeless endeavor. It was straight overhead, for that much she was grateful. Feeling drowsy she thought she might nap, but fear of being sucked dry talked her out of it. She was staring at the ground, trying to determine if a small pebble-looking thing was sneakily walking towards her when she heard heavy mechanical sounds coming from the ship, things locking into place in anticipation. She knelt behind the tree and peered through the ferns. Around the lower edge orange and blue lights went on. She flinched back. Now the whole damn place is lit up like a Christmas tree, she complained. A humming sound filled the air. The ground thrummed with a deep resonance.

She looked through the leaves just in time to see the ship lift off straight up, slowly at first, until it reached the treetops where it stopped. She rose as light as a leaf caught in a gentle updraft and staring up, unmindful of where she stepped, floated out onto the squishy ground, awed, fascinated, beyond all fear. Soundlessly, it hovered above a good hundred feet or more for a couple of seconds, then, the lights shifted to a dim red and in a flash the sundial-shaped ship sped off at an upwards angle and was gone, lost in the blackness, leaving only the waning moon and stars twinkling through the heavy air.

Transfixed, she stood perfectly still for a long time, looking up. Actually, she wasn't even doing that much. Her eyes were open, her face was turned upwards, and above her was the star-studded night sky, what she could see of it between the trees, and that was all. There was no cognitive consciousness of the recent event. In other words, she was dazed, to put it mildly.

The abrupt cacophony of frogs broke her spellbound reverie. Collecting herself, she turned on the flashlight and made her way to the drive where she ceased all movement. She was processing. Did I just see what I think I saw? she said out loud. Mother of angels. Wait till Billy Bob hears this. She hurried up the drive, smiling and amazed.

As she reached the porch, thirsty for a drink if only to steady her nerves, she heard Billy's truck. She waited. He rolled in hard and came to a jarring stop, turned off the noisy engine in serious need of a tune-up, opened the door and fell out onto the hard ground. She ran over and helped him up. "You all right, Billy?" she asked, knowing he probably was but feeling obligated to at least ask. When people fall out of trucks you're supposed to ask. It's polite.

He smiled a bleary smile, a drop of blood dripped from his nose. "I found him, Lizzy. He was in Hope's bar. He refused to apologize so we went outside and fought. When I left, we was drinkin' together at the bar. He said he was sorry because we were friends but it just made him mad that I took all the credit for the firewood we got for old lady McGallagher." He paused to laugh. "Johnny has the hots for her granddaughter and thought it might give him an edge in. So I said I was sorry and promised to straighten it out. I reminded him though that it was my truck what brung it."

That was it; he was done. She helped him to the porch and plopped him down in Aunt Morningstar's heavy rocking chair. Its seat had been repaired with some stiffer wicker material but Billy's prodigious posterior had broken its will. It now had a comfortable curve to it. Aunt Morningstar used to be called Loretta, her Christian name, but after spending a summer in San Francisco, of all places, she came home looking quite different and said she'd changed her name. You're allowed to do that, Loretta, a.k.a. Morningstar, told her, but Mary didn't think so. You should stick with the name your parents gave you, out of respect.

She went inside and grabbed the jug and took a deep pull, then brought it out and dropped it in Billy's lap. He was smashed but not done, she knew. She debated whether to tell him now or later, in the morning, when he might be sober. But she couldn't wait, she was too excited and knew she wouldn't sleep till she got it out.

"Billy, something happened here while you was gone," she began, solemnly, standing in front of him. Holding the bottle in his lap, he stared up at her stupidly, trying to focus on her face. "I was sittin' readin' a magazine when a man showed up. He was wearing a suit and tie."

"Did you shoot 'im?" he asked, putting the bottle to his lips.

"Yea, I killed him and buried him in the backyard." He gave her a sharp look. "No, I didn't shoot him. Now listen," she said with a perky smile "do I have a story for you." She sat down beside him and told him everything, in detail, from the moment she heard the creak to when his ship took off.

Following her recount, she felt tired, empty, but invigorated all the same. Billy had sat still, couldn't do much else, and listened as well as he could. After a long pause while he tried to digest what she'd told him, he said, "Woman, that's it for you. No more drinkin'. You been actin' strange lately, I been meanin' to tell you, and now this. You've gone off the deep end." He took a sip to finalize his pronouncement.

"Them rocks is gone, see for yourself."

"That don't prove nothin'. You coulda give them away any time in the past two years."

"Why would I do that? What the hell do I care about a bag of rocks? And who would I give them to? Who's dumb enough to want a bag of rocks? There's rocks everywhere, you just need to bend over and pick one up."

"'Cause you was mad at me and Luke going off and leavin' ya' by yourself, that's why."

"I was mad, at first." She recalled how much fun she and Gracie had together. "Leaving me here for a whole month," she said, trying to sound as forlorn as possible.

"It was hotter than blue blazes. I don't know how anybody can live there."

"They been in there all this time until today a little while ago. You musta seen them."

"I don't know what the hell's there."

"What doya mean you don't know? It's your shed, you built it."

"Do we hafta discuss this now?"

"Yea, because of what just happened."

"A man in a suit came here and gave you a handful of hundred dollar bills in exchange for a bag of rocks that'd been sittin' in the the corner of the shed collectin' dust for the past two years." Billy deliberately skipped the part about the ship. It was outside the limits of his imagination, and there it would stay. Besides, Mary had often talked about things she read as though she'd experienced them first hand. That is, she sometimes had trouble differentiating. He figured this was one of those times.

"How'd he know they was there? Does that make sense to you?"

"Yea it makes sense to me, I'm the one who told you."

"You're crazy, Lizzy. Stone crazy."

"No, Billy," she pleaded. "I'm just fine. It's all true. Let me show you." She ran inside to get the thick wad of hundred dollar bills, but when she opened the drawer all she found was a stack of blank pieces of paper the shape of hundred dollar bills. She stood there frozen in time. She knew what she saw. Looking at a hundred dollar bill magnified by a thick stack of them is not something Mary Elizabeth is likely to misconstrue. Astonished, bewildered and beside herself, she picked it up ever so carefully as though it might at any moment change back, disbelieving what her eyes were telling her, and sleepwalked outside to show Billy.

She stood in front of him for a moment trying to collect herself, then put it in his face and said, wonder in her voice, "This was hundred dollar bills. I swear it on my mother's grave."

Drunk as he was he was still a caring man and loved Mary very much. After all, she was the only woman in the entire county who would have him. So he tried to calm her as best he could, although he was having a hard time to keep from laughing. She sat beside him, the pieces of paper resting in her lap. Softly, she began to cry. "I know what I saw, Billy. I know what I saw." She had no idea what he'd done, how he did it, but somehow he changed them. Her mind needed to come up with something, some explanation that would relieve her from doubting the validity of her senses. It formed the ground on which she maintained her sanity and sense of self. It was important, in other words. She recalled reading once in a magazine while waiting to get her hair done--once a month she goes into town to bask in luxury--a short mystery story, a three-pager. That's what it was, that's how he did it, she realized. "Invisible ink," she muttered. "It evaporated." Anger swelled in her breast, indignation boiled in the pit of her stomach, outrage flooded her mind. That pretty much covered all the bases. In other words, she was hurt and pissed. Until they could no longer be contained.

"That son of a bitch," she said through tears. "That rotten son of a bitch." She jumped to her feet and walked to the edge of the unbanistered porch and with fists clenched, arms and shoulders tight, she yelled at the top of her voice, "You bastard. I hope your ship crashes into the mountains with you in it." Fury let loose, she stared at the ground and let the disappointment and loss and betrayal and foolishness drain away.

They sat together through the warm summer night listening to the frog serenade, mosquitoes taking their chances, and the june bugs crashing into the screen going after the kerosine lantern. They finished off the bottle and helping one another, mostly it was Mary Elizabeth helping Billy Bob, managed to open the screendoor. As they stumbled by, she blew out what was left of the lantern, a practiced move, and together succeeded in getting to bed just as the sun was poking its hot face over the distant mountain tops.

She lay there for a long time listening to Billy's loud snores. He only snored when he was drunk, which was often, so she was used to it and blocked it out. She recalled everything that happened clearly and was certain she'd never forget. And one day, maybe soon, she'd run into that man again. He had a lot of explaining to do and she'd get it out of him one way or the other.

Just before nodding off, she reminded herself to get her .45 working. Her momma had given it to her, so it had sentimental value. Family was everything.