Reney doesn’t know what her mom is looking for in the men or nonstop working. She doesn’t know what makes her squeeze Reney so hard and so long sometimes that it seems like all the air might leave Reney’s chest for good, what makes her sit up all night watching Reney sleep some nights and stay up making noise with the good-time gang others. Reney doesn’t understand what makes it so hard for her mom to keep still. As far as Reney can tell, they don’t need much at all, and between the one job and Granny and Lula, they have all they might ever need in the world.
Like a cowboy from Waylon and Willie come to life, in saunters the jockey from Texas. A towhead with blue eyes and skin like orange leather, Pitch stands a whole head shorter than Justine. Despite his size, he fills the house with bellowing laughter and a Texas jangle, tight as a new barbed wire fence. He doesn’t drink much. When he’s around, whatever it is that keeps Justine wound so tight seems to ease up. He buys Reney a Zebco reel one visit, then shows back up to take her and Granny fishing. He lets her braid racehorse mane and stand in winner’s circle pictures. Reney beams when he remembers to leave her eggs runny and fry her bologna black on the edges.
One Friday morning before school, Justine’s flurry of getting-to-work-on-time chaos comes to a stop in the kitchen doorway. She stands there, tying her hair up in a bun, watching as Pitch flips a pancake shaped more or less like Texas. It grazes the ceiling, and Reney doubles over giggling as Pitch stretches himself as far as he can to catch the pancake before it slaps the floor. When Reney straightens, she notices Justine’s eyes are not on Pitch, but on the sink piled with dishes.
“Go comb your hair, Bean,” Justine says. She sticks her safety glasses in her shirt pocket. “I have to go, and you don’t have time to be playing.”
“But we made God’s country for breakfast,” Pitch says, offering her a plate.
“You better be out there when the bus comes, Reney,” Justine says.
Pitch and Reney listen to her bang down the hallway. When the front door closes, Pitch makes a scary face that gets Reney laughing all over again, but as she lies in bed that night, worry washes over her. She knows the beats of their old apartment by heart. Two doors slammed, one after another, meant guaranteed trouble. The sound of skin hitting skin had been rare, but Reney’s bones zapped like a mosquito trap before it happened. She remembers the grunts and knocks of two people falling together in a room, still stupidly—lovingly—trying not to wake a child. She knew when she would be herded from her room before she had half of what she wanted and driven across town where she would wake up at Granny and Lula’s. If only one door was slammed, Justine might sneak into Reney’s room. Crying, she would curl into the bed beside Reney and stroke her hair until the night hummed quiet.
Reney loves her mother more than anything. She feels thankful for this old house and for goofy Pitch, but she can’t shake her uneasiness. She squeezes her eyes shut and whispers a prayer for all of it, all of them.
“He didn’t invent the pancake, you know,” Justine says, as they pull into Granny and Lula’s driveway. “Or tap a damn maple tree.”
Justine had to pick up a Saturday shift, and Reney knows she is annoyed that Pitch left to gallop horses before the sun came up. He’d said he was going to take her fishing. The ride over was quiet, and now Justine’s words seem to come from the middle of a conversation, an argument.
“I’m glad I get to see Granny today,” Reney says. She opens the door and pulls on her backpack. “It’s okay.”
Justine takes a deep breath before leaning over for a hug. “Pitch isn’t ever going to leave Texas, Reney. Plus, he’s got girlfriends in every town from here to Santa Anita. Don’t get attached.”
“He wouldn’t if you told him not to,” Reney says. “And he doesn’t have another me.”
Justine begins to make excuses when they go fishing. She tries to stay out of photos, but Reney pulls her back into the frames. When he goes back to his beloved Texas or packs up his gear for another track town, the good-time crew returns, and to Reney its edges feel sharper than before.
Reney gets up for a drink of water but stops at the foot of the stairs. The ponytail guy is kicked back on the couch. His feet rest on the coffee table, and he’s hugged up on Justine, whispering in her ear.
“What’s that sorry sack of snakes doing here?” Reney says. She can’t believe how calm she sounds. “Did he bring you some calamine lotion?” She had been nearly sleepwalking before, but now she is wide awake.
“Reney, you need to mind your business,” Justine says. “Get back to bed.” Her mascara is smeared.
Reney stomps up the stairs, thirsty.
Two nights later, Reney hears his voice downstairs again. Justine’s been picking up more shifts at the bar. Nobody wants to buy the Mary Kay, and Justine and Christy have gone through most of it themselves. Justine won’t let anybody answer the phone because of bill collectors.
Ponytail guy laughs. His low voice rumbles through the walls, up the banister, and under her bedroom door, where it rattles her bones.
When they begin to yell, Reney’s feet hardly touch the stairs before she’s in the living room and sees that they have already passed through the fight into something else.
“Go to bed, sweet girl,” Justine says. She pulls away from his embrace and glances at the coffee table full of party stuff. In the middle of it all, a leather holster with a metal clip swaddles the .38.
Reney’s about to say something else, something that will probably get her into big trouble, when she feels a hand on her neck. It’s Christy.
“Come on, Beenie Weenie,” Christy says. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Reney goes, but she cannot get her mother’s eyes out of her mind. There was something wild about them, something sad. She waits until she hears her mother’s bedroom door close. Then she waits some more, watching the flames of the gas heater dance on her walls. When she knows they won’t be awake for a very long time, she creeps back down the stairs.
The gun is heavier than she expected, the handle a hundred sharp, tiny teeth in her hands. When she turns back toward the stairs, she accidentally kicks over his cowboy boots. They are expensive, with lizard toe boxes and garish stitching up and down the shaft. She grinds the heel of her foot into one boot’s counter and the other one’s toe box. Then she carries the gun upstairs to her room. She sits on her bed, holds the gun in her lap.
Reney thinks about what she might do next. She could walk to Granny and Lula’s for good and bury the gun on the side of the road, far away from anybody who might do any harm with it. Once she got to Granny and Lula’s, she would wash her hands and face and maybe get something sweet out of the fridge. Then she’d go get in bed with Granny, where everything would be alright as alright could be.
She could put on a mask and hold up the store on the corner where the man behind the counter always made her feel like she was stealing anyway. She’d take the money and all the Reese’s Pieces in the place. She’d leave a trail of them to her Cookson Hills hideout and send her mom a letter telling her all their troubles were over, telling her she could follow the Reese’s trail, but only if she came alone and ate the evidence.
Reney cocks the gun, then holds the hammer and gently releases the trigger. She doesn’t know how she knows to do this, but she does. She does it again and again. Then she gets on her knees and puts the gun deep under her bed, next to Waylon and Willie.
The next morning, when Reney goes downstairs, ponytail guy is pacing the living room, wearing nothing but jeans and an unbuckled belt. He has long red hairs spilling off his big toes that make Reney sick. Justine is sitting on the couch chewing a thumbnail. The party stuff is still strewn on the coffee table before her.
“Where is it?” he says to Reney. It doesn’t really seem like a question.
She settles onto the couch next to her mom and tucks her legs into her sleep shirt, rests her chin on her knees.