Crooked Hallelujah. Kelli Jo Ford

it anywhere,” he says, starting to yell. “That’s the fucking point, Justine. It was right here, and somebody stole it.”

      He stomps down the hall. When he starts banging on Christy’s door, Reney runs up the stairs. She gets on her hands and knees and inches under the bed for the gun. When she gets ahold of it now, it no longer feels like power and possibilities. It feels just like the danger she always knew it was, and she wants it far away from all of them.

      When Reney gets to the hallway, Justine is stepping between him and a messy-haired, cursing Christy. “Here,” Reney says, shoving the gun at her mom.

      He yanks the gun from Justine before she can react and takes one hard step toward Reney. Justine slaps both of her hands against his chest, pushing him back back back into the living room and out the front door.

      Reney hears him shout “about like a bunch of Indians” and runs over to the window in time to see him yanking open the door to his truck. Justine bursts back through the door and grabs his boots. She throws them from the porch all the way to the driveway, and Reney smiles.

      “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” Justine says.

      Reney’s been getting in trouble at school. She leaves her lunch sack on the kitchen counter and won’t eat all day long. She feigns a stomachache if Justine works overtime and talks back to Lula. Granny gives Reney her own key and says it doesn’t matter if nobody’s home. She can always come inside; she can always stay. Even stern Lula nods her head and says, “Always.” But as soon as Justine drops her off, Reney starts walking home. The belt doesn’t work.

      When Justine catches her trying to light a roach left in an ashtray, that’s it. She ties her hair up in a bun and spends an entire Sunday cleaning house. Then she gets on the phone. The next weekend Pitch makes the drive across the Red River and into Oklahoma even though he didn’t have a race. Reney crouches at the top of the stairs listening to the two of them talk deep into the night. Pitch stays for three weeks before Reney suspects that the good-time crew might be gone for good.

      They take her to Padlock Pizza to tell her they are getting married. The three of them are moving to Texas, and she’ll get a horse. Reney’s eyes well with tears. Though she is no farther from Granny than she had been a minute before, she thinks her heart might burst from the way she suddenly misses Granny, dear Granny who speaks Cherokee best and wraps her up in arms that smell like Shower to Shower and something good cooked over the stove. A single gray braid curling to the middle of her back, she crushes Reney’s bones the good way, like only love can.