Dothan stuck the toe of his boot under a stake and eased it from the ground. My rain fly went even droopier. "In jail where folks can't see what a wretch she is, they might feel sorry for her."

"n.o.body feels sorry for her," Mangum said.

"I do," I said.

Dothan went on. "Let's keep her out front where she can dig her own grave."

Mangum nodded as he considered the wisdom of the plan. "Whatever you say, but I'd be more comfortable with her behind bars."

Dothan turned to look at the house. Sugar waved and smiled, and Dothan waved back. "If she approaches my son or my home, I want her nailed to the wall."

"Sounds reasonable," Mangum said.

Dothan always sounds reasonable when he's not. I started to stand up, but my knees got wobbly. "The part I don't understand," I said, "is why you want Auburn. You haven't spent ten minutes in a row with him since the day he was born."

Mangum and Dothan walked toward their vehicles. With his back to me, Mangum said, "What'd you ever see in that woman in the first place?"

Dothan opened his truck door and looked over at me. The expression on his face was like when you have to shoot a dog that's been chasing the neighbors' calves. He said, "I don't remember."

Dothan saw plenty in me back in high school. He acted half-crazy whenever I came around, although maybe he was at an age where he'd have acted half-crazy about anyone who let him nail her at will. The boy was insatiable-before school, during lunch, he came so quick back then we could hop in a mop closet after geometry, get him off, and not be late for social awareness.

He was two years older than me, so after he graduated they wouldn't let him hang around school anymore. He took a job at his dad's taxidermy. Dothan used to say he spent the days mounting elk and the nights mounting me. No matter how often he showered the alum brine smell clung to him like Saran Wrap. The stink nauseated me to the point where I refused to kiss him anymore, then he started splashing himself with Old Spice, which was like sucking Sterno.

My senior year I decided he was more trouble than fun, and I tried to break up. Dothan crumbled. First he said he'd kill me, and when that didn't draw the right response he said he'd kill himself. He said if I went out with another boy he'd join the army and get sent to Vietnam and die at the hands of gooks and it would be my fault. He also said no one would want me because I had the reputation of a s.l.u.t. Which was c.r.a.p; at seventeen every boy wants a s.l.u.t.

I finally decided splitting up was just too hard and I'd deal with one more summer before escaping to college. It was a pretty lousy summer. I can't think of much worse than having s.e.x in a car with someone you don't like.

Then, nightmare-come-true, he followed me to Laramie. I've never seen such a pain in the b.u.t.t to get away from. I treated him mean so he would go away-didn't answer phone calls, stared through him in public, made fun of his pointy chin and old-man hairline.

To spite Dothan, I went out with an offensive lineman named Rocky Joe and slept with him. Isn't it amazing the number of motivations there are to f.u.c.k? Dothan and Rocky Joe got in a fight, and for the first time in his life, Dothan had his a.s.s kicked. He limped back to GroVont and I never saw Rocky Joe off the football field again.

After that came the Park thing with all its deepness followed by two years of boys I needed but didn't much like who didn't much care for me either. College turned out such a bust that I figured Dothan was what I deserved. He'd gone from stuffing animals to selling real estate-not a step up, but at least he smelled better. So I dropped out, moved back home, got married, got pregnant, got drunk.

A kid from the Jackson Hole News dropped by to take my picture as a human-interest item. I crawled in the tent and refused to come out even though he whined that his editor would chew him out if he came back with nothing but a tent in a front yard. I didn't budge. n.o.body says laughingstocks have to cooperate with the media.

On my stomach, I watched through the insect net as people walked up and down the street, pretending they had errands downtown. Or the dog suddenly needed relieving or something, any excuse to check out the Talbot spectacle. Cars drove by slow, as if my camp were a prizewinner in the Christmas outdoor display contest.

I ate two candy bars and drank half the pint of Yukon. Inside the tent was hot and airless, so I rolled Sam's sleeping bag into a pillow and took a nap until Dothan coming home for supper woke me up. When he slammed the truck door, I jumped like I'd been shock-therapied. Sleeping in the afternoon always makes me skittish.

The sunset was great. I may have been depraved, and I may have been a drunk, maybe I was even town tramp for a while, but I never lost my appreciation for the sun going down behind the Tetons. Even then, I had standards.

Besides, town tramp was a matter of perspective. We're talking a college coed between 1968 and 1971 here-the very height of the s.e.xual revolution. I slid through that remarkably short gap between the pill and herpes when for the first, possibly the last, time in history the young reveled in s.e.x without consequences. A dozen boys before age twenty-three was not that rare or squalid.

After dark I unscrewed the Yukon bottle, switched on the flashlight, and pulled the notebook from the pack. Between sips, I made a list-one dozen p.r.i.c.ks I have known.

Sam Dothan Rocky Joe Park Randy Lonnie Chuck Joe Bob Joe Bob Winston Akeem Leon I went back and put a check next to the ones who sleeping with had made me feel better about myself instead of worse.

Sam Park Lonnie I'm not totally convinced happened because if we made it, he was a tequila screw that I blacked out. All I know is I woke up naked beside him in a Cowboy Joe homecoming float, and afterward he told anybody who would listen that we'd made it. Lonnie may have been lying through his teeth. He wouldn't be the first to say he did when he didn't or he didn't when he did.

One of the Joe Bobs was from Archer City, Texas, and the other from Great Falls, Montana, but I couldn't tell you which was which. The bigger one had a '58 Corvette tattooed on his chest. I remember that. I met him at a frat party, where he slammed a thirty-two-ounce Miller High Life and said "Lick my chrome, baby."

Winston was a married English professor specializing in Camus and Kafka. He's the one who denied me. Akeem was a black guy who collected white women. Honest to G.o.d, the headboard of his bed was covered with silver stick-on stars like you give little kids for doing their ch.o.r.es. I asked him what they were for, and he said it was to remind him of the night sky over Mecca. Then when we finished what wasn't near all it's built up to be, he jumped from the bed to add a star to the collection.

Even a tramp can be naive.

Sipping the Yukon so as to conserve warmth for the long night, I played with the flashlight beam on the roof of the tent and came to generalizations concerning the male gender. A few, a very few that I'd met, see women as individual people with both good and bad traits and unique fears and needs. The giant majority of boys said things to each other like "Gettin' any lately?" and "If she's ugly, put a flag over her head and f.u.c.k her for Old Glory."

Boys plied girls with whiskey in hopes of tricking them into doing stuff they didn't want to do. If a woman gave anything of herself willingly, boys interpreted it as proof of their manly superiority. The worst insult one boy could hurl at another was to call him female body parts-b.o.o.b, p.u.s.s.y-or the action most wanted from a woman-c.o.c.ksucker.

Was I the first female to figure this stuff out? Maybe Lydia knew and wouldn't tell me for fear of causing disillusionment. At nineteen I'd wanted someone to like me, so I came at this human connection thing open to sincerity, and now at twenty-two I was bitter, cynical, and smart. If I met any of them now, the good ones, the Parks and Sams, they would avoid me like walking gonorrhea. Five years out of high school and I'd lost hope. What a gyp.

I filled in the rest of the page with doodles, then I couldn't think what to do next, so I turned the page and did it again. My problem, besides retrieving my child, was that I could chug the Yukon and turn off my mind, knowing that running out meant we were in for a long night, or I could drink slowly, which meant sobering up between sips. The quandary was kill the bottle and be out of whiskey, or save it as security and never quite cop a proper buzz. I began to regret drinking in the afternoon as a nap inducement.

How I doodle is I draw pages of wavery lines with arrows on both ends. I'm very careful-no lines cross each other and every single arrow is a perfect wing-like V pointing the way to look next. I don't know why I doodle that way; I guess I never made the grade with faces.

Halfway through my third page of arrows, a sneeze exploded outside my tent. I would've liked to pee my pants.

"Who's there?" No sound came except the slight swish of someone trying to walk on gra.s.s without making noise. "I've got a gun."

"It's not loaded," a voice whispered.

Jesus, what good is a pistol if the whole county knows you don't have bullets? "Who's out there?"

"Pud." He waited a moment, then whispered again. "Pud Talbot."

Pud Talbot-all I needed was that r.e.t.a.r.d sniffing around the tent. "Did Dothan send you out to bother me?"

"Dothan'll be real mad if he catches me here. Can I come in, Maurey?"

The whisper action seemed to indicate he was telling the truth, the visit was unauthorized, but I'd known the Talbot family too long to trust anything that seemed the truth. "What do you want, Pud?"

"I brought you food. Can I come in, Maurey? I don't want Dothan mad."

"Okay, but try anything weird and I'll break your nose with Charley."

Pud knew who Charley was. "I won't try anything weird."

The zipper made its sound, then Pud pushed a greasy paper sack and a lit flashlight through the door. He crawled in head first. "I thought maybe you were hungry."

I hadn't considered it, but he was right. "What all did you bring?"

He shined the light on the bag. I picked it up and shined my own light inside-bologna and American cheese on white bread sandwich, a carton of chocolate milk, and a box of Milk Duds.

"Thank you, Pud." Maybe almost dying had made me susceptible to emotion, but I was kind of touched. Here was someone I hadn't known about who cared whether or not I ate.

"It's what I had for supper," he said.

"Didn't happen to bring anything to drink, did you?"

He raised up on his knees and flashed the light beam down the bag with mine. Our heads almost touched. "I put milk in," Pud said.

"I meant alcoholic to drink."

He lowered himself again. His voice sounded disappointed, as if he'd failed in his good deed. "I didn't think about alcohol."

"Wish I could say that. Thanks again, Pud. I do appreciate the food."

Pud sat quietly while I ate my sandwich. His flashlight beam explored the tent some, but he was careful not to illuminate me. He seemed to accept it when I shined my light on him. Pud was shorter than Dothan, with curly dark hair and eyes the same brown as the backs of his hands. I figured his age at eighteen or nineteen. I'd known him most of my life and married into his family, but I doubt Pud and I had ever had a real conversation. The guy in front of me was different somehow from the kid we'd mocked in junior high.

"Thank you," I said again. "This is what I needed."

He nodded twice. "I thought you might be upset and forget food. He took your baby."

What I saw when I looked at Pud that I'd never seen before was compa.s.sion. I never know what to do with compa.s.sion. Lydia had it, she'd give her right arm if you needed it, but she'd joke like it didn't matter and call you trouble as she saved you. Her compa.s.sion had to hold the illusion of hard a.s.s or the whole Lydia image would collapse.

Pud's compa.s.sion was straight. Men too simple to hide themselves get to me. Right in the middle of chewing bologna I suddenly got the urge to crawl into Pud's arms and cry for six hours. I hadn't touched a human, when I was awake, anyway, in a week. Having a baby, you get used to skin-touching affection, even when you don't have a man.

But I was afraid if I touched him Pud would take it wrong-all other men would. He might think he could touch me back.

"Can I ask you something personal?" I asked.

His hands turned over, palms up, but he didn't say anything, so I went on. "For as long as I can remember people have said you're not smart, but I've seen you work on cars and stuff and you seem on the ball then. Why do people think you're not smart?"

He turned off his flashlight. "I can't read."

I turned off mine. It was kind of nice in the dark. The moon outside was bright enough that I could make out Pud's form, his arms and the outline of his head, but I couldn't see the expression on his face.

"Can't read at all?" I asked.

The head outline dropped and I could tell he was looking at the ground instead of me. "Not very good. I try, I used to try hard, but the letters don't stay still."

We were quiet a long time, aware of each other's presence. Reading books was important to me, maybe most important after Auburn, Yukon Jack, and horses. It was hard to conceive of not being able to read.

I was curious about something else, too. "There's this other thing people say you do, Pud, that I always wondered if it's true."

"Mess around with animals."

I was glad he said it. Even in my frank frame of mind I'd have had trouble saying "Hey, Pud, do you f.u.c.k sheep?"

Pud's flashlight came on and he shined it on me for the first time, although he kept the beam out of my eyes. "Do you believe it?'' he asked.

"I don't know what to believe anymore."

"My brother tells everyone I mess with animals."

"I'll ignore what Dothan says about you if you ignore what he says about me."

Pud slid closer. I needed to hold his hand, nothing more, but I needed a hand.

He tapped a rhythm on the tent floor with his knuckles. "When I was a kid Dothan had a club, the Rough Riders, that he wouldn't let me in. He said I was too stupid."

I saw a glimpse of what being Dothan's younger brother must be like. I'd lived less than two years with him and already tried suicide.

Pud went on. "Dothan said I could be a special cadet of the Rough Riders if I'd give Stonewall a jack job."

"Wasn't Stonewall that G.o.d-ugly dog of yours?"

"He wasn't so ugly."

I didn't see any reason to fight over it, but Stonewall was ugly. "How do you jack off a dog?"

Pud held his hand in the light and made his thumb and first finger into an O. "I didn't like being left out, so I did what he said. The boys in the club laughed at me." His voice was sad. "Dothan said special cadet meant I had to jack off a different animal before every meeting. I wouldn't do it."

How could I tell him Dothan was the screwed-up one, not us? Everyone in town had it backward. "Jacking off an ugly dog isn't so bad, Pud. h.e.l.l, I've jacked off Dothan himself."

His head nodded. "He told everybody, too."

Pud's eyes came up and met mine. He moved his hand toward me, I closed my eyes and felt his fingers gently touch the side of my neck. I almost groaned.

Pud said, "You've got a tick."

"What?"

"Hold still, I don't want to leave the head inside."

I went rigid, afraid to even blink. Pud's fingertips on my neck turned slowly counterclockwise. He exhaled and drew his hand back to hold the tick under the flashlight beam.

"See," Pud said. "I got his head."

The tick kicked its tiny legs into Pud's palm, and its head rose and fell, like it was blind and wanted to re-enter my body. Pud pressed its middle with his thumb until the tick popped and blood splattered from the base of Pud's fingers to his wrist.

He wiped his hand off on his jeans leg and said, "You should check yourself. Stonewall used to get hordes of ticks this time of year."

8.