It was three days before Hank showed back up. People knew he’d left, too. There had been an incident with Bill the night before where he finally worked up his nerve to offer his consoling shoulders to her for the evening.
“I do hate to see a fine woman distressed so, and alone of a night. There’s foul dealings can often happen to good women these hot nights,” Bill had said.
Mary-Alice had chuckled inside herself beside her driveway and mused for a moment on the irony that a week earlier she might have actually considered such an offer. But, of course, the very circumstances that enabled the offer consequently prohibited it from being accepted. She could by no means betray her man now that she finally wanted him again. And she did want him back.
Mary-Alice smiled at Wild Bill Scanlon—the last real outlaw in this county: one who’d had no other choice but be who he was. Maybe the man could pull off his election. She wasn’t sure about how all those things worked anyway. She’d spent the majority of her senior civics classes staring at a particular boy. But, she decided she would go vote for Bill. She hugged him again and sent him on his way.
At the store the next morning, Bill was absent. Presumably he had moved on down the road to the Pine Ridge area where he would no doubt repeat his wild rants for those good people there.
Mary-Alice was straightening the soaps down the far aisle of the store when she heard the bawling of Tommy.
“Papa! Papa!” he yelled as she heard his feet slapping across the floor.
Mary-Alice walked up front to see him standing tall, shielded in full regalia. Like a statue, he stood with the light from the hot southern sun bleeding in from the door behind him.
“Mrs. Maggie,” he said, “Put that diesel on Chauncy Pickering’s ticket. And two cokes for the road, please, ma’am.”
Mary-Alice couldn’t even know if the man was looking at her from behind those black glasses but she felt sure he wasn’t. From out the front window she spied a big rig truck parked at the diesel pump, trailer hitched and ready for the highway.
“Trucking out with Chauncy,” he said still not seeing her. “Taking on some bigger work.”
“Real work?” Mary-Alice was in such a mood she didn’t at all mind calling him out on his dealings in the midst of Willy’s store. Eyes from the bullpen stuck to Hank and Mary-Alice. People always did love to catch sight at others’ business any chance that presented itself.
“Real as any, I reckon,” Hank said without a beat and turned out the door.
“Coming back?” She shot at him.
“I could never leave my sweetheart,” Hank said turning back to smile his fakest smile yet, and only Mary-Alice knew what he really meant. He was wise that day to leave it parked elsewhere.
Hank left and Mary-Alice worked out the rest of the day with her jaw set hard as it would go. She tried well as she could keep the blame off herself and all onto Hank where she felt it surely belonged. But maybe he would really start something decent for a change. Maybe he’d straighten up and fly right and stop tearing about so much. And maybe next week she’d fly jet planes.
It was later that afternoon the handful of people inside were rocked by what sounded like explosions coming from outside the store. There were several all right in a row, loud as thunder nearly. In a moment of terror, Mary-Alice realized Tommy was nowhere in sight and she just knew he’d finally found something to destroy himself with.
She ran outside along with Willy, Maggie and Billy Parker.
There, they all saw the sight they couldn’t quite grasp. Tommy was standing up on a trailer with Billy’s little girl, Lacy, watching on. Somebody had come up with a bucket full of 5 pound steel ball bearings, and Tommy was hurling them up over his head and slamming them down onto the blacktop parking lot, sending sparks flying like little bolts of lightning with each one. Billy ran and grabbed him off the trailer before he could toss another one. Tommy and Lacy were just laughing wild as they could. It was all just their little game. Maggie stared at the boy like he might as well be the third cousin of the devil or John Brown.
That was when it all finally hit home for Mary-Alice. All she’d ever wanted was to have a plain and decent life. Live in a house. Plant a garden. Take her children to school. Go dancing with her husband on Friday night. Instead, she found herself constantly surrounded by ridiculousness. She had a duded-up rogue boyfriend who literally spat all over the law trying everyday hard as he could to get himself jailed or killed chasing down his own made up legend. She had an old ghost of an even wilder time dead and gone offering her use of his “sword” and wandering through the countryside living in the fading memories of purported exploits. And now, she had a little boy pushing three years and hurling boulders off a truck like they were baseballs. Nothing about her life, she knew, would ever be plain.
“Say, y’all,” Charlie Ford called out, coming in from behind them. “Y’all hear about Wild Bill? He just gutted a big fat panther down by the old burnt bridge. Sure and he did, split it wide open with that blade of his. Telling you what right now, but that man’s got my vote in a hurry. Ain’t lost a beat. Cut it clean near in half. Old Bill. What you reckon he makes a new hat from it? I bet I would.”