She sits and pees with a hollow pattering sound into the dry bowl, lifts the tampon from the bucket by the tail and drops it into the bowl and with a tilt of the water bucket sloshes everything down to wherever it goes when it goes down, obeying laws of gravity and geography. Th e Great Divide deciding even this.

In the dull small mirror screwed to the wall is a pale miner, halogen moon in the center of her forehead. Th e pajamas lie on the floor and she stands as if risen out of them, all her flesh crawling in the cold. She soaks the washcloth in the remaining bucket water, soaps it and washes herself while the girl in her head takes up her story again midsentence . . . but there was one thing I had to tell myself every morning when I woke up in that place . . . the voice not hers but the voice of an older, tougher girl, speaking as though to a gymnasium of girls, all their faces composed while their bodies imagine and their hearts beat with strange excitement, and she is one of them, knee to knee with her friends. Listen, is the girl’s message, this could happen to you.

She takes up the sour gray towel and dries herself quickly and begins to dress.

What did I have to tell myself?

Th ere is only you. Th ere is only you.

IN THE OUTER ROOM she throws her arms one way and then the other, limbering her spine. Rolls her head on her neck and bends at the hips to grab her toes. So bent she clasps her arms around her knees and hugs herself into a compact human fold, breathes in, her upside-down heart thudding evenly, breathes out. She touches the thick band at her ankle, the hard iron within the leather liner, no more strange to her now than her own foot. She releases her legs and gathers up the chain in her fists and stands, leaning until all her weight is opposed to the remaining length of chain, and she begins to walk, clockwise, like a mule turning a mill wheel.

Th e steel plate, about the size of an index card, makes its minute adjustments under the four bolt heads, revealing hairlines of raw wood as she half circles the compass and then returns. Th e movement of the steel plate is good, but her focus is the ringbolt itself, the small half hoop of steel welded to the plate, its gritty underbelly of red-brown where she has nurtured corrosion on a diet of water, sweat, orange juice, urine, and Coke. (Rust particles are harder than steel, sweetie, her father told her once, by way of comfort when a swing chain dropped her on her fanny; abrasive wear is inevitable.) With her every straining pass the connecting link traverses the arc of the ringbolt, and back again, transmitting a grinding kinking code up through the links to her hands. Th e turnings have become grainier, noisier, and she stops every six passes just to listen—for whistling. For footfalls.

Th e coin of light is on the last floorboard before the lion’s foot and she releases the chain for the day. Kneels down facing east and tests the ringbolt with the tender backs of her fingers. Hot. She wets a fingertip and blots up tiny particles like spilled salt. Presses fingertip to lips and tongues up the taste, the peculiar rusty tang she loves now, so like the taste of blood. Good work. And off in the woods she hears the whistling and she stands and brushes off her knees. Good girl. And the whistling is coming and she goes to the cot and lies back and picks up the magazine and opens it and stares at the picture of an Egyptian mummy. Th e magazine is trembling, her fingers trembling from her labor, the jumpy kinking and twanging of the chain still alive in her hands like crazy heartbeats. Good work. Good girl.

29

Reed Lester sat toying his glass around on its base, wheeling the naked cubes around and around. He had a new red hue to his face like the faces of the people who sat near the windows where the red beer lights burned. The waitress brought him a fresh drink and asked the boy if he was ready for another and he told her he’d take a glass of water and she went to see about the group of young people in the corner who had taken to ordering shots—downing them in some kind of game, slamming the glasses hard on the table and cheering. People at the tables next to them had paid their tabs and left. One of the boys in jerseys had his arm around one of the girls. Another boy leaned to say something into the ear of the other girl and she shoved at him and said, “Get your dog breath offa me. Jesus!”

Outside the window the sleet was turning to snow.

“Know what I’m thinking, boss?”

“No.”

“I’m thinking you should come with me to Uncle Mickey’s. He’ll hire us both like that.” His finger snap was soundless. He leaned back in his seat and regarded the boy with whiskey eyes. His eyelids slid down and were a long time opening again, and then only in reaction to the commotion from the table of young people. A chair scuffed the floor and a clump of keys were dropped and retrieved. “Ah, sit down, Courtney,” said one of the boys, “c’mon.”

“Abby,” said the standing girl, “I’m serious.” The girl Abby said something and the standing girl said, “I’m serious, I’ll take the car. You’ll be stuck here.”

Reed Lester watched them without expression.

“She won’t be stuck,” said one of the boys.

“Abby,” the girl said. “Abby.”

The girl Courtney crossed the floor alone, fierce and unstable on her bootheels, and pushed out through the front door. In a moment a pair of headlights flared, thickening the snowfall, and swung around and were replaced by the red eyes of her taillights and these went bobbling over the pitted lot and arced onto the frontage road and vanished.

“Stupid,” said Lester. “Stupid, stupid.”

“I think it’s time to hit the road,” said the boy, and Lester gave an extravagant wave.

“Let’s do it. But gimme one minute here. My head is rollin like a BB in a teacup. I need water. One glass and I’ll be shipshape.” His head went back again and his eyes closed. The boy looked for the waitress. She was behind the bar staring into a computer screen. He sat looking at Lester for a while, then got up and walked down the hall to the men’s room.

“Leave him, Dudley,” he said to the cracked plaster over the urinal. To the large curving phallus carefully penned there. “Bring his goddam bag in

and go.”

Outside in the hall a group was passing. Someone of size thudded into the bathroom door. A man whooped and the restaurant’s back door groaned open and after the group had passed through it groaned shut again and he could hear them faintly in the parking lot laughing. An engine revved to life, car doors slammed, and the sound of the engine faded away.

He washed his hands and crushed a paper towel and stepped into the hallway and went to the metal door and stepped outside again and looked for the man who’d given him a light before, but the man wasn’t there, no one was. He lit his cigarette and leaned against the wall. The sleet had gone completely to snow and there was a good white inch on the ground, on the Chevy, on the black Ford with the topper, on everything but the rectangles in the gravel where cars and trucks had recently sat, and these were quickly filling in. His eye fell on the freshest of the rectangles and stayed there. Then he looked to the side of the building where he himself had driven around to park. He looked back to the rectangle. The tire tracks leading away from it did not run that way but banked in the opposite direction, disappearing into a narrow gap between the Paradise Lounge and the cinder-block building next door. The boy leaned on the bricks and smoked and watched. In a moment, at the corner where the tire tracks disappeared, came a cloud of white breath. Only one.