He moseyed toward the bar, pausing to say hello and ask the guys who were shooting darts who was winning. He nodded at the pool players and blew out a long breath as he hoisted his boney frame onto the barstool. He gave me a smile that was missing its front teeth and asked the same question he’d asked me every night for ten years.
“How’s the world treating you, Becca Boo?”
“The world is treating me just fine, Carl,” I said with a smile. Old Carl had called me Becca Boo for as long as I could remember. I had no idea why he called me that, and he couldn’t remember the reason. I set the beer in front of him and nodded at the pass-through behind the bar that looked into the kitchen.
“The usual, Carl?”
“I might try something different tonight,” he said, grinning at me as he brought the beer to his lips. When he smiled, his eyes disappeared behind a single line of bushy white eyebrows. He took a long drink and smacked his lips. “I was gonna order fries and a burger, but on second thought, burger and fries will do.”
“That’s good, since that’s all we sell,” I said, winking at him.
I stuck my head in the pass-through and yelled at Pete, the old black gentleman who had been the fry cook at the Snowcap since the place opened. Like Carl, Pete had always looked old to me. He stood at the grill with a greasy spatula in his hand, always at the ready, and waited for me to yell out the orders. And I do mean yell, because Pete was as deaf as they came.
I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled, “Burger and fries for Carl!” Pete gave me a slow nod and saluted me with the spatula and then reached into the freezer for a hamburger patty and dropped it on the grill. The meat immediately began to sizzle.
I picked up the bar rag and started wiping down the vacant end of the bar. As I swirled the damp rag over the Formica bar top, the little voice inside my head returned. It came every night about this time to taunt me. The little voice always said the same thing.
Welcome to your life, Becca Boo. You’ll die behind this ratty old bar, just like your dad.
I never bothered to argue with the voice, because I knew it was right. It would take a miracle to get me to leave this place, and miracles weren’t doled out to people like me. The Snowcap would be my home until the day I died.
The place was small, with just enough room for half a dozen tables, a couple dozen chairs, and a ten-foot bar with eight wobbly stools. In one corner was an old bumper pool table with the felt nearly worn off and its one pool cue that everyone shared. In another corner hung a dart board that only had two darts left.
The plank floor creaked with every footfall and the coal heater in the corner barely kept the place above freezing.
It was hard to believe that my entire world was encompassed within these four falls and the mountains surrounding the little town of Snowcap, population two hundred until somebody died from frostbite or old age.
I knew there was a big world outside that front door.
All I had to do was open the door and step out into it.
The last time I’d done that, it hadn’t worked out so well.
I’d come crawling back to Snowcap with my tail tucked between my legs like a whipped dog.
I’d love to have a man in my life, but not if it meant getting my heart or nose broken again.
Once was plenty enough for me.
CHAPTER TWO: Rebecca
His name was Charlie Feenie. He worked as a surveyor for a company that came through Snowcap five summers ago, harvesting white pine for the furniture mills in North Carolina.
Charlie was six-feet-five, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the waist, with coal black hair and deep blue eyes and muscles in places I didn’t know muscles even grew.
He came into my daddy’s bar one night with a bunch of his logging buddies, all of them rowdy and full of piss and vinegar. I caught him looking at me as I set their beers on the table. His hand touched mine when he paid the check. I thought my heart actually jumped a little. I felt a searing heat inside my belly that I’d never felt before.
I gave Charlie my virginity in the cab of his truck two nights later, and he convinced me to take off with him when the surveying job in Snowcap was done. My daddy tried to warn me, but I was too young and stupid and horny and in love to listen. I packed a bag and snuck off into the night with the man I thought I’d spend my life with.
Charlie turned out to be the biggest son of a bitch you’d ever want to meet. He treated me like dirt and talked to me like I was a dog. He took up with another woman in the next town, and when I caught him fucking her in our bed, he told me to grow the fuck up and leave him alone.
I was just a kid, and that was how I reacted. I stomped my foot and slapped him in the face. Without so much as a blink of an eye, he punched me in the nose with his fist as hard as he could, knocking me out. He kicked me in the ribs while I lay curled up on the floor. Then, as I lay there with blood gushing out of my nose, screaming for help, he ripped off my clothes and raped me.