They both ran back to the patrol car and got in, and inside it was warm and dry, and because it was summer, the patrolman turned up the air-conditioning, and when the cold air blew on Amy Raye’s wet skin, her legs and arms turned to gooseflesh. She scooted over close to the man, who she thought looked about forty, and other than a small belly that most of the men around his age had, he was nice enough looking. He clapped a freckled hand on her left knee, and shook it back and forth as if to warm her up a little. He asked her what she was doing out on a night like this and where she was heading to.
She said she was on her way home. She told him about the stable and the horse. “Can’t you tell?” she said. She lifted her shirt out a little ways from her chest. “Don’t I smell like a barn?”
“You smell good,” he said, but he was looking down her shirt when he said it, so she turned toward him and pressed her hand inside his thigh.
“I’m still cold,” she said.
The man looked over his shoulder, and Amy Raye could tell he was getting nervous. They were on a highway. There hadn’t been any other cars, but there might be.
“You think we ought to drive somewhere and get you warm?” he said.
“I don’t much care to leave my truck on the side of the road,” she said. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.” And all the while she was talking, she was rubbing her hand along the man’s inner thigh, and his breathing was becoming thicker. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, but he was all out of breath when he said it. He removed his gun and set it on the dashboard, and Amy Raye worked her hands up to the man’s belt and lowered her head to his lap.
She left that night, without a ticket or a warning, drove herself the rest of the way home, said hello to her parents, read for a while, and went to bed. And she’d almost forgotten about the whole affair, until two weeks later. She’d just gotten home from work. Her mother had cooked a pot roast that morning in the slow cooker. Amy Raye hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, a premade sandwich she’d bought at the store, and was looking forward to dinner. But when she walked into the house, her parents were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. The table was bare except for her father’s hands, which were clasped in front of him. The slow cooker was still on the counter, and the pot roast smelled burned.
“What’s going on?” Amy Raye said.
“You have five minutes to pack your belongings and get out of this house,” her father said.
“What are you talking about? What’s going on?” Amy Raye was standing between the door and the kitchen table, about four feet from her parents. She had a denim purse slung over her shoulders, was wearing a pair of army fatigues and a green T-shirt from the convenience store with an advertisement for Purity Dairy products on the front and Stoker’s chewing tobacco on the back.
“I won’t have a whore living under my roof.” Her father was staring at his hands.
Amy Raye tried to make eye contact with her mother, whose hands were in her lap. But her mother continued to stare at the surface of the table.
Amy Raye kicked the legs of the chair closest to her, knocking the chair on its side, and started to walk through the kitchen and back to her room, but her father shot up out of his chair and grabbed her arm.
“Clyde!” Amy Raye’s mother said.
“Stay out of this, Sharon.” He was twisting the skin on Amy Raye’s arm, and his saliva had left drops on her face. “How many?” he demanded. “I know of at least one, but how many others?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you don’t know what I’m talking about. Someone at the station says your license plate was called in the other night. Says I might want to ask David Skinner about it. Seems like there was some talk going on. So I asked Skinner, and he tells me I best keep an eye on you. Says he would have hauled your ass to jail if it wasn’t for him calling in your plate and finding out you were my—” Her father let go of her arm, dropped his hand to his side. “Like I said, you got five minutes. And if you got any sense left in you, you’ll get out of this town.”