Million Dollar Road (9 page)

“Hey, girl.”

It was Harlan Baham, the crew boss. She'd been so preoccupied she hadn't heard him coming, and now he was so close he was practically on the toes of her shrimp boots.

“You done in there?” Harlan's big, work-scarred hand descended on her shoulder. Lireinne couldn't hide her involuntary flinch, but she nodded in wary agreement.

“Yeah,” she said. She wanted him to take his hand away, but knew she couldn't tell him to knock it off. Harlan was her boss. She couldn't risk making him mad at her for any reason, not if she wanted to keep this hateful, desperately necessary job. Harlan seemed to be enjoying her discomfort, too, and that was somehow worse than his touching her.

“What's up?” Lireinne asked cautiously.

“Been thinkin 'bout you,” Harlan said with a greasy smile. “Thinkin 'bout how you're bound to be feeling the pinch, hosers getting paid shit, and don't I know it.” His hand moved lower and closed around her upper arm, squeezing in a mindless rhythm. Squeezing, squeezing. He licked his thick lips.

Lireinne froze, her heart suddenly thundering. Harlan was reminding her of Brett in the truck, right before he'd locked the doors and grabbed her. All that was missing was the LSU cap.

“I could help you out some,” Harlan whispered, a world of intent in his throaty rasp, “if you want to play nice.”

They were alone in the doorway of the BFG barn, alone at the back of the property: the rest of the crew was up in the house eating lunch. Lireinne's mouth went dry. Her hands clutched the hose's nozzle in an unthinking death grip. Harlan was too
close;
he had her by the arm. His nauseating smell—cigarette smoke, days-old sweat, and rancid hair oil—was like a poison gas, worse than the barn reek. She was totally
freaking
stupid. She should have seen this coming. She should
never
have let herself get trapped like this.

Lireinne looked wildly over Harlan's shoulder, but there was no one in sight. She was on her own this time, too, she realized with a sinking heart, just like before with Brett.

His mean little eyes dancing, Harlan's low, hoarse voice thickened with insinuation. “What you say? Want to come over to my place later on?” He slid his hand down to her waist, pulling her toward him.

Lireinne's paralysis broke. She jabbed her elbow in Harlan's side, as revolted as though his hand were a cottonmouth moccasin. “You jackass,” she snarled in desperation. “Don't you
dare
grab me, or, or . . .”

“Or what? Look who thinks she's a big ol' gal.” Harlan leered as he let his hand fall. He wiped his dirt-grimed, perspiring neck and raised an eyebrow in speculation.

“We ain't gonna be friendly, huh,” he said. He turned his head and spat. “Well, I just might let ol' Mr. Costello up to the house hear 'bout you getting sloppy, messing shit up in the barns with that there hose you got. Believe you me, your ass'll be outta here in no time. I even got somebody in mind for the job, you don't give me a piece of what you're keepin' so close. My sister's gal, Chimene, got laid off at the gas station just last week. Come here, you.”

Harlan hitched up his work pants before he lunged. He was quick for a big man, but Lireinne leapt like a startled doe and he grabbed nothing but air. Thick lips split in a confident grin, Harlan reached for her again as she backed away, still clutching the hose.

“Hold still,” he said with a laugh. “You little whore, I got you now.”

The hose! Lireinne's mind screamed. With a twist the nozzle opened full bore. Water exploded, the hose a live thing in her hand. “Get back—I
mean
it.” The pressurized flood tore the ground at Harlan's white rubber boots. Fat brown chunks of mud shot upward, clotting his stained pant legs.

“Get the fuck back, I'm telling you!” Lireinne shouted.

“Shee-it,” Harlan laughed. “Ain't afraid of a little water. C'mon, honey—give ol' Harlan some sugar.” Lunging again, he had her shirt. “Let's see what you got under this here.”

With a wordless shriek, Lireinne raised the cannon of water to Harlan's gray-stubbled face. The powerful stream clobbered him solidly on the nose, flooding his astonished pig eyes. Harlan's head shot backward over his shoulders like he'd been sucker-punched. Arms flailing, Harlan slipped on the slick ground, and toppled flat on his ass with a splat. At the same moment the sky overhead shattered in a great crack of thunder. Covering his face with his hands, Lireinne's would-be rapist was pinned under the water hammer pummeling his chest and shoulders.

“Bitch!”
Harlan's howl was muffled, but there was no mistaking his rage.

Lireinne didn't stop to watch. She wasn't waiting to get grabbed again. She flung the hose away from her, and freed, the long rubber cylinder was a twisting anaconda hurling angry spirals of water. With a single white-faced glance over her shoulder at her attacker, Lireinne almost slipped in the mud herself, but she was running now, running for home as fast as her shrimp boots would let her.

She was leaving five barns unhosed, there was work remaining for her on this terrible Friday, but she ran.

 

Nobody was home when Lireinne fell inside the trailer door, sobbing for breath from her headlong flight down Million Dollar Road.

“Wolf?”

But her brother was gone, embarked on being a dropout. He was probably riding around with Bolt or some other loser from Covington High—someone with a car and a fake doctor's excuse to get out of class. She was alone in the trailer. Lireinne threw the dead bolt, knowing that it would be of little use if Harlan went crazy with rage and came after her. The trailer would be easy to break into. Should she call the distribution center and get them to send Bud home? Should she call the police?

Thoughts of Bud and the cops sobered Lireinne. Her breath slowed, her racing heart pounded down. Lireinne collapsed in a boneless heap on the sectional, holding her bowed head in her hands, her fingers buried in her long black hair. She couldn't call Bud at work. He'd go postal and beat the hell out of Harlan, for sure. After Brett's assault, hadn't she endured Bud's questioning glances, his unspoken worry for just that reason—keeping her stepfather out of the Parish lockup? Besides, Bud had enough to worry about already. He needed the hours on the loading dock: the last thing she wanted to do was screw that up, too. There'd be September's bills to pay soon.

And forget the police. Her mouth trembling, Lireinne almost sobbed with the frustration of knowing what would happen if she called them. The police wouldn't believe her, not if it was her word against Harlan's. She'd figured that out the hard way when she'd tried to get the school counselor to at least
listen
to her. No, nobody ever believed the girl, especially if the girl was just some hoser who lived in a broken-down trailer. Lireinne had no doubt Harlan would have a good story ready should the cops even bother to come out to investigate her allegations. It had been a near thing, but he hadn't actually raped her. Oh, he'd talked rough and grabbed her shirt, but Lireinne wondered if that was enough to get Harlan into real trouble. Calling the police would probably stir shit up worse, with no good to come of it.

Her job was bound to be shot after this, Lireinne realized, twisting her hands uselessly. After getting hosed, Harlan was sure to follow through on his threat. Remembering the look of soaked astonishment on his brutal face, though, her mouth involuntarily turned up in a halfhearted grin. He'd looked so freaking
lame,
rolling around on the ground in the mud. If Lireinne didn't need the job so bad, that would have been worth laughing at now. She had to admit it felt good, having defended herself for once, having taken care of a would-be rapist.

But . . . her
job
.

Outside, after nearly ninety days of drought, the rain began falling with a slow tack-hammer beat on the trailer's fiberglass roof. Lireinne hugged herself as she got up and peered out of the window. The first drops were streaking the dusty windshield of the minivan in the weeds. It was really raining at last.

It was raining and there was Mose to feed before these first drops turned into a downpour. Lireinne didn't know if wet feed would hurt him, but she couldn't take the chance.

Hurrying, she found an umbrella behind the door, three of its ribs broken and dangling, but it would do to keep the oats dry while the old horse ate his dinner. With still-shaking hands, she poured a measure from the last of the feed into the plastic dishpan, added the LarvaStop, and dashed out back where Mose was waiting for her by the fence.

Eyeing the umbrella with wary suspicion, but drawn by the scent of grain, he sidled closer, snorted, and then got to work on his dinner. The rain was falling in heavy, slow drops. Lireinne held the umbrella over the dishpan as the dust of the parched ground popped in dry explosions, and the steady fall swiftly intensified until it turned to streams of water, to a river, and then the rain was a cataract, cold and clean and life-giving as oxygen.

Her long hair dripping into her eyes, Lireinne shivered in her wet T-shirt and shorts. While Mose was busy eating, she confided in him about Wolf's dropping out, the hosing of Harlan, and at last she broke her long silence about Brett. Mose was only the second person she'd ever told, the first being useless Mrs. Cooper, who hadn't believed her.

“What the hell am I gonna do now?”

Lireinne knew Mose didn't have any answers, but he was the only person she could trust with any of her troubles. She didn't dare share a thing with Wolf because he might not keep his mouth shut this time. He might tell
Bud
. Where would they all be then?

Bud would be in jail, that's where, and then they'd be out on their asses, Lireinne thought grimly. She swiped her soaked hair out of her eyes. Without Bud's income, she and Wolf would be
fucked
. No, there was no one but her old horse to tell about Harlan, but thank God he'd waited until Friday before trying to jump her behind the barns. She'd gotten a full two-weeks' pay yesterday, but the specter of Monday loomed. Monday was going to come around like it always did. Come Monday, she'd almost certainly be out of the only shitty job she could get. She'd be an unemployed hoser and Wolf would still be a dropout.

“Sorry you're getting wet, Mose.” Lireinne stroked the horse's rain-soaked neck, wishing he had a warm, dry place where he could wait out the downpour. Was she imagining his liquid brown eyes returning her defeated gaze with sympathy? Probably so, but right now, she'd take it where she could get it.

Lireinne hurried back inside the trailer, out of the rain.

 

In spite of her wretched day, after a frozen dinner and a hot shower Lireinne fell fast asleep that night to the sound of the steady drizzle pattering on the roof and the faint thunder of Wolf's Xbox in the front room.

She slept without dreaming, awaking the next morning to washy, pale sunshine and a chill in her room: the rain had stopped during the night and a cool front had moved through. Lireinne sat up in bed and stretched, yawning. Her clock said it was after nine. Somehow she'd slept through her alarm. Lireinne frowned, feeling as though she'd forgotten something important, until she remembered what had happened yesterday afternoon.

Harlan. Her job. Wolf's dropping out.

And as those appalling recollections sank in, Mose whinnied out back and Lireinne remembered that the bag of oats was almost finished. There was barely enough feed left to give the horse his breakfast this morning, but then it would be done.

Before Lireinne knew she ought to be feeding him, she'd never had to worry about how she'd pay for it, and now that she was doing right by Mose, she was going to be broke. There was a word for this feeling, if only she could figure out what it was. It was on the tip of her tongue, a word from her last English class.
Ironic,
Lireinne thought. That's it. I'm ironic now.

Overwhelmed by the notion of her life being ironic before she could even have a legal
drink,
Lireinne threw the covers over her head, wishing she were seven years old again, having no cares beyond how to spend her Saturday. Like, would she take her Barbie down to Tiger Branch and play
Gilligan's Island
on the rain-swollen creek bank? Would she climb the live oak by the fence to see if the crows' nestlings were still there? As a child, Lireinne had been used to these solitary pursuits. Isolated in the country, with other kids few and far between, it was a very rare day when someone was around to share the life of her imagination with her.

When Lireinne was three, she and her mother had moved into the trailer with Bud. She remembered her mother had occasionally spent time with her—for a little while. Her mother would drink Diet Coke and smoke cigarettes while Lireinne carefully poured out tiny cups of make-believe tea for her and the pink bear, but those tea parties never seemed to last for more than a few minutes. Soon her mother would be on the phone again, pacing, smoking, and talking to someone named Duane. The tea party was always over after that.

“Hush up, Lireinne, go away. I'm not gonna play with you now. Mommy's
busy,
okay?”

Often Lireinne's mother left the little girl behind, by herself in the trailer, when she caught rides into town with a man in a white truck. Being alone was frightening, but then her mother grew big with the new baby. She'd stayed home then, complaining bitterly about her lost figure, and making fudge—that is, when she wasn't taking long naps. Her mother had left for good, though, a little over three years after Wolf, known then as Larry, was born. Then Bud had to pay the neighbor woman, Miss Penny, to look after Lireinne and her little brother while he was working.