The Flood Girls (3 page)

“Go,” she commanded, and he did.

She watched as he skulked away, clearly terrified, and she turned her attention to a red-faced couple attempting a lazy jitterbug, moving at half time, because the song was a ballad. They were the only dancers, although there was some movement from a few drunkards leaning up against the wall, slightly swooning, heads bobbing like sloppy metronomes, eyes closed.

Rachel closed her own eyes but opened them quickly, sensing a threat.

Here was her mother, clutching her plastic cup of beer and looming dangerously, so close that Rachel could smell the Oil of Olay and the cigarettes on her fingers. Too close, especially after all these years.

“What?” Her mother's voice was still the same, imperious and scratchy. “You'd better get out of here before Red Mabel sees you. There's guns here.”

“I know,” said Rachel. “I bought raffle tickets.”

“You'd better start saving your cash, Miss Big City. That trailer house is a goddamn money pit.”

Rachel had received a slim letter. This was how she found out her father had passed away, this official notice from a lawyer naming her the sole beneficiary. She had barely known her father but still felt something inside her tear when she ripped open the thicker envelope that had arrived two days later—papers to notarize, two keys, a typewritten list of the things of value: a 1970 Fleetwood trailer house, a small lot in a trailer court measuring ninety-eight by two hundred feet, a Stihl chain saw, a 1980 Toyota Corona, and a checking account containing exactly $2,034.08. She immediately called her AA sponsor and proclaimed it a sign.

“No,” her sponsor had said. “Not a sign. It's estate law. That's how it works.”

“I can't help but think of it as fate,” Rachel had insisted. “It means something.”

“You don't have to accept every gift you've been given,” her sponsor had said, somewhat coolly. “I suspect this one might have some strings attached.”

And it did. The strings were in her face at this very moment, and they had hot beer breath. Her mother extended a finger and poked Rachel in the chest. Rachel took a deep breath. This encounter would be unpredictable, a teeter-totter.

“The last time I saw you at a Fireman's Ball, they had to scrape you off the floor. Could've used a giant fucking spatula.”

“I don't drink anymore,” said Rachel.

“That's what you keep telling me,” muttered Laverna, her shadow fifteen feet long, wobbling in the heat.

“I never told you that. You returned all my letters. I haven't talked to you in over nine years.”

“Word gets around,” said Laverna, somewhat ominously.

“Well,” said Rachel. “I'm excited about the house.”

“I take it you haven't met your neighbors yet.” Laverna cackled, and then she was gone.

Rachel wondered if her sponsor had been right, that this insistence on proving herself was a mistake. She glanced nervously toward Red Mabel, who fairly resembled a black bear, burly, all haunches. Her face got dark brown in the summer, but year-round her hair was massive and black. The people of Quinn called her Red Mabel because she had Kootenai blood. The people of Quinn had chosen black to distinguish the other Mabel, because of her rotted smile, teeth long dead from too many amphetamines and too little floss. Black Mabel was a drug dealer and a thief and a pool shark and a terrible drunk driver. Not terrible because she did it often, but because she did it so poorly.

Rachel had always loved Black Mabel. Both of the Mabels were barflies, but they were never seen together. There was a begrudging respect between them, a draw. Their personalities had arm wrestled and neither budged.

The Chief of the QVFD emerged from the restroom and nodded curtly at Rachel as he passed, drying his hands on the legs of his wool pants. He had several chins and was fleshy, but not fat. He was completely bald, and his eyebrows were each as thick as a thumb.

When Rachel had been a junior in high school, this man had been the grand marshal of the Fourth of July parade. He had ridden in the back of the oldest known truck in town, and Rachel had been behind him, clomping down the streets in the marching band, attached to a bass drum, the harness pinching into her shoulders with every step. He was chosen to be the grand marshal that year because he had put out the most chimney fires in one winter, more than any volunteer who had come before him.

A creature with no eyebrows approached Rachel, chomping gum, fearless. Della Dempsey. Rachel could never forget such a face, smooth brow like a burn victim.

“Rachel? Rachel Flood?”

Rachel sighed and shook her head. “I don't know who that is,” she said. And it was true, in a way. She would not have to call her sponsor; she did not tell a lie. After she sobered up, Rachel had no idea who she was anymore. She didn't know what really made her happy. She was figuring it out as she went along.

The Chief yanked at an extension cord until it dislodged itself from the wall, and the music stopped, mid-song. In the corner, the lone couple continued their clumsy dance. Della waited for Rachel to say something, anything, but just like in high school, Rachel stared right past her.

He stomped to the center of the room and pulled a flashlight from his back pocket, illuminating the cement around his feet.

“Raffle,” he announced.

One of the volunteer firemen leaped to his feet, coming forth from the shadows, clutching a coffee can that was filled with ripped halves of ticket stubs. A brand-new rifle was slung across his back.

The Chief barked again: “Remington Model 870 Super Mag twelve-gauge shotgun.”

Rachel did not know what most of this string of words meant; it sounded like an incantation, a curse.

“Check your stubs,” said the Chief, and that was it. He was so no-nonsense that Rachel was absolutely certain she had never had sex with him. She never had sex with men who knew what they were doing.

The Chief pinched a half ticket between his giant fingers, shone his flashlight and squinted.

“Six-two-seven,” he proclaimed. The revelers examined their numbers.

Some people had entire handfuls of ticket stubs. Others bolted out the door to grab tickets from the jockey boxes of their automobiles. This was going to take some time.

Rachel tried to make herself as small as possible as she slunk toward the exit.

“Six-two-seven,” bellowed the Chief again, obviously annoyed, as purses were emptied onto the floor, and hands were jammed deeper into pockets of blue jeans, digging desperately.

Rachel had memorized the string of salmon-colored tickets she had bought from the schoolchildren. They had been attached to each other, spun off the roll in one long chain, numbers 624 through 634.

“Six-two-seven,” shouted the Chief. She could hear the exasperation in his voice as she passed him, as she made her way out into the cold, clear night. A small brown dog darted away from her, no collar, no tags. The dog ran under a fire truck as she approached. Even the strays of this town were frightened by Rachel Flood.

She walked across the frozen gravel. She'd never had luck of any kind. She supposed she was lucky that she had escaped this town. But that had not been luck—Rachel had been driven out. There probably would have been townspeople coming after her with torches, if it hadn't been fire season.

L
averna woke with a hangover, and her shoulder hurt. She blamed both on her daughter. She lay in bed, kicked at an empty can of beer caught in the folds of the quilt. It flew from the bed and rolled across the floor, came to a rest as it wedged between her high heels. She planned to never wear those heels again. They were impractical, and she fell several times at the Fireman's Ball.

Today was her birthday. There was a hair in her mouth, and it tasted like home perm.

In the kitchen, Laverna made a pot of coffee, toilet paper stuffed where the filter should be. She smoked her first cigarette of the day—her first cigarette at age forty-seven—and grimaced. It wasn't that she thought forty-seven was old, just inconsiderate, a bad thing that happened to good people, like home perms.

As the coffee brewed, Laverna dressed for her shift at the bar. It was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon. She dug out a pearl-colored blouse, a black pantsuit, a gauzy black scarf. She pulled on thin nylon socks, slid a black velvet headband across the pelt of her hair, and stepped into black loafers with no heel whatsoever. Laverna always dressed in layers, even in the thick of August. Red Mabel accused her of dressing like she lived in constant fear of strip poker. Laverna cursed when she realized she had forgotten her control-top panty hose, removed her pants and started over again. This was forty-seven. Nine more hours and it wasn't her birthday anymore, not that anyone would dare mention it. In the bathroom, she penciled her eyebrows, added more arc than usual. She considered curling her eyelashes, but her hands were shaking, and besides, it seemed excessive, and she was supposed to be in mourning.

She returned to the kitchen, sipped at her coffee and smoked another cigarette. Laverna stared out the window into the front yard. It all looked the same to her in the winter, a rerun. She hated the winters here. The only thing moving outside was smoke from wood stoves. Winter in this town trapped people in their homes, in their lives. It was no wonder trains didn't stop in Quinn anymore. Only derailed.

Laverna drove to work past the softball field, covered in snow. She slowed the Cadillac, as she did every day in the winter, making sure that everything was in its right place. She was very protective of the softball field; it was the only place that made her happy, although last season had been a catastrophe. They had won only three games, and one was by default—the entire opposing team of silver miners had gone to a Heart concert in Spokane.

The Dirty Shame was converted out of a row of railroad apartments. It was sided with oily wooden shingles that Laverna's father acquired at an outrageously low price. She took after her father; Gene Flood could talk a dog out of having rabies. He grew enormously fat after they opened the kitchen and started serving food at the bar. He died of a heart attack at one of Quinn's softball games, which was embarrassing enough, but the fact that it took six volunteer firemen to haul him away from the bleachers was mortifying. A week after the funeral, Laverna's mother answered the door and made the mistake of inviting Jehovah's Witnesses into her home, confusing them with mourners. Before a month passed, she sold all the video poker machines and fled to eastern Montana with the money and her new congregation. At twenty-two, Laverna became the owner of the bar, and twenty-five years passed, changing out kegs and breaking up fights.

Tabby threw her apron at Laverna the minute she walked through the door.

“It's all yours,” she said. And it was. Of the two bars in town—Laverna proudly owned the one that served food and encouraged fighting. The other bar was the Bowling Alley, an unoriginal name but frequented by most of the volunteer firemen and folks from town who had tired of fist-fighting over the conservation of the spotted owl. The Dirty Shame was always packed with loggers, men from the highway department, and the female silver miners. The miners were her most devoted customers, so Laverna tolerated the constant cloud from their boots and their pants, piles of powder in the dustpan. The silver mine seemed to only employ dwarf-size men and giantess lesbians. The lesbians were tougher than anybody else in town, so people held their tongues.

At six o'clock, Red Mabel installed herself at her usual stool as Laverna wiped down the taps and made a fresh pot of coffee. A silver miner, already quite drunk, stood at the end of the bar waving a twenty-dollar bill. The woman looked like Fred Flintstone.

Laverna sighed. “What?”

“Can I get a White Russian?”

“Too much work,” said Laverna. “It's beer or nothing. I'm in mourning.” Laverna sighed again. Frank's death was recent enough for her to get away with such a statement. They had been divorced for two decades, but Laverna would capitalize on any grief to get out of making a mixed drink. Frank rarely crossed Laverna's mind. He had already become a ghost, as fleeting as wood smoke, long before he died. She always knew he would derail, but there was no conductor asleep at the wheel, no negligence. Frank had crashed his own train.

She had met Frank at her first and last yard sale. This is what he bought: A toy logging truck missing a wheel. A Pat Boone album. A mountain lion carved from a piece of cottonwood tree. A boot warmer. Laverna's bowling ball, bowling shoes, and wrist guard.

Frank had held the bowling ball, palmed it like a thick-knuckled ­fortune-teller, and smiled shyly.

“Now that's a sweet thing,” he said, and paid with cash. They were married four months later. He was a stranger in town, a precious thing. Laverna was not going to let him get away. She was surprised that her daughter had shown up to claim the inheritance. Laverna thought of Rachel the same way she thought about the time her appendix had burst—sometimes things could come from inside your body and suddenly betray you, nearly killing you.