gotta get up and get to school.” She tapped the book on the seat between them. “Drive truck half the night, sleep a bit, and then I gotta get to school.”
Jim kept his arm across her shoulders, pulling her into him. “Haven’t seen you since we lost that pool tournament at the Flame. You still mad at me about that?”
“We? Don’t count me in on that. You lost that one all yourself.”
“Come on, Cash, don’t be so hard on me. I miss you.”
His hand slid up her leg.
“Go on.” She pushed away again. “I have to study. I got a quiz tomorrow in science I gotta study for.”
Jim backed off and slid over to the passenger side of the truck. His grin was gone. He gazed out the truck window then back to Cash. “You gonna come to the Casbah this weekend?”
Cash looked at him. She and Jim were pool partners. Had been “sleep together” partners until a month ago, when he had lost a pool tournament that cost her her rent money. Cash had been pretty drunk and had gotten 86’d from the Flame when she had upturned a couple of tables on her way out of the bar. She’d also cleared a few with her other arm, busting glass all over. All because the barmaid had accused her of hiding beer in her purse at closing time.
Cash had never carried a purse. She had tucked two bottles in the back of her jeans, but that wasn’t a purse. Cash looked at Jim. He was built thin, hair slicked back, his farmer tan from the summer fading. His Scandinavian whiteness would be fully back by Thanksgiving. He was looking at her with a hopeful grin. “Why’d you go crazy that night anyways? Not the first time we lost.”
Cash started to laugh in spite of herself. “I don’t know. She just pissed me off. Only white girls carry purses. Maybe if she’d just accused me of taking the beers, I woulda put them on the table. But it was the purse that got me.”
Cash laughed harder.
“You’re crazy.”
Cash looked at him. He was smiling. That smile reminded her that earlier in the day of the lost pool tournament she had seen Jim and his wife and kids at a restaurant in the new mall west of town. The smile he had now was the same happy smile he had had that day eating with his family. Cash quickly looked away.
“What?”
“Nothin.”
“Criminy, one minute you’re laughing like crazy and the next you’re looking at me like you want to kill me.”
Cash took a drink of lukewarm coffee from her Thermos. “I’m just tired, Jim. School. Work. I’m just getting used to school.”
“Let me come over after we’re done with the shift here. I’ll just stay for a minute.”
“That wouldn’t be much fun.” Cash laughed again.
The truck ahead of them was moving forward. Jim opened the passenger door. As he hopped down he said, “Leave the door open, okay?”
“Okay, for a minute.” Cash laughed.
Cash watched him in the side mirror as he walked back to his truck. He told her he was married before they ever slept together. Mostly he would come to her apartment after a night of drinking and shooting pool together. They would have sex and he would leave. The wife and kids he told her about weren’t real to her until that afternoon when Cash saw them at the mall eating dinner as a family.
Cash finished her shift, retrieved her Ranchero and drove back into Fargo. Out of habit, she drove by the Casbah even though it was a couple of hours past closing time. The bar was dark except for the neon light of the Hamm’s Beer sign, which hung above the bar inside, shining through the window. Back at her apartment, she took a quick bath, grabbed a Bud from the fridge and crawled into bed. Halfway through the bottle, Jim arrived, stayed a bit longer than a minute, and then headed northwest out of town to his wife and kids. Cash was asleep before he pulled the door shut and locked it after himself.
Cash pulled herself up and out of her bedroom window. Fear propelled her, running barefoot, across the damp ground, listening to heavy breathing gaining on her. She ran toward the plowed field ahead, heading to town. Her foot sank into the cold dirt of the furrowed field. When she tried to pull her foot up, her front leg sank farther into the dirt. She threw herself forward, clawing with bare hands, her waist length dark brown hair caught in her hurried grasps. She could still hear the heavy, labored breathing of the person chasing her. Fear forced her from her body so she was soon flying above herself. Looking down she saw herself stretched out in the mud below, buried to her knees, arms flailing. Cash circled in the air above like a bird of prey looking down at a mouse in the field. She tried to see who was chasing her but the face was obscured in the darkness. Below, her own body changed to a paler, longer-legged, long-haired blonde. The young woman looked up at Cash and screamed, “Help me!”
Cash sat straight up in bed, then thudded back onto her pillow. Her heart was racing. The same dream, two nights in a row. Damn. She glanced over at the clock sitting on the dresser; the hands read 3:40. Cash reached over and flipped on the lamp sitting on the dresser, swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached around until she found the half-finished bottle of Bud on the floor. She killed it, lay back down without turning off the light, flipped over the pillow and fluffed it up under her head.
She ran the dream back through her mind. She remembered, in foster homes, having that dream as a recurring nightmare.
Always before in the dream, when she flew out of her body and looked back at who was chasing her, it was a foster parent. In those dreams, when she got stuck in the mud of the field and took off, up and out of her body and started flying, she eventually looked down. When she saw herself, she reached down and pulled herself up, out of the field and into the sky. But in this dream, when she looked down she saw another body there instead of hers. It creeped her out. She flipped the pillow again and this time folded it in half with her head stuck inside.
She needed to sleep. She planned to go ask the chair of science about testing out of biology and, if she was lucky, Professor LeRoy from the English Department would let her take that test tomorrow. She started counting backwards from ten. Ten-nine-eight and on to one. Then she started counting forward. She almost always fell back asleep before she reached fifty and tonight was no different.
She woke again at seven when the alarm went off. She brushed her hair, quickly braided it into one braid down the center of her back, washed her face while her coffee was brewing. She rinsed out her Thermos before filling it with hot coffee, made a fried egg sandwich, grabbed her book and notebooks off the kitchen table and headed to school.
The first place she stopped was LeRoy’s office.
“Oh,” he said, leaning back in his chair as she entered. “I looked up your grades. Not bad. You did all right in high school too, I see.”
Cash stood waiting.
“So…you still want to test out?”
“Yes.”
“Alright… if you’re sure. Come back here, not here, but to Room 103 in this building at two. Can you come at two?”
Cash
