the still hot coal of her cigarette burning a hole in the velveteen of the cushion. Hud sat on the coffee table and took the cigarette from her fingers. He leaned back, took a drag, examined Tuesday’s costume—she wore a 1970s-style shirtdress, her hair swept up in a fresh beehive slightly crushed by the sofa pillow, a false eyelash dangling from one eyelid. A fake yellow bird with synthetic feathers sat perched in a small birdcage at the foot of the sofa. Hud couldn’t figure out who she was supposed to be.
Tuesday had always slept the deadest sleep he’d ever witnessed—her body didn’t move at all, not even with her breath. She usually stayed up late painting desert scenes on the skulls of cows and horses, then fell into her bed. Hud could too easily imagine all sorts of things happening in the night of Tuesday’s deep sleep—a terrible storm, or a kidnapping, or a fire engulfing the entire house long before she choked awake on a single breath of smoke. That’s the only reason I drink, he thought, crossing his legs, crossing his arms, blowing cigarette smoke toward Tuesday’s face to test her as she slept. She didn’t flinch. I drink because I worry myself sick about my girls, he thought.
He started to snuff the cigarette out in a glass ashtray, then recognized it as a souvenir from a family trip of years before. He picked it up and spat in it, then rubbed his thumb at the black. After rubbing some of the ash away, he could see the bare feet of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Hud and Tuesday had taken the kids, with Nina practically just born, up to South Dakota one summer, where they had walked through Flint-stone Village, taken a tour of a cave, and eaten in a cafeteria with a view of Mount Rushmore. Hud had bought Tuesday a locket of Black Hills gold that she had promptly lost when they went swimming in a naturally warm pool in Hot Springs. Tuesday had cried about it at the motel that night, upsetting Gatling a little, but Hud had loved it. He’d loved holding her and telling her they’d go back to the pool to search, or that he’d buy her another, cooing at her like she was a kid. He’d been glad she’d wanted the necklace so much because even back then, especially back then, they’d had many fights and troubles.
Hud got up and stuck the dirty ashtray in the saggy back pocket of his jeans as he walked through the kitchen, flicking the cigarette into the sink. A nightlight near Nina’s bed lit the room enough for Hud to see Nina sleeping, still in a cowgirl costume, still even in boots and prairie skirt and Western shirt printed with yellow roses. A straw hat hung on the bedpost. Hud tugged on Nina’s skirt, and she woke peacefully, too peacefully, Hud thought. “You shouldn’t be sleeping next to an open window,” he whispered, and Nina sat up in bed and puckered her lips for a kiss. Hud kissed her, then said, “Any creep could come along. Aren’t you afraid of creeps?”
“Oh, sure,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Let’s go for a drive someplace,” Hud said. He opened the window and lifted the torn flap of the screen.
“OK,” Nina said, standing up in the bed, “but first, don’t you like my costume? We went to a party.”
“It’s nice,” he said.
“I’m Opal Lowe,” she said, and Hud was touched that she had dressed up like Opal Lowe, his favorite country singer. He’d taken Nina to a county fair a few weeks before to see Opal singing in the open-air auditorium. They’d had to sit far in the back on a bale of hay, had to strain to hear above the bleats and clucking of the animals judged in nearby pens, but Nina had loved it and had hummed along as Opal Lowe sang about her man’s habits, how he liquored her up on Wild Turkey, lit her Old Golds, made her need him like water.
Nina said, “Can I bring my purse?” and she picked up a clear plastic purse from the end of the bed. Inside was a tube of lipstick, a little box, a comb, and a plastic baby doll’s head with wild yellow hair.
“Sure, bring your purse,” Hud said. He jotted a note in crayon: “I’ll be back with her before sunlight, before you even read this,” and left it atop the rumpled covers of the bed. Nina crawled onto his back, and they slipped through the torn window screen. He imagined never returning with her, imagined his picture next to hers on fliers sent through the mail.
“We’ll go anywhere you want to go,” Hud said, helping her into the car. “Should we go to some ocean far away? Go smoke a friendly cigarette with the fishies?” Nina laughed, and Hud said, “Go to Mexico for some cow-tongue soup?”
“No,” Nina said. “Disgusting.”
“We could go to Disneyland and ride a roller coaster,” Hud said. “Just be careful not to spill your beer,” and Nina laughed at the idea of having beer to spill.
Hud drove off toward the highway. “We could run away together for good,” he said.
“I live with my mom, and you have to drive the school bus,” Nina said, almost scolding.
“We’d write songs for a living,” he said. “Our first song could be called ‘Two Fugitives.’ It’ll go . . . um . . . ‘We’re fugitives from a bad life. Breaking free from . . .’ From what . . . ‘From the chains and shackles of separation and loss.’”
Nina sighed with disapproval. She’d become an expert fan of country music ever since Hud had taken her to see Opal Lowe. She turned on the radio now, as they drove to the edge of town, listening, hoping for an Opal Lowe. But instead they heard Chief Kentucky Straight, a man one-sixteenth Ogalalla Sioux who sang of the pain of life on the reservation. They heard a choir of hard-living rednecks called the Widowmakers. Then there was Rose-Sharon and her Lilies of the Valley. Rose-Sharon was a woman with cancer who sang gospel. Nina sang along to her song called “I’m So Full of Jesus.”
“What was your mom dressed up as?” Hud asked.
“A mermaid,” Nina said.
“No,” Hud said, but he thought a second, thinking of the bird, remembering Catherine Deneuve’s canary in a cage at the beginning of Mississippi Mermaid, one of Tuesday’s favorite movies they’d watched many times together. Deneuve hadn’t had a beehive in that movie, he was almost certain, but rather a tall straw hat. He wondered if Tuesday had missed having him at her side at the party, someone who would truly appreciate the charm of her costume. He could have gone as her Jean-Paul Belmondo, but he would’ve preferred to be Belmondo in Breathless in fedora and sharp suit, puffing on a French cigarette.
It was Tuesday who had first called him Hud; when they were dating in high school, they stayed up late to watch the movie, just long enough for them both to be impressed by Newman’s cantankerousness. “You’ve got his snarl and skinny legs,” she said, then they nodded off to sleep long before Newman raped Patricia Neal.
Hud asked Nina, “Do you know why you even wore that costume today?”
“Well, you see,” Nina said, “you see . . . there was this guy . . . and he was somebody’s dad . . . and there were these boys . . . and the dad hurt the boys so bad that they were killed. And everybody dressed up because . . . um . . . there’s going to be a funeral soon.”
“Jesus,” Hud said, sighing and shaking his head with frustration, “nobody even told you much about it, did they? They just let you get dressed up for their own perverted goddamn reasons.”
Nina said, “I do so know everything about it.” She looked out the car window. “And I hate it when you swear.” She normally enjoyed when he let some swearing slip in front of her.
Hud took off down the unlit gravel roads, squinting into the dark, looking for the sign to tiny Rhyme, Nebraska. Behind a grocery store there lay an old Happy Chef, the thirty-foot-tall fiberglass statue that had once towered in front of
