that cried out for doing. He had held her up after breakfast, talking about what money they didn’t have and apparently never would, until finally she had to leave him there in the dirt path that passed for a driveway at their place. She’d sped off in the Silverado he’d picked up from the dealer the morning of 9/11—two years old and the light of Roy’s life. While the Twin Towers were collapsing, Roy had tooled around Kiser showing off their big purchase. Now they could barely make the payments.
Carter pushed in on the key, pulled back, turned slowly. Nothing. Roy had insisted on the deadbolt, though she’d told him it would never keep out trouble determined to get in. Last year, someone had broken in through a window and stolen cigarettes, shotgun shells and four bottles of iodine from the back room where Carter kept the horse supplies. The cigarettes and shells didn’t bother her, but nobody needed that much iodine unless they were cooking meth.
She tried the key with both hands. Yesterday that had worked, but not today. Inside her purse, her cell phone rang. Behind her, she heard footsteps.
“Graphite?” Grady MacFarland held out a pencil.
“If Roy doesn’t fix this lock.”
“You’ll what? Here, let me. Answer your phone.” Grady took the key and ran the pencil over its teeth. He was not much taller than Carter, the wiry sort that Roy would call scrawny. This morning she could see gray around the temples in his light brown hair, but he was one of those men who would be slow to age. The crow’s feet around his green eyes would not deter a younger woman, if he fancied one.
She let the phone ring. “So what are you needing this time of the morning?”
“No more than your sweet hello. And some batteries.” Grady put the key in the lock and when the door opened Carter gave him the smile he’d flattered her for. She’d known Grady MacFarland since she was fourteen and for a while in high school he’d shared with her his hopes and dreams and plenty more on the old plaid sofa in his parents’ downstairs den. Whatever else they’d been—right for each other but at the wrong time, or wrong for each other and lucky enough to find out—they were still friends. He had the soul of an intellect and why he’d given up on life in Tulsa to come back here, she had yet to figure out. He’d bought a piece of land near his mother, an insurance business, and just last week, two of Jimmy Hubble’s brood mares. Carter was, herself, fed up with Kiser and fed up with family obligation. It had hogtied Roy and tethered them to this store forever.
“Coffee’ll be ready soon,” she said.
Grady held the door for her. “Coffee? That’s new.” A shaving nick on his jaw was fresh. The aftershave was lime.
“Roy’s idea. Maybe it’ll help. You know Roy. He can always think of something else for me to do.”
So far, at fifty cents a cup, they were just breaking even. The one financial bright spot Carter could see was a call yesterday from Jerome, her old boss at Porta-Chow. Last February, after the space shuttle broke up and hundreds of people arrived to search for debris, Porta-Chow came in from Kansas City and set up barbecue pits and trailers with portable kitchens. They hired thirty locals. Every afternoon Carter left the store at three o’clock and went to work at four, prepping vegetables and serving up the meats. In twenty-two days she’d made three thousand dollars. Now Porta-Chow was setting up in Baton Rouge, where a tornado had just come through. “We could use you,” Jerome had said.
Carter slid her purse under the counter and unlocked the front door. She’d told Jerome she would think about it. She hadn’t mentioned it to Roy; she knew what he would say.
Outside, Junior Pierce had pulled up his cab to the diesel tank. The sun was breaking through the clouds right into his eyes, and he shaded them as he looked out over the scrubby pasture at the intersection with Buford Road. Not even cattle grazed in the weeds where Pizza Hut had wanted to build, and didn’t, because Horace Chadwick, rich enough and happy with the status quo, wouldn’t sell. Last week, the pizza chain had announced it would build in Eno and the old description of Kiser had bubbled up again: twenty miles south of Eno and thirty years behind.
Carter said a quick prayer that the diesel pump would hold out long enough to fill Junior’s tank. She started the coffee and opened the last new pack of Styrofoam cups. Maybe there was no point in buying more.
“Grady,” she called, “you ever seen a white birch tree? I’ve been telling Roy we should travel. We could get someone to look after the horses and the store. He says there’s nowhere he wants to go. How can that be? Nowhere.”
“Man knows what he wants. You got any fire lighters?”
“Got these butane lighters up here. It’s just that I’ve never seen a birch tree, I’ve never seen more than three inches of snow. I want to see the prairie that Willa Cather wrote about in this book I’m reading. You ever read her? I’m not afraid to go alone. I swear I’m not. I’d get on the train with a good book and talk to strangers who sat next to me. A stranger might be nice once in a while, instead of these old boys come in here that I been knowing all my life.”
Grady had wandered into the back room and was walking out with two tubes of horse wormer. He stopped in front of the drug store supplies.
“Not you,” Carter said. “I’m not talking about you.” Grady seemed to be looking at the condoms, though more likely it was razor blades. He had married his college sweetheart and the rumor was they’d had a happy life, though one without children. Three years ago they’d split up. As far as Carter knew, he hadn’t had a single date since he moved back to Kiser. Maybe he was carrying a torch. “You know where the batteries are?” she said. “Over by the window, next to the light bulbs.” She fished into her purse for a Tums. Roy had taught her never to rush the customers, but she wanted Grady out of here, before Newland Sparks came in. Newland was running his foul mouth when no one else was in the store, about how much she wanted to give him pussy, what would happen when she did. It left her feeling the need for a shower and not ever in the mood for sex, as Roy had taken to pointing out. If Newland came in, Grady would stay until he left, thinking he could keep the creep in line. But Newland would just come back later and that meant two encounters in a day instead of one. It was making her stomach hurt, a slow burn right in the pit. She’d just as soon Newland Sparks come in now, get his jerk-ass crap over with, go shoot off his rocks if that was what he did after and she could maybe—maybe—have a little peace for the rest of the day. She’d tried to get Roy to do something. “You keep your mouth shut,” he’d told her. “All that kin Newnie’s got around here. We can’t keep open if even half of them turn against us.” Carter had lived all her life in Chireno County. If she woke up tomorrow in another state and never saw this store again, it would be an answer to prayers. Once she and Roy had driven to Tennessee. It seemed like a nice place.
Grady set the batteries and horse wormer on the counter. He saw her watching out the window. “Newland still bothering you?”
“It should be against the law, what he’s doing. Sheriff’s deputy that was in here last week, Cecil Dawson, I told him I got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it. I’d just as soon shoot Newland Sparks as shoot a bug.” She handed Grady his change, setting the coins firmly in his slender palm. “Put me in jail, put me away. At least I’d have three meals a day and a roof over my head. And he’d be dead.”
Junior Pierce had come up to the register, and now he was holding out a hundred dollar bill. “Let’s hope not,” he said.
“You know I’m just running my mouth,” Carter said. “That all you got?”
“Sorry, this is it. Sparks, the poor bastard. Black sheep of the
