Stan awoke dry-mouthed and shivering, even though it was warm in the tiny bedroom. Laurel and Roy were gone. He pulled the thin blanket over himself and curled into a fetal position. The night before was coming back to him. Without the distance imparted by the drugs, he felt filthy, soiled.
The door opened. Laurel came in, holding a glass of orange juice in one hand and a fat joint in the other. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said.
Stan sat up. He didn’t speak. Laurel slid onto the bed next to him and handed him the glass. He wanted to move away from her but there was no room on the bed. Besides, he was so thirsty. He drained half the juice in one swallow. Laurel snuggled closer to him. “You were great last night,” she whispered.
Stan shuddered. He drained the rest of the juice, then slid away from her to sit on the opposite edge of the bed. He dropped the glass to the floor and put his head in his hands. He heard the sound of a cigarette lighter flicking, then the sharp tang of pot smoke filled his nostrils. He looked back at Laurel. She was sitting up in the bed, looking at him calmly. She took a drag on the joint, held the smoke in, and passed it to him. He looked at it for a moment. He didn’t want it, but he suddenly desperately wanted that distance, that fuzziness around everything, especially his recent memories. He took the joint and inhaled.
“I know you’re a little freaked out right now,” she said. “You done things you never thought you’d do. But Stan, that’s kind of the point. That’s freedom, Stan. That’s learning that there ain’t no rules anymore.”
The familiar buzz was coming back, the surge of energy, the feeling of power. The joint, Stan realized, was laced with the meth. He didn’t care anymore. He took another pull. “He hurt me,” he said sullenly. “You hurt me.”
She slid over and put her hands on his shoulders. “I know, baby,” she said softly. “But that’s part of it, too. It’s like you’re being born again. Like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. And that hurts some. But you got to learn to live with the pain, Stan. You got to rise above it. You got to not mind it.”
Stan shook his head. He couldn’t seem to track what Laurel was saying. It sounded like gibberish to him. Maybe it was gibberish. He was too fucked up to tell.
Laurel slid off the bed on the other side and stood up. “Come on, baby,” she said. “He wants to see you.”
I don’t want to see him, Stan thought, but he stood up anyway. He pulled his pants and shirt on and followed Laurel out of the trailer.
Roy heard the trailer door open and lowered the Army .45 that he had been aiming at a beer can on a post, some thirty feet away. He watched as Laurel came out, followed by Stan. The boy kept his head down as they approached, as if he didn’t want to look at Roy. That was fine. Last night, they had broken the kid down. Now they would build him back again, in their own way.
“Mornin’, Stan,” he said casually. Stan mumbled something back.
“You ready to be famous?” Roy said.
Stan looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “What?” he said.
Roy looked at him for a moment. Then he took the gun and held it by the barrel. He handed it to Stan, butt-first. “This is your ticket, kid,” he said. “Your ticket to ride. But you got to know how to use it. You ready to learn?”
Stan looked at the gun. Roy held his breath. Stan reached out and took the gun from Roy’s hand. He let the hand fall limply to his side, the barrel pointed down. His eyes were empty of emotion.
Roy smiled in triumph. He had been right. The kid was weak. Had anyone done to Roy what Roy had done to the kid, that person would be dying on the ground right now. But Roy sensed that Stan had no strength of his own. Maybe it was because of the beatings he had suffered, or maybe he was just a pussy. But he had no power inside him. Any power that came to him now would be given to him by Roy. And what Roy gave him, Roy could take away. To make the point, Roy held out his hand for the gun. Stan looked confused, but handed it back to him. Roy ejected the magazine and slammed a fresh one home before handing it back to Stan. The kid looked confused, but took the now-loaded pistol back. He looked at it.
“It was empty?” he said.
“Yeah,” Roy said. “But you didn’t know that.”
“What would you have done if I …,” Stan began, then shut up.
Taken the gun away and beat you to death with it, Roy thought, but didn’t say. There was no need. Roy gestured toward the can on the post. “Try your luck,” he said.
Stan raised his arm, holding the gun out clumsily in front of him. His arm trembled with the weight of it. The flat bang of the gunshot rang out, startling a wading heron into panicky flight before the sound was swallowed by the vast silence of the river. The can didn’t move.
“Put just the pad of your finger on the trigger,” Roy said. “If you curl your whole finger around it, the shot pulls to the right.”
Stan raised the gun again and took aim. “Keep both eyes open,” Roy reminded him. “Put the dot of the front sight between the two dots on the back sight. Focus on the front sight and lay it on the target. Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it.”
This time, the can seemed to explode as the heavy caliber bullet tore through it.
“Can I try it again?” Stan asked.
“Sure,” Roy said. They worked with the gun for another half hour, firing round after round against a succession of bottles and cans. Roy finally held out his hand for the gun.
“We got stuff to do before we leave,” he said. “And then we got a ways to go.”
“Where are we going?” Stan said.
“You’ll find out,” Roy said, “when the time’s right.”
Stan turned as he heard Laurel come out of the trailer. He was startled to see that her short blonde hair was now shoulder length and jet black. As she came closer, Stan saw she was wearing a cheap wig. She grinned at him. “Like it?” she said.
“Come on,” Roy said. He headed for the trailer. Stan fell in beside him. Inside, Roy hunted through a cabinet for a few moments before coming out with a box.
“Wait a minute,” Stan said. “You’re going to dye my hair?”
“No,” Roy said. “Laurel is.”
She came inside and smiled at Stan. “And cut it, too,” Roy told her. “First thing people look at is the hair,” Roy said. “Most times, that’s all they remember. Hair and height. So we change what we can.”
“But why?” Stan said. He felt his voice rising with frustration. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Explain it to him,” Roy said. “I’ll be getting the van ready.” He walked out.
“Sit down here, Stan,” Laurel said. He sat. She got a pair of scissors out of the kitchen drawer. She took a tablecloth from a nearby cabinet. His shoulders tensed as she
