MATTIE’S LAST SUMMER

By

Jeremy Gordon March



Here are the first twenty chapters of a “prequel” to my other stories 
about Mattie Lee, the Woman With Kids at Home. Like my third story about 
her and her friends, “Trying to Forget,” this one was written in response 
to a reader’s question. He agreed with me that Mattie, for the brief 
moments we see her in the film, seemed to bear the emotional scars of 
some long-ago tragedy. I’ve discussed this tragedy – the car crash that 
killed her first boyfriend and marked the beginning of her extraordinary 
run of bad luck – in most of my other stories. My reader wanted to know, 
though, what she had been like before all this happened to her. What was 
the happiest time in her life? He noted that she clearly loved her 
children Wanda and Victor and that she was devoted to her friend Rose; 
and he reasoned that someone must once have shown her love and kindness.



This is the story of Mattie’s last perfect summer, before the accident, 
before the wars that took her best friend away, and long before the 
coming of the mist. We see her happy, with hopes for a bright future that 
never came. And we see her fall in love with the man who should have been 
Wanda and Victor’s father.



This is fan fiction, protected by the First Amendment and the Fair 
Use Doctrine. It has not been written or posted for profit. It has not 
been reviewed or approved by Stephen King, Frank Darabont, or anyone 
connected with the film “The Mist” or the novella of the same name.





We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows. 

	Donald Justice, “On the Death of Friends in Childhood”



I.

Like nearly everyone else in the Rubidoux Trailer Park, Mattie Lee, her 
best friend Rose, and her boyfriend Kyle hated Kyle’s stepfather, Brian 
Donovan. Brian, a loudmouthed, bullying security guard with pretensions 
to being an actual police officer, had moved there from Jefferson City 
with Kyle and Kyle’s mom just a few months before. Almost immediately, 
Brian had begun trying to push the other residents around, usually over 
minor things like noise from a TV set after ten and night; water and 
electrical hookups; or someone smoking marijuana. Joan Sullivan, Rose’s 
mom, had gotten a short and unpleasant visit from Brian late one night 
simply because Rose and Mattie, hanging out in Rose’s room, had been 
laughing too loud over the latest cartoon they’d drawn. Brian had asked 
Joan if there was a “domestic disturbance in progress” in her home. She 
told him no – the Sullivans, like most of the other people of Rubidoux, 
might get a little rowdy at times but they never attacked their own 
family members – he informed her that someone in her trailer was 
violating some unspecified “noise ordinance” and that he could call the 
police right then and get them all in trouble. Within a month, no one was 
talking to Brian; few of the women would exchange more than a couple of 
words with his new wife Loretta; and his stepson Kyle found it very 
difficult to make any friends at school.



But if it hadn’t been for Brian, and particularly for his faults, Mattie 
and Kyle might never have fallen in love back when they were sixteen. And 
if they hadn’t, Mattie’s life would have taken a completely different 
path. 



Brian Donovan introduced them – in a manner of speaking - on a hot May 
night at the Corona, Rubidoux’s ancient drive-in movie theater. Rose, 
after working in menial jobs (mostly legitimate, a few not) all year, had 
finally been able to buy her first car. It was an old black Camaro that 
required four new tires, a host of spare parts, and two days of engine 
work by Rose and her brother Mike (Mattie Lee knew almost nothing about 
cars, apart from how to steal them). Rose gave out a long, loud rebel 
yell when they finally got the thing running. Much later that night, 
she’d taken Mattie and Mike on a test-drive, tearing down the nearly-
empty highway at a hundred and ten miles an hour.



The night that Kyle came into Mattie’s life, Mattie and Rose were again 
in the Camaro, along with Rose’s father Tom. They were watching an 
animated movie called “Heavy Metal,” a film adaptation of an illustrated 
fantasy magazine of the same name. Rose and Mattie simply had to see that 
one. It was no surprise that they loved the same films. Growing up 
together in adjacent trailers in the park, they’d discovered, beginning 
at the age of five, that they had practically everything in common. They 
looked almost alike: Redheads (Rose more so than Mattie); bright green 
eyes; pale, clear skin punctuated by freckles; naturally thin, flat-
chested and gracefully muscled figures. They also dressed alike; their 
outfits these days consisted of blank tank tops – which showed off their 
identical Celtic knotwork tattoos on their left and right biceps – and 
tight black jeans tucked into twenty-eyelet Doc Martens boots. And they’d 
even come up with a hairstyle (which their parents hated) to match their 
outfits: Their red hair was literally shaved to the scalp on the back and 
sides of the head, fading up to about a half-inch or so on top. And they 
shared almost every interest. Since they were eight or nine, they had 
both collected comic books and graphic novels – the more sophisticated 
the artwork and the writing – and the greater the amount of sex and 
violence – the better. And Rose, since discovering last summer that she 
preferred girls to boys, found that many of the stories, which often 
featured scantily-clad or out-and-out naked heroines with perfect bodies, 
had taken on a whole new meaning for her. Rose was looking forward to 
seeing the film’s final sequence for the first time in four years, one 
featuring a beautiful white-haired women, clad in a tiny leather corset, 
riding through the skies on a pterodactyl. Mattie Lee was simply looking 
forward to yet another fun evening, preferably a drunken one, with her 
friend Rose (Mattie preferred boys to girls, but Rose’s interest in girls 
was just fine with Mattie, so long as Rose continued to tell Mattie that 
she “looked ugly” to her.)



But as they were leaving, Tom – a handsome man with blonde hair and 
country-boy looks who himself was only thirty-three years old – mentioned 
had seen and loved Heavy Metal when it first came out in 1982, the year 
after Rose was born. He asked if he could come along. Rose wasn’t 
thrilled about her father coming along with them; a drive-in movie was 
normally a great chance to drink and smoke everything under the sun. But 
she could see that coming along meant something to Tom. It made him feel 
young again, he said, especially hearing the music. Maybe he also simply 
wanted to enjoy some time with her daughter before he lost her to the 
outside world. Rose was sixteen and about to finish her second year of 
high school and who planned to join the Army in just about another year. 
It turned out that Tom, whatever his reasons for joining them that night, 
did them all a big favor by coming along.



When the film was over, Rose and Mattie were still wiping tears of 
laughter from their eyes, especially when they thought of the part where 
a wimpy, soft-spoken little man fell under a spell and transformed in a 
matter of moments into a fifty-foot-tall, muscle-bound, destructive 
giant.



Mattie turned around to face Tom, who was sitting alone in the backseat. 
“Was that as good as you remembered, Mr. Sullivan?” She felt a little bad 
that Rose had deliberately ignored her father for the whole evening. Tom 
was a nice guy; and his only flaw was that he was too old to truly be one 
of them.



“Oh, yeah!” Tom enthused. “Now when I saw it with my friends, we weren’t 
at the drive-in. We were at this theater-“ he pronounced it the-ATE-er “-
all the way down in Salem. There was about twenty of us, packed into 
three cars. Then we went back to this one girls’ house – Karen Finley, 
she had a swimming pool, and we had a kind of a party. And at some point, 
someone said we should start acting out scenes from the film-“



“Jesus, Dad,” Rose gave him a withering look, although she and Mattie 
often did just that after seeing a particularly good movie or TV show.



“That sounds like fun,” Mattie pressed on, determined to be nice to him 
if Rose wouldn’t be.



“Thank you, Mattie Lee,” Rose growled under her breath.



Tom ignored her. “It was,” Tom had a sentimental smile on his face. “The 
first thing we did-“



“Dad, I’m tired,” Rose pleaded. This was a lie, of course, and a 
transparent one at that; Rose, who needed only about five hours’ sleep at 
night, seldom went to bed before two in the morning. “Can we just go 
home?”



Tom held up his palms in a gesture of surrender. “I get the message, 
kids. Lead on, honey.”



At first, Rose could not. The parking lot of the Rialto was one of the 
most confused and dangerous places in town right after a movie. Everyone 
was trying to back their mostly large cars and trucks out of the spaces 
at once. After nearly a minute of looking in the rear-view mirror, Rose 
saw no cars behind her. She slowly began to back her new car out of its 
space. As she turned the car sideways, she heard the roar of an engine 
and a very brief screech of brakes as an SUV parked directly behind her – 
unexpectedly surged forward and tried unsuccessfully to stop. She tried 
to get out of the way but there was no time and no space. The other car 
broadsided her new Camaro, smashing into the driver’s door.



Mattie and Tom, neither of whom ever bothered with seat belts, were 
shaken by the impact but their first concern was for Rose, who was 
sitting perfectly still, a stunned look on her face.



“Rose?” Mattie looked at her friend, whose eyes were staring and mouth 
was slightly agape.



“Honey?” Tom put his hand on her shoulder. When he got no response, he 
squeezed her shoulder – gently at first, until he was satisfied it was 
not broken – and then tightened his grip and rocked her a bit.



Rose came back to life. She leaned forward and looked around, first at 
Mattie, then at the car pressing against her door. She looked like 
someone waking up from a bad dream, her initial shock quickly replaced by 
anger. Her face turned bright red. She slammed the flat of her hand onto 
the horn, keeping it pressed down for a full ten seconds. As she spoke, 
the other car backed up a bit, and even with the horn blasting, she could 
hear, or perhaps feel, part of the door falling away. She took her hand 
off the horn and for a moment everything was silent except for some 
commotion outside and the sound of Rose hyperventilating. 



“Take it easy, Rose-“ Tom advised her.



Rose shook her head. “My car,” she said, as though she was trying to 
explain something that should be obvious to an idiot. “My new car. Did he 
get the frame?”



“What?” Mattie didn’t understand what Rose was saying.



“The car frame,” she explained, her voice speeding up and rising. “Did 
that fucking bastard dent the car frame!?” 



“Rose,” Tom cautioned. He knew his tomboy daughter well enough to know 
what she was planning to do.



Rose tugged the handle of her door. At first, the bashed door would not 
open. Cursing, she shoved against it three times and the door finally 
swung aside. She stepped out of the car and waded forward, fists 
clenched, just as a tall, heavyset, mustachioed man, who she recognized 
as Brian Donovan, was getting out of the other car.



“You see what you did!?” Rose howled. “You coulda killed me – and you 
wrecked…my fucking..car!” Tom, hearing this, scrambled out of the 
backseat and tried to step in front of her. From the corner of his eye, 
he saw Mattie Lee racing around the front of the car to stand by her 
friend.



“First off,” Brian began, “I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.” He 
spoke in the loud, singsong voice that some police officers use when o 
giving orders to civilians. And that was why he used it.



Rose started to shout something in reply. Tom placed his hand on her 
shoulder, gently held her back. “You smashed into my daughter’s new car. 
She could be hurt. Just how’s she supposed to speak to you?”



“Maybe you should’ve taught her to drive that thing safely,” Brian said 
contemptuously. “She just went tearing out of that space and probably did 
my car five hundred dollars’ worth of damage.” As he spoke, the front and 
rear passenger doors opened. A tall, thin middle-aged woman with long 
blonde hair and a lined, weary face, got out from the rear and came to 
stand next to Brian. From the front passenger seat came a boy in his late 
teens, wearing cowboy boots and blue denim. He shared the woman’s wiry 
build and his hair was as straight and blonde as hers. It spilled out 
from beneath his baseball cap and reached down to his collar. His golden 
hair was a good match for his sad blue eyes and very light complexion.



The woman started to say something to Brian. He shook his head. “I’ll 
handle this.”



Tom had taken his hand off Rose’s shoulder and she continued advancing on 
Brian. “Now don’t you turn this one around on me. You’re the one who went 
too fast. You even hit the brakes; I heard ‘em squeal.”



“I braked to keep you from smashing into my car,” Brian retorted. Behind 
him, the blonde boy shook his head and lowered it sadly.



“I’m a witness too,” Mattie chimed in. “I was with her, in the front 
seat-“



“I recognize you now; you’re the two girls who were disturbing the peace 
the other night-“



“Never mind that. I was with her. She was only going-“ Mattie broke off 
as she frantically tried to think of the proper speed for a crowded 
parking lot, “-two miles an hour!” 



Brian forced a laugh.



“I was there too, in the back,” agreed Tom. “That’s about how slow she 
was going.”



“Looks like it’s our word against yours.” Brian indicated the woman and 
the blonde boy. The boy turned his head away. “Tell you what: I got a 
buddy who’s an accident reconstruction specialist. He will write me a 
report that’ll show this was the little girl’s fault-“ Rose started to 
curse again as he called her a little girl “-and you and she’re gonna pay 
for everything you did to my car. Can you afford that? Can you afford 
trouble with the police around here? I work with them-”



“You son-of-a-bitch!” Rose started to shout something else at Donovan. He 
took a step forward, closing most of the distance between them, and 
shoved her backwards with the palms of his hands. She stumbled into 
Mattie and Tom, and Tom had to catch her under the arms to keep her from 
falling.



“All right,” Tom said, as soon as he had helped his daughter up. By now 
he was as angry, and as beyond reason, as his daughter. “That’s it-“ he 
started to draw his own fist back when he heard a loud, high-pitched 
whoop and saw colored lights out of the sides of his eye. A police car 
was slowly making its way down the aisle toward them. The parking lot was 
fairly well-lit, and Rose, Tom and Mattie could all make out the words 
SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT and JUDAH BENJAMIN COUNTY on the door. An amplified 
voice told passersby to please step aside.



“You’re in big trouble,” Brian and Tom said it at almost the same time.



The patrol car stopped and two deputies slowly got out. They wore wide-
brimmed straw hats and the confederate-gray short-sleeved uniforms that 
some civil-rights group had sued them over a few years ago. Their 
revolvers were tucked into their Sam Browne belts. Tom and Mattie huddled 
around Rose, urging her to calm down.



“Anybody hurt?” asked one of the deputies, a young Hispanic man with a 
nametag reading “Sanchez.”



Before Rose could start screaming again, Tom said to her quietly, “honey, 
are you hurt?”



Rose shrugged. She still felt a little stunned from the impact, and was 
furious at having been shoved, but she was in no pain. She shook her 
head. Mattie, Tom and even Brian did the same.



“OK, how about telling me what happened here?” The other deputy was a 
middle-aged Anglo with thinning, salt-and-pepper hair and glasses. The 
brass name tape above his right pocket read “Anderson.”



Everybody – at least Rose, Mattie, Tom and Brian – started talking, and 
then shouting, at once. The deputies closed in on them – Mattie could see 
that Sanchez actually put his hand on his nightstick – and Anderson held 
up his palms. “Whoa! One at a time. Hang on-“ he reached into his shirt 
pocket and took out a small notebook-and-pen set. “Sir,” he glanced at 
Brian, “I believe you spoke first.”



“Okay. First off, my name’s Brian Donovan, and I’m with law enforcement.” 
Tom shot Rose a look that warned her to be quiet. After he showed the 
deputy his driver’s license, he continued. “My wife, son, and I-“ the 
blonde woman glanced at the boy as he said this, “went to the movies 
tonight. It was a drive-in. When it was over, I pulled my car forward. I 
was going maybe one, two miles an hour. It didn’t even show on the 
speedometer. I was halfway into the aisle-“ he started to step forward to 
show what he meant, but that brought him closer to Tom and Rose and 
Sanchez asked if he could please stay put. “Sorry. I was halfway into the 
aisle, when that car there-“ he indicated the Camaro “-driven by that 
young lady-“ he gestured at Rose “-peeled backwards out of its space at – 
it must’ve been forty miles an hour. Then she swerved to the right-“



“Bullshit!” Rose spat on the ground. “That’s the same God-damn lie you 
told me. And now you’re lying to the cops! I-“



“Young lady?” Anderson had to out-shout her to be heard. Rose quieted 
down when she realized he was shouting at her.  He continued more calmly. 
“Tell me your name, please?”



“Rose. Rose Sullivan.” She dug her wallet out of her back pocket and 
fished out her driver’s license.



“Rose Sullivan, if you do not stop that right…now…I’m gonna run you in. 
You got that?”



“Yes…I mean, yes sir,” she said in a low, defeated voice.



“Thank you. Go on, Mr. Donovan.”



“She swerved to the right, just as fast and really broad. I could hear 
the sound of her brakes, but it didn’t stop the car. I didn’t want to 
back up because there were all these pedestrians in the lot.” He 
indicated the crowd of looky-loos who were watching this entertaining 
spectacle from a distance. “So I couldn’t get out of her way. Her 
drivers’ side door hit the front of my Land Cruiser.”



The older man finished taking his notes – he was a slow writer – and then 
turned to Tom, Rose and Mattie. “I think I’d better hear from your dad 
what happened. He is your dad, right?” Rose nodded. “Her dad,” Mattie 
confirmed, pointing at Rose.



“Okay. After he’s done I might want to ask you some questions, but for 
now, let him speak.”



Tom introduced himself, showed Anderson his license, and then gave an 
account that was almost the mirror image of Brian’s. Rose had been slowly 
backing out, braking almost every foot or so, when Brian’s land cruiser 
had shot forward, caving in the driver’s door when his daughter was just 
inches on the other side and could have been killed. He also added that 
in the argument that ensued, Brian had shoved his daughter. 



“Miss?” Anderson was looking at Rose again. “Does that sound about 
right?”



“Yes, sir,” she said, and let it go at that, still chastened by his 
earlier threat to arrest her if she kept on talking.



“Do you have anything to add?”



“No, sir.”



The officer next went to Mattie. After showing her identification and 
answering a few preliminary questions about how to pronounce her first 
name – which was legally Moragh (“you pronounce that “Mo-rah”), and not 
Mattie - she backed up Jim and Rose, adding only that Rose had hit the 
horn right after the collision.



He turned back to Brian. “Anything to add?”



“What happened is what I told you happened. It’s the exact opposite of 
what they just told you. Now I know this guy’s trying to protect his kids 
and his kids’re backing him up. They’re lying. And as for the accusation 
that I shoved the girl, that’s a lie too. After shouting obscenities at 
me at the top of her lungs, she charged at me like a linebacker. She was 
maybe four inches away from me and I had to put up my hands-“ he held his 
palms out “-to protect my face. That’s all.”



Next up was the blonde woman, Loretta Donovan, Brian’s wife. He asked her 
whose version of events was closest to the truth. She shrugged. “I’m 
sorry,” she said in a tired voice. “I-I wasn’t paying attention. I 
remember the crash, of course, but—“ she trailed off.



“Well, Mr. Sullivan says your husband was going forward awful fast. Did 
you feel your husband was maybe going too fast?”



“I suppose not but…I really can’t remember. Okay?”



Finally, he turned to the blonde boy, who had been standing quietly by 
the woman’s side.



“What’s your name, son?”



“Kyle. Kyle Denton.” He had a soft voice, with a Southern accent to be 
sure, but much less pronounced than any of the other people there.



The officer started to write that down, then looked up, confused. “Did 
you say ‘Denton’ or ‘Donovan?’”



“Denton, sir. This man – Brian Donovan - is my stepfather. My father’s 
name is…was Denton. My mother-“ he nodded toward Loretta “-changed her 
name last year, when she married Mr. Donovan. I didn’t.”



“Okay. Mr. Denton? My partner and I’ve just heard two, completely 
different, versions of what happened. Three people – Mr. Sullivan, young 
Miss Sullivan, and young Miss Allen here say your stepdad was at fault, 
that he was the one who stepped on the gas. One person, your mom, says 
she can’t remember. And one person, your stepdad, says it was Miss 
Sullivan hit the gas. Who’s telling the truth?”



“Mr. Sullivan, his daughter, and Miss Allen are telling the truth,” he 
replied without hesitating. Brian immediately began asking Kyle what the 
hell he was trying to pull. The older deputy advised him to let Kyle 
talk.



“So you’re telling us your stepdad was at fault?” The officer sounded 
mildly surprised.



“I’m saying he was the one hit the gas. Maybe it was an accident. He’s a 
pretty good driver. But I was in the front seat. I saw it happen. I 
remember he and my mom – she was sitting in the back - had been arguing 
about something. He sometimes raises his voice when he argues. He finally 
said something like, ‘that’s it, we’re going home’ and I felt the car – I 
mean our car – tear out of the space like a race car. And then, maybe two 
seconds later, I heard him yell something like, ‘Jesus Christ.’ I saw him 
stamp on the brake. I heard the brake screeching. I don’t know if it 
worked or not, because the thing that stopped us was hitting Miss, uh-“



“Sullivan?” the younger officer asked.



“Yeah. Miss Sullivan’s car.”



Anderson called a “time out” while he finished taking down Kyle’s 
account. “Okay, next question for you, Mr. Denton: Could you tell how 
fast Miss Sullivan’s car was going?”



“Before or after my stepdad hit the gas?”



“I did not-“ Brian began. The deputy held up a hand.



“Whenever. Before or after.”



“After my stepdad hit the gas, I couldn’t tell how fast Miss Sullivan was 
going, because our car was moving so fast. All I could tell is that our 
car and their car suddenly got closer and hit.” 



The officer pushed his lower lip out and nodded. “What about before your 
stepdad hit the gas, like you say.”



“The Sullivans were going very slowly. Kind of a stop-start, stop-start. 
Go a few inches and brake; go a few more inches and brake. They 
turned, slow, to the right-“



“Your right?”



“Yes. And I could see the person behind the wheel – I guess it was Miss 
Sullivan – turning the wheel hand over hand. She kept looking over her 
shoulder while she did it.



“And that’s when my stepdad said, ‘that’s enough; we’re going home’ and 
hit the gas.”



“Mmm-hmm.” Deputy Anderson was silent as he finished writing a sentence 
or two. “And now, I want to ask you another question. If you don’t know 
the answer, tell me you don’t know: After the collision, when everyone 
was out of their cars, did you see what happened between Miss Sullivan 
and your stepdad?”



Kyle swallowed, then nodded. “Yes, I did.”



“So what happened?”



“My stepdad and Miss Sullivan were arguing. My stepdad was talking loud 
but not shouting, basically saying it was her fault and she was in 
trouble. Miss Sullivan shouted back. She was swearing at him.”



“How far away was she from your stepfather?”



“Maybe…two feet, maybe a little more.”



“Did she try to get closer to your stepdad – run at him, jump, walk?”



“No. She stayed still.”



“Did your stepdad put up his hands?”



“Yes, like this-“ Kyle held his palms out, about six inches away from his 
upper chest, elbows belt. “Then, he stepped forward-“ Kyle took a big 
stride forward, “and then pushed forward like this-“ he quickly and 
forcefully extended his arms all the way, keeping his palms out. “She 
kind of stumbled backwards, into her dad and Miss, uh-”



“Allen,” said Mattie.



“You’re saying…your stepdad walked towards Miss Sullivan and shoved her?”



“Yeah. He shoved her.”



“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” Brian said under his breath. Anderson gave him a 
dirty look, and he didn’t have to be told to say no more.



“Why do you suppose he would do something like that?”



“I don’t know.”



“Do you think maybe he was afraid Miss Sullivan was about to attack him?”



“Well, she was screaming at him, like I said. She seemed very angry. On 
the other hand, he’d just hit her car, so maybe that’s why she was acting 
like that. Also, he’s maybe twice her size; and my stepdad, he doesn’t 
scare easy, that’s for sure. Also…” he paused, considering something, 
“…well, I’ve seen him do it before.”



“Officer,” Brian broke in. “My son is lying on a police report-“



“Sir, we’re gonna look into this whole thing,” said the younger deputy. 
“Just let him finish what he has to say.”



“When before?” The older deputy pressed him. “In self-defense?”



Kyle shook his head again. “Sometimes when people argue with him. Just 
once in a while, but it happens. He shoved the man who lived next door, 
back in our old neighborhood in Jefferson City. They were arguing about 
something like who’d let their garbage can spill all over the street. 
Remember how you asked me about my name. He shoved me when I told him I 
wouldn’t change my last name. And-and…never mind.” By the time he 
finished, everyone, even Brian, was looking at him.



“Mr. Denton, one last question: You’re sound like you’re saying that 
everything that happened here tonight – except maybe for Miss Sullivan’s 
little fireworks display – is your stepfather’s fault. You even told me 
he took a step towards Miss Sullivan and pushed her hard enough to knock 
her down.



“My question is: Do you have anything against your stepfather? Is there 
anything he’s said or done that would make you say things about him that 
weren’t true? To try to get him into trouble when he hadn’t done 
something wrong?”



“No. We…my stepdad and I don’t get along perfect, but we’ve only known  
each other for a year and a half. I’m sure it’ll get better someday. And 
I’d never lie about him. I don’t want to get him in trouble.”



“All right,” said the older deputy as he finished writing and put his pad 
and pen back in his shirt pocket, “here’s what I want us to do. Miss 
Sullivan, can you still drive your vehicle?



“I think so, yeah.”



“Mr. Donovan, can you drive yours?” Brian nodded, wordless for once.



“Okay, then the first thing is, I want everybody to go home and get a 
good night’s sleep. Tomorrow morning, Miss Sullivan and Mr. Donovan have 
to call their insurance companies. My partner and I are going to be 
working on an accident report. If you need a copy, just call me.” He 
fished some business cards out of his pants pocket, handed them to Tom 
and Brian. “If we need to ask further questions of any of you, we’ll give 
you a call.



“And now, I’d like to talk to Miss Sullivan alone.”



Tom was allowed to follow the older officer as he led Rose off about 
halfway down the parking lot aisle. Apart from a few syllables of his 
voice, Mattie couldn’t hear what he was saying. She could see Rose 
gesturing, shaking her head a little. Then Tom said something. Finally, 
she saw Tom, then Rose, shake the deputy’s hand. They returned.



“And now,” the man said, “I’d like a word with Mr. Donovan in private.” 
Brian shrugged his shoulders. He and the officer walked an even longer 
distance away. Mattie and her friends could not see him. Tom put his arm 
around Rose’s shoulders again and started to tell her not to say or do 
anything until the officers were gone. She nodded impatiently and shook 
his arm off.



Mattie, meanwhile, was looking at Kyle Denton. He was gazing sadly at his 
mother. Loretta was frowning at him, shaking her head as if about to 
scold him, but she said nothing. He reached for her hand and she pulled 
it away. He walked slowly away from his mother but he never took his eyes 
off her.



The deputy returned with Brian Donovan, who was red-faced with anger. He 
told them, once again, to go home. Rose gingerly opened the scratched and 
dented door – they’d have to pay for a tow truck if it fell off – got 
inside, and very carefully and softly closed the door. Tom got in the 
shotgun seat and Mattie in the back. 



“Wait…” Rose had been about to start the car when something outside her 
window caught her attention. “Look at that,” she told her dad and Mattie. 
Good old Brian Donovan was back in his SUV. The headlights were on. His 
wife was in the front seat. But Kyle was still standing in the lot, next 
to the car, shaking his head, palms spread out in front of him. He seemed 
to be arguing with Brian and his mom – or at least trying to convince 
them of something. And then, for the second time that evening, Brian 
floored the gas, then stamped on the brake; and then hit the gas again as 
his car lurched out of its space, racing past Kyle and the Camaro.



“I bet he’s in trouble,” Tom said.



“What should I-?” Rose began.



“Help him,” Tom said quietly, automatically. “He helped us. Stuck his 
neck out for us.”



Rose honked the horn and rolled down her window. “Hey!” Kyle, still 
standing in the space where his ride home had been, was looking at her 
now. 



“You, hold up!” Tom and Mattie were already on their way out of the car. 
Rose joined them, carefully opening and shutting the door.



Mattie reached him first. “Are you all right?”



“Yeah,” he said very quietly, sadly. “I’ll be all right.”



“Wasn’t…didn’t you say your dad was about to take you home?”



“He’s…angry at me right now. I think I know why.” Kyle managed a slight 
smile. “He told me to come back tomorrow night.”



“Look,” Tom said. “it’s ‘Kyle,’ isn’t it? – Kyle, I don’t think we’ve met 
yet but we’re your neighbors. You live in the Rubidoux Park, right?”



“Just moved there a few months ago.”



“Well, we’re in units 113 and 114. I’m Tom, this is my daughter Rose, and 
the little lady here-“ he turned to Mattie and then back to Kyle “-is our 
next-door neighbor Mattie Lee. We’ve known her all her life. We’ll take 
you home.”



Kyle seemed relieved to find someone who was not yelling at him or 
peppering him with questions. “Thank you. But that won’t do any good. 
When they get home, they’re gonna lock me out. I won’t be able to get in. 
I should go into town, find a motel room, or-“



“Why don’t you crash with us tonight?” Tom suggested. “We don’t have an 
extra bed – just a couch, but it’s real comfortable. I sleep there 
whenever my wife Joan kicks me out of our bedroom.” He managed to get a 
grin out of Kyle.



“No, that’s-“



“We also owe you,” Tom overrode him. “For telling the truth even when you 
knew it was gonna cost you. Were you scared?”



“Sure. But…” For the first time, Kyle looked uncertain, maybe wondering 
how much about his family he should tell to these strangers. “I saw what 
happened. You didn’t do anything wrong. And like I said, he’s done this 
kind of thing before. I guess I just had enough.”



“Let’s take you home,” Tom said. “If you like, my wife can call your mom 
or go over there and make sure everything’s OK for you.” Rose was back in 
the driver’s seat, but Tom could see her fumble the key into the 
ignition. Her hands were still shaking. “I’ll drive us back in, Rose,” he 
said quietly, shooing Rose out of the front seat. “Why don’t you two 
lovely ladies keep Kyle company in the back?”



The girls thanked him again as they piled into the back. Tom kept looking 
back and forth between them, seemingly puzzled. “Why do you two wear your 
hair like that?” He finally asked.



“Well, that’s a long story.“ Rose broke off. “Once, we- well, you tell 
him, Mattie Lee.”



“We…Rose, you tell it better. Tell him,” was as far as Mattie got before 
looking back at Rose. She shook her head. Rose shrugged.


II.

After they got home, Tom and Rose, often talking over one another, 
related to Joan Sullivan the story of the crash, the police 
investigation, and how Kyle had saved the day for them. Tom also 
explained that Kyle now needed to use their couch for the night.



“Right,” Rose agreed. “He’s needs – what’s it called? – political…”



“Asylum,” Mattie finished for her.



Joan, a plump, middle-aged redhead who had already had her share of 
trouble with Brian Donovan, said that was only right, but asked why he 
had to stay on the couch when he could take Rose’s room for a night.



Rose rolled her eyes. “Don’t push it, Mom-“



“Rose!”



“She’s just afraid you’ll find all those men’s magazines hidden in her 
desk,” Mattie explained before she remembered where she was. “Sorry, Mrs. 
Sullivan.”



Kyle smiled at her, but refused. “Really, the couch is fine. If it 
weren’t for Mr. Sullivan, I’d be sleeping in the high school dugout 
tonight.”



“You talk so…” Joan trailed off. “I’m sorry. You just speak so well.”



“Thank you.”



“You’re not from around here, did you?”



“Well...no. I moved from Jefferson City back in March.”



“Well, welcome to Rubidoux. Not as big or fancy as Jefferson City, I 
guess, but the people here are good to each other.”



“We pay back our debts,” Mattie nodded.



“That’s right,” nodded Rose. “We ain’t gonna forget what you did.”



“So, Kyle Denton, welcome to our home.” Joan gave him a brief hug. “Have 
you eaten yet?” She had fed Mattie, Rose and Tom before they’d left for 
the movie.



“I’m fine. I had dinner already.” It was his first and only lie that 
evening.



“Well, if you get hungry, we have some chicken and some slices of ham in 
the icebox. Help yourself.”







After Joan went to bed, Kyle thanked them all again, headed for the 
couch, and said he should get some sleep.



“No, no no,” Rose said, steering him away from the sofa and towards her 
room. “We’re gonna have us a few drinks before going to bed.”



“Well…” Kyle blushed again, “I don’t really- you know, drink that much.”



Rose shook her head with mock contempt. “What are you, a…Baptist or 
something?” She spat out the name of the faith as though it was a curse.



“Well…yeah.” Kyle smiled, a little uncertainly. “At least my mom is.”



“Nice one, Rosie,” Mattie spoke quietly enough, but her tone suggested 
she’d really wanted to say, “shut the fuck up, Rosie.”



“Is it a problem? I mean, I don’t really believe in all that. Just look 
at me. Do I look like a choirboy?” He ran his fingers through his long 
hair, then over his unshaven face, then over his shabby clothes.



“Don’t you mind Rose, here,” Mattie assured him. “Nobody cares about that 
kind of thing here. I sure don’t.”



“It’s okay,” agreed Rose. “It’s just that the whole town is Catholic. 
Good Irish Catholics. It’s always been that way. So pretty much everyone 
I know is Catholic, whether they believe in it or not. I wouldn’t have 
said that if I’d…” she trailed off.



“No worries,” Kyle told her. “It’s funny. When I was growing up in 
Jefferson City – before Brian came along and got us kicked out, that is – 
everyone in our part of town was Protestant. Most of ‘em were good Bible-
believing Christians. You’d see ‘em walking into church carrying the ESV-
“



“What’s that?” Mattie looked confused.

 

“Sorry. ‘English Standard Version.’ Of the Bible. And I don’t think I 
ever met any Catholics. I mean, I’d heard about ‘em, - seen ‘em on TV 
coming out of Saint Patrick’s Church in New York at Christmastime, but 
I’d never met any.”



“So,” asked Mattie, “what are we like?”



“You’re…” he shrugged, “You’re…pretty much like the kids I used to hang 
out with. And Rose, please tell your Dad and Mom thanks, again, for 
letting me stay tonight.”



“No problem,” Rose had regained her confidence. “If you hadn’t’ve spoke 
up, I’d have a big old ticket to pay, and my insurance would have about 
doubled.” She pronounced it “IN-surance.” She seated him on her bed. “Now 
you just stay there with Mattie Lee; I’ll be right back.” With that, she 
quietly closed the door to her room and padded off toward the kitchen. 
Tom and Joan, of course, knew Rose and Mattie would be getting drunk; 
that’s what they usually did when they hung out at night. For a while 
they’d tried to stop it. But neither of Rose’s parents was a poster child 
for sobriety; they themselves had done the exact same thing when they 
were teenagers; and they finally gave up trying to lecture the kids and 
weakly told them just not to do it where they could be seen. (Mattie’s 
mom, Sue Allen, had a simpler and much more effective way of keeping 
Mattie and Rose from boozing when they were in her home; she would simply 
barge into Mattie’s room and start hectoring both of them about their 
drinking, ruining their fun and driving them outside.)



“So-“ Kyle began as he turned toward Mattie Lee. As he looked at her, he 
began to get a strange feeling in his chest, a sensation that was a 
little painful, but also thrilling at the same time. And then he found he 
couldn’t speak. He could only grin, and he could feel a flush of red 
spreading across his cheeks. 



“Yeah,” was all Mattie was able to get out. She was feeling the same way, 
and her heart was pumping about twice as fast as it normally did. And 
then she smiled and turned red, and finally ended up looking at her toes.



“Well…” Kyle tried again, but found himself laughing softly.



“Oh-kay,” she managed, then grinned again and buried her hands in her 
face.




Kyle forced himself to speak a complete sentence. “We-we understand one 
another.” He broke off laughing again, this time louder. And this time 
Mattie joined him. 



The door opened, slowly, quietly, and there was Rose with a bottle of Jim 
Beam whiskey in her right hand, a forty-ounce bottle of very dark, local 
malt liquor (“Cave Man,” named in honor of the town’s high school 
football team, aptly called the Cavemen) in her left. “What’re you two 
laughing about?”



Kyle and Mattie each turned to the other, hoping they would explain, but 
they both ended up shrugging and giggling some more.



“I get it,” Rose groaned. Several months before, she and Mattie had had 
their first and only real fight in their ten-year friendship. It had been 
over Rose’s sexuality. Rose had assumed Mattie, who was so much like her, 
would see things her way. So, driving home one night, Rose had pulled off 
the highway and taken her friend to what she thought was a romantic 
locale – a hill at the top of a deserted fire road – and had tried to 
make out with her. To Rose’s horror, Mattie had recoiled from Rose, had 
been unable to look her best friend in the eye, had cried all the way 
home. She’d stayed in her mom’s trailer for two days after that. Rose was 
beginning to think she’d killed off the eleven-year friendship when 
Mattie finally came over and they reconciled. Since then, Rose had 
accepted that Mattie was straight. At least, she reflected, they wouldn’t 
be fighting over some good-looking boy or girl. 



“Oh, I can’t drink that,” Kyle protested. When Rose said they were going 
to have something to drink, he’d hoped for beer, which usually made him a 
little drowsy but at least was ice cold and tasted good.



“You mean you can’t even drink like a girl?” Rose teased him gently. “Yes 
you can…and you will. She set the bottles down on her desk, opened a 
drawer, took out three small plastic shot glasses (souvenirs of Tom and 
Joan’s trip to Las Vegas) and three large red plastic cups, and began to 
fill them. 



“Well, I-“



“Come on. I taught Mattie Lee here how to drink-“



“-and I only ended up puking my guts out the first few times,” Mattie 
clapped her hands and flopped backwards onto the bed with laughter.



“-and I’m gonna teach you.” Rose gave him a brief run-down about knocking 
back the whiskey and swallowing it as quickly as possible, and then 
washing the taste out of your mouth and throat with the malt liquor. 
“That’s why they call it a chaser.”



“So,” Rose asked when everyone had their shot glass and cup, “what should 
we drink to?”



“Friendship?” Kyle suggested.



“Too dull,” Rose vetoed the idea. She proposed, “getting laid.” Kyle’s 
eyes widened; the girls he’d known, whether religious or not, usually 
didn’t start conversations about sex. Later, Mattie would explain to him 
about Rose.



“How about to your car,” Mattie said, and then began to grin nastily, 
“may it rest in peace.” 



“Fuck you,” Rose said good-naturedly.



“All right,” Mattie tried again. “I think…I think we should drink to 
Kyle. He helped us when he didn’t have to, even though he knew he was 
getting in trouble. And he’s our guest.” She paused. “And our new 
friend.”



“I’ll drink to that,” Rose sounded more serious.



Kyle turned beet-red once more. “Thank you.”



Kyle did as Rose had told him, downing the whiskey and following it right 
up with the malt liquor. He grimaced almost comically and stared at the 
shot glass with tearing eyes.



Mattie applauded him. “You did it, honey!” And then she leaned over, put 
her mouth to his cheek, and kissed him for the very first time.



Rose – curious to see what Kyle would be like when he was really drunk – 
suggested they play a drinking game that she and Mattie had invented last 
year. She explained that they’d come up with it while they were 
struggling, in their math class, to understand the idea of prime numbers. 



“You know,” Mattie interrupted her, “like one, three, five, seven, 
eleven-“



“You forgot two, stupid,” cracked Rose.



Kyle, still grateful for the evening of friendship and more and more 
thrilled to be around Mattie Lee, was much nicer. “Yeah, sure.”



“Okay. We take turns counting. One, two, three, four five. All the 
numbers, whether they’re prime or not. I start with one, Mattie does two, 
you get three. Then we go back to me, and I do four, she does five, and 
so on. Whenever someone comes to a prime number, you don’t say the 
number. You say “prime” instead. If you forget, you have to drink a shot 
of whiskey.”



“I can wash it down with the beer, right?”



“That ain’t beer. It’s malt liquor. But yeah. Now enough talk. Let’s go!”



Kyle, it turned out, was very good at math. He knew the first twenty or 
so prime numbers by heart and he could reason out the others. After 
twenty minutes, Mattie and Rose were reeling, having put away six shots 
of whiskey between them. Kyle, who’d had only one (after an intentional 
miss that didn’t fool the girls at all), asked if he could have some more 
of the malt liquor anyway.



“You believe this guy?” Rose ran her words together. “I sure don’t. He’d 
rather think about…prime numbers than get drunk. Anything not to drink.”



“You did fine for your first time,” Mattie told him. “Sometimes we play 
this for money. If we ever do, I want you on our team.” She winked at 
Kyle.



“You’re so sweet.”



“That reminds me,” Rose snapped her fingers, “I’m gonna get me some Old 
Traveler.” Rose got up unsteadily from her chair.



“No you’re not.” Mattie placed her hands on Rose’s shoulders and gently 
eased her back into the chair. Old Traveler was another locally-produced 
alcoholic drink, a brightly-colored, almost viscous brew of sickly sweet 
fruit-flavored soda (it came in grape, strawberry, and apricot flavors, 
all of which tasted pretty much alike), with some kind of liqueur mixed 
in. It went for three dollars a bottle at Duke’s Liquor. Bums drank it, 
along with the kind of folks who were willing to drink things like 
aftershave or distilled shoe polish to get a buzz on. Rose loved the 
stuff. To Mattie, it tasted like spiked pancake syrup. “Honey, please. 
You’ll be puking all night if you put that on top of the whiskey. Don’t 
you remember last time?”



“I was too drunk to remember!” Rose began to laugh at her own joke.



“Okay, Rose, I think it’s time for us all to go to bed,” Mattie 
suggested. “Kyle, can you help me?”



The two of them walked Rose, who was still laughing, over to her bed. 
Kyle untied and unlaced her Doc Martens and pulled them off; and then, 
without being asked, he turned his back to Rose and looked quietly out 
her small window as Mattie took her jacket and pants off. He heard Mattie 
whisper something to Rose and then laugh gently herself.



“Alright, I’m decent again,” Rose said, a little too loudly, after Mattie 
had gotten her underneath the covers.



“Kyle, I’m goin’ home now.” It was nearly eleven o’clock, an hour past 
Mattie’s bedtime. “You’re gonna be okay on the couch?”



“It looks fine, thanks. But where do you live? I’ll walk you there.”



“That’s so sweet. I live with my mom, just next door. But if you want to 
come along-“



“Let’s go.” Kyle leaned over Rose. “Rose, I’m gonna walk Mattie Lee home. 
I’ll be back in about five minutes.” Rose, by now almost asleep, grunted 
something about turning out the light. Mattie got the light on her 
nightstand and Kyle turned off the switch by her door. They walked 
through the empty living room – Tom and Joan had long since gone to bed – 
out the door, and soon they were advancing on Mattie’s own trailer.



Mattie cautioned Kyle to drink plenty of water before going to sleep. 
“You’ll hafta get up and pee a half-dozen times,” she said, “but at least 
you won’t have a hangover. And since this was your first time getting 
drunk, you’ll have an awful hangover if you don’t do it.” 



By then they were at the foot of the wooden steps leading up to her front 
door.



“This is me.” She smiled at him.



“I just wanted to say, thank you again.”



Mattie looked up at him. “You’re so very sweet, aren’t you? We should be 
thanking you. You really helped us this evening.”



“Well, I had a great time. Your friend Rose is…” he tried to find the 
right for her. “She’s a real character, isn’t she?”



“Yeah, she is. She’s been my best friend, all my life. I could tell you 
some stories about her.”



“I want to hear them. But I also want to hear more about you. Will I-“ 
Kyle paused, once again unable to speak. “Will we…see more of each 
other?”



Her eyes lit up. “Of course we will. We’re neighbors, after all. And do 
you go to McKinley?”



“Yeah. Junior year.”



“Me too. Well, then we’ll see each other tomorrow. You can have lunch 
with us.” Mattie looked at her watch. “I’m sorry but I-I have to go now. 
My mom-“



“I understand. Good-night, Mattie Lee.” She drew closer to him and kissed 
him again. Then she stepped back and turned her cheek to him.”



Kyle was uncertain. “It’s okay?”



“Sure!”



So Kyle kissed Mattie Lee for the first time. And Mattie went to her 
small bedroom, Kyle went back to the couch in the Sullivans’ living room, 
and they dreamed of one another as they slept.



III.

Kyle woke up the next morning to a rhythmic metal clinking noise. For a 
moment, he was confused at finding himself on a strange couch, covered by 
a blanket he’d never seen before, and then he remembered what had 
happened last night. The light coming in from the thin curtains was gray 
and a clock over the TV said 6:35 in bright red letters. At first he 
thought the sound was the ticking of the clock and then he remembered 
that digital clocks don’t tick. Quietly, so as not to wake anyone, he 
slipped on his pants and T-shirt and began exploring for the source of 
the noise. It got louder as he neared Rose’s room. Her bedroom door was 
open by only a crack but she must have been able to see him because she 
told him, in very low tones, to come in.



“Morning,” he said.



“Hey there!” Rose, wearing an olive-green tank top and boxer shorts and 
white sneakers, was lying on a small, padded bench about a foot off the 
floor of her room, a large metal dumbbell in each hand. The number 50 was 
stenciled on the outside of one of the weights. Slowly and deliberately, 
she stretched her muscular arms – which looked far stronger than Kyle’s –
all the way out to the sides, and then carefully pulled them back up, 
stopping only the two dumbbells clinked together above her head.



“That’s impressive.”



“Almost done.” Rose counted out seven more repetitions, counting up from 
“forty-four” under her breath. When she reached “fifty,” she lowered the 
weights back down to her sides and carefully set them down on the floor.



“I’m gonna do some sit-ups now. You wanna hold my feet?”



Kyle did so as she did fifty sit-ups, grunting out a number each time her 
head touched her knees. He briefly wondered if Mattie Lee was as strong 
and athletic as Rose; and then decided she probably wasn’t. Aside from 
being slightly shorter and thinner than Rose, Mattie was far more gentle.



After doing three more exercises that probably would have put Kyle in the 
hospital – fifty chin-ups with a metal bar in one corner of her room; 
curling a barbell fifty times (the number on its side read 100); and 
fifty painful-looking pushups on her knuckles (she lost count around 29 
and he helped her count off the rest) she flipped over on her back and 
rolled to her feet. “That’s that.”



Kyle was still marveling at her. “That’s more exercise than I got last 
year.”



“Thanks. I’ve been doing that every morning since I was thirteen. I 
started with twenty reps with ten-pound weights. I tried to do one lousy 
chin-up and I practically ripped my arms off. All it takes is 
repetition.”



“Are you gonna join the Army?”



“Yup. As soon as they let me out of high school. I want Mattie Lee to 
come with me, but she’s too much smarter than I am. They’d make me a 
Private in the Infantry and make her a Second Lieutenant in 
Intelligence.”



“She is smart. I can tell.”



“So are you,” Rose nodded. “And you know what? I think that’s what she’s 
looking for. Anyway, I’ve gotta do some cooling-off exercises. Why don’t 
you take the first shower? My folks won’t be up for another fifteen 
minutes at most.”



Kyle quickly showered, using as little hot water as he could, and 
dressed, as the Sullivans began to emerge from their rooms. Joan asked 
him to stay for breakfast. He gently turned her down. “I should get back 
– try to get back, that is – to my own place. I can’t take anything more 
from you.” But Joan insisted. Kyle asked if he could first call his mom 
and tell her he was all right and would be returning that afternoon. But 
instead of his mom, he got Brian, who hung up the phone as soon as he 
recognized Kyle’s voice. 



“Bad news?” Joan was standing beside him.



“I couldn’t – he hung up on me.” She put her arm around his shoulders.



Kyle joined the family at the kitchen table for a huge meal consisting of 
grits, homemade hash browns, and a plate of miniature sausages. There, 
Kyle met Rose’s brother Mike, a big young man with a red beard who shared 
an apartment with a friend on the outskirts of town. Mike grinned and 
gave him a bone-crushing handshake when Tom related the story of Rose’s 
accident and how Kyle had backed them up and gotten barred from his own 
home for the night. Rose was the last to join them, and Kyle noticed that 
the sides and back of her head had been shaved smooth and that that there 
were streaks of shaving cream on the towel around her neck. 



“Oh, honey,” Joan said in a pained voice. “You shaved your head again. 
You promised me you’d grow it back.”



“What’re you talking about?” Rose asked innocently, running her hands 
through the fringe of carrot-colored hair atop her head. “I have hair.”



“You know what I mean,” her mother continued, as Kyle sat quietly and 
pretended not to hear the argument. “That’s a skinhead haircut. People 
see you, and they think-“



“Mama, I’m not a skinhead. Everybody knows that. I wear my hair this way 
for the same reason Mattie Lee does.”



“And you know what?” Tom Sullivan broke in. “Mattie Lee says almost the 
exact same thing: She wears it that way because you do.”



“Honey, please stop pretending you’re a man.” Joan looked up at Kyle and 
swallowed, maybe wondering how much he knew already. “I mean, stop 
pretending you’re in the Army already. It’s just a year and a half away.”



To change the subject, Tom turned to Kyle, explained that most people in 
town had served in the Army at one time or another; and that Rose and a 
lot of her classmates would be going in right after graduation. “Do you 
have anyone in your family in the service?”



Kyle’s eyes brightened. “My dad – my real dad, that is – was in the 
Marine Corps, in the First Marine Division. He was in Desert Storm.”



“I was there too,” Tom nodded, “but in the Army. You must be proud of 
him, son.”



“I am.”



“Where is he now?”



Kyle looked down at his plate. “He died, two years ago. Lung cancer.”



“I’m sorry, honey,” Joan patted his hand. “You must miss him.”



“Believe me, I do. I still think about him all the time. It was even 
harder on my mom.”



“You know,” Tom continued, “Jim Allen – Mattie Lee’s father - won the 
Distinguished Service Cross in Operation Desert Storm. He’s an honest-to-
God war hero. They should have given him a Medal of Honor.”



“That’s great! I’d like to meet him one day.”



A silence fell over the table. “It was awarded…after he died,” explained 
Tom. “He saved the lives of thirty-two men in his unit by catching a 
grenade that’d fallen into their barracks. Can you imagine doing 
something like that? And then he ran outside with it – I guess he was 
going to pitch it – but it went off in his hands.”



“I’m just sorry Mattie Lee lost such a brave father.”



“Oh, he was a great guy,” Tom went on. “I grew up with him. And my dad 
knew his dad. The Sullivans and the Allens have always been friends.”



“You’ve all been very good to me. So has Mattie Lee. I just wish my 
stepdad was trying to be friendlier.”



“That’s not your fault,” Tom assured him. “You guys are going to be here 
for a while, right?”



“Far as I know. He’s gonna be working in the courthouse. In the Marshal 
service.”



“So, is he really a cop or not?” Rose was confused; after a run-in with 
Brian a few weeks ago, Tom had been raving about him impersonating a 
police officer when he was only a “God-damn night watchman.”



Kyle laughed. “Uh…did he tell you he was?”



“Yes,” Mattie, Rose and Tom said at the same time.



“Well, don’t listen to him. He’s a security guard and he’s a process 
server. That’s all.”



“What’s that last thing?” asked Rose.



“He comes to your house and gives you official papers from the court. 
Like a summons to appear in court.



“He sometimes works with courts or police departments when they need some 
extra men to help them. Like if the Sheriffs here don’t want to spend 
their time going from door to door serving papers, they’ll hire someone 
like him. But he’s no cop.”



“Some nerve,” said Joan. “You know, that man came over here just a couple 
weeks ago, saying he could arrest my daughter and Mattie Lee for laughing 
too loud. For laughing. You believe that?”



“I can,” he said regretfully. “He shouldn’t do that. I’m just afraid 
folks are going to hold it against my mom and me.”



“Over time, the folks here will find out who you. We can help tell ‘em. 
And I’m sure they’ll like you.”



“We sure do,” Rose finished for her.



By then, Kyle had finished everything on his plate. He was just starting 
to rise, to take it over to the sink, when Joan said, “you’re not eating 
enough.” At first, Kyle thought she was joking. In trying to keep pace 
with Rose and her family, he’d eaten about twice as much food as he 
normally had for breakfast. “You’re so skinny,” she continued. “Even 
Mattie Lee eats more than that.”



“Mattie Lee is a pig,” Rose explained to Kyle. “It just doesn’t show. 
She’s got this condition in her – her…thorax?”



“Thyroid, honey,” corrected Joan.



“Thyroid condition, right. She can eat almost anything she wants – fried 
chicken, ribs, donuts, beer, you name it – and not get heavy.”



“I think she’s very pretty-“ Kyle said before he caught himself.



Joan, Tom and Rose and Mike gave each other knowing glances. “I think he 
likes Mattie Lee,” said Joan in a singsong voice. “She’s a lovely girl. A 
little shy, though – don’t you go too fast with her or she’ll run away – 
and her mother’s kind of grumpy. But if you’re nice and quiet and maybe 
like to read…“ Joan trailed off.



“That’s me.” He smiled.



“You’ll see her again this morning,” said Rose. “We’re gonna take my car 
– that is, what your stepdaddy left of my car – to school. She’s coming 
with us.”



“Is it safe to drive?” Mike asked her. 



“Sure. I think the driver’s door is smashed, that’s all. It has a little 
trouble opening.”



“I’ll fix it when you get home,” offered Mike. “Get those dents out.”



Rose smiled at Tom and Kyle. They’d seen the door, which looked like 
crumpled aluminum foil. Mike hadn’t. “No. Probably needs a new door.”



“At least the other guy’s insurance will pay for it,” said Tom, “because 
the accident report says it was his fault.”





Mattie walked through the front door a few minutes after breakfast. Like 
Rose, she was clad in a black T-shirt (sleeves this time), jeans, and 
heavy black motorcycle boots. Also like Rose, she’d “renewed” her haircut 
by shaving the sides and back smooth and buzzing the dark red hair on top 
(Kyle couldn’t imagine this gentle girl shaving about three-quarters of 
her own head, but there she was.) Yet again to Kyle’s surprise, she 
greeted Kyle with another hug and kiss.



“Did you sleep well?” she asked. “Or were you thinkin’ about me all 
night?”



Kyle was glad, in a way, that Mattie was taking the initiative; he was 
pretty shy around girls. “Both. I slept last night, but I was dreaming 
about you.” Rose, still seated at the breakfast table, whistled. Mattie 
dug into her backpack – black, like the rest of her outfit – dug out a 
pen and what looked like a green flyer and began scribbling something as 
she wandered into the kitchen area. 



Tom got up and announced he had to go to work. Kyle asked him what he 
did. “Rail freight inspector. There’s a junction in Riverside – that’s 
the next town, about fifteen miles from here. A bunch of small, private 
rail lines. Now Rose, go on to school so you can become a low-paid rail 
inspector just like your daddy.”



Kyle held the door open for Rose and Mattie. “A real gentleman,” Joan 
enthused. As Mattie headed past him, she slipped something into his 
pocket. Curious, he took it out as he followed the girls towards Rose’s 
bashed Camaro. It was the green flyer, folded twice over. Written on the 
outside were the words READ WHEN U R ALONE. He looked around. The door 
had closed behind him and Mattie and Rose were several feet ahead. He 
opened the note. Above a smiley face were the words I DREAMED ABOUT YOU, 
TOO, followed by her number. 


IV.
IV.

Most of McKinley High had been built as a WPA project in the 1930’s. It 
was named after Bennett McKinley, the town’s favorite son. According to a 
plaque in the entryway of the main building, McKinley was a Civil War 
hero (Confederate, of course!) who had organized the townsfolk to defend 
themselves against attacks by the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan in the 
1870’s. Kyle had heard of him only once before, in passing, during a 
lecture at his old school about the history of mid-Missouri. He had been 
depicted as a violent, fanatical brigand who had led his rag-tag 
followers on a rampage through the surrounding towns, burning and looting 
churches, old houses, and farms. One man’s fool, he supposed, was another 
man’s hero.



Like Mattie and Rose, Kyle was a junior, but he had no morning classes 
with either of them. Yet the two of them – especially Mattie – were on 
his mind all through English, Chemistry and gym. He was grateful to both 
of them for welcoming him and for helping him out, keeping him from being 
hurt last night. Moving into the trailer in little Rubidoux had been the 
latest step down for his family. They’d lost their house soon after his 
father had died. After his mom remarried, he had gone with her to live 
with Brian in Brian’s small apartment. And then Brian had lost his job, 
for just the kind of bullying behavior he’d shown toward Mattie and the 
Sullivans last night. The criminal charges against Brian had been 
dropped, but he’d found himself blacklisted from practically every 
security firm in Jefferson City. Even after a month of searching, the 
only job he’d been able to get was in this tough, working-poor town where 
seemingly all the families had known one another for generations and 
where Kyle, Loretta and Brian were outsiders. It seemed like everything 
about them – not just Brian’s misbehavior but the “big” words Kyle used, 
the way he dressed, even their Protestant backgrounds – set them apart. 
At best, their neighbors were polite but not friendly. At worst, they 
were out-and-out hostile (Kyle, a sensitive boy, still felt bad about 
something that had happened a few weeks back as he walked down Pyrite 
Street, Rubidoux’s main drag. A fat, middle-aged man with a crew cut, a 
loud Hawaiian shirt, and horn-rimmed glasses (to Kyle he looked like 
Billy Carter) had loudly called out to him. The man was seated behind the 
wheel of an old Chevy parked at the curb about a half-block up from where 
Kyle was. He kept gesturing with his left hand – a thick cigar held 
between his second and third fingers – and calling to Kyle in his thick 
country accent, to come closer “so’s we don’t hafta holler.” When Kyle 
finally reached the driver’s window, the fat man had gestured a final 
time for Kyle to lean closer to him, grabbed a handful of his shirt, 
blown a stream of cigar smoke in his face, and then said, “your daddy can 
kiss my ass.” Then the man had let go, roared with laughter at Kyle’s 
misfortune and taken off in his car before Kyle could say or do anything 
in response. Kyle was first angry, then sad, then frightened – the man 
had a build like Brian’s, only he was bigger and could probably break 
Kyle in two if he really had it in for him. Later, relaying the incident 
to Brian and his mother, he found out that the man was one of the park’s 
many residents who Brian had threatened.) Mattie and Rose, along with 
Rose’s parents, were the first people in town to give him a chance, to 
treat him like he was one of them.



But Mattie was not only nice to him like Rose and the others, she 
fascinated him. She was exotic, with her black clothes and tattoos and 
nearly-shaved head (perhaps too exotic; a month ago, if he’d seen 
someone, even a girl, dressed like that that coming towards him at night, 
he would have crossed the street to get away). But there seemed to be 
something bright and thoughtful and gentle beneath that exterior. Mattie 
and Rose had both gotten him drunk last night; but it was Mattie who 
tried to make sure he wouldn’t be hung over the next morning. And she was 
clearly interested in him.



So he was very happen when she and Rose both ambushed him right after the 
lunch bell, as he walked out of the boys’ locker room, coming up behind 
him and knocking the cap off his head (a souvenir hat extolling his 
hometown of Jefferson City).



“First thing is,” Mattie said, “we’ve gotta get you a new hat. No one 
here likes Jefferson City.” 



“Get…let’s see…one of the Cavemen hats from the student store,” Rose 
agreed. 



“Just don’t wear it anyplace outside of town,” laughed Mattie. “They’ll 
kill you.” The Cavemen were McKinley High’s football team, beloved by the 
town’s residents and despised by almost everyone else in Southeastern 
Missouri. The name, he later found out, went back to 1969. Before that, 
they had been the Bears. But because of their reputation for extremely 
bad behavior both on and off field – and the similar reputation of their 
fans, who invariably showed up for the games drunk and stoned and 
practically rioted if the referee made a call they didn’t like, the 
sports columnist for a Salem paper had likened them to a bunch of cavemen 
rampaging from town to town. It was a tribute either to the good humor, 
or the bad judgment, of the town and the McKinley student body that they 
had proudly accepted the name. 



“Will do,” he said. “Are you hungry?”



“Starving,” Rose said. “Let’s go to the cafeteria – and get you a few 
more friends.”



Kyle had been to the school’s large, humid cafeteria only a few times. 
For one thing, the food was no good – it was a sort of ghastly parody of 
Southern home cooking with instant grits for breakfast and overcooked 
chicken and fish and mushy greens. But more important to Kyle, he could 
find no one to sit or talk with him; even if he hadn’t been linked to 
Brian, most of the students sat together in their own little closed 
cliques. Mattie and Rose, like Kyle, weren’t terribly popular. They 
marched to their own drummer; and Rose, while an excellent athlete and 
the star of the school’s ROTC chapter, made most of the other girls 
nervous. But they had several friends scattered throughout the student 
body. Not surprisingly, most of their friends were outsiders, or at least 
stand-outs.



There was Nicholas Quinn, the brightest kid in school, one of the few 
besides Mattie Lee who liked to read and one of the few people in town 
who didn’t give a damn about sports. Chris Duke and Jane Duffy, the 
school’s only two Goths and the only ones whose taste in clothes 
resembled Mattie’s and Rose’s. Jill McCain, a good-looking and very well-
endowed blonde girl who Mattie later said was Rose’s girlfriend. Sonny 
Callahan, who spent weekends with his dad and granddad digging for Civil 
War relics and who was obsessed with the details of the War Between the 
States. Judah Benjamin (“Ben”) White, son of the City Engineer and a 
member of the town’s only Jewish family (“very good,” he nodded, 
pleasantly surprised, when Kyle asked him if he was any relation to Judah 
Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Secretary of State.) Jamie O’Neill, a  big, 
jovial guy who had played for the Cavemen until he’d lost half his right 
leg in a boating accident in the Lake of the Ozarks last Spring. Craig 
Trotter, one of two black students at McKinley. And they also introduced 
him to a senior who was not exactly their friend; a handsome, unusually 
clean-cut, charismatic boy named Val Starkey who showered all three them 
with flattery. Kyle figured him for the student body president. As they 
were leaving, Val told Mattie to see him at her convenience. As he spoke, 
he gently tapped the front pocket of his shorts. (Mattie later explained 
that Val was a drug dealer whose brother worked in a pharmacy and who 
could get you most anything you wanted. Kyle, somewhat haltingly, told 
Mattie he didn’t use drugs; Rose clapped him on the back and said they’d 
have to go to work on him.) 



The girls also introduced Kyle to some of his neighbors in the trailer 
park. A few of them knew he was the stepson of the hated Brian, and 
seemed uncomfortable with him; Mattie melted them by recounting how Kyle 
had stood up to Brian the night before. One of them, Eric Morrow, beamed 
and clasped his hand. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”



Over lunch – they sat at a table with Ben and Jamie, who were engrossed 
in a discussion of baseball – Mattie suggested taking Kyle on one of 
their midnight rides that evening. “Forget it,” Rose shook her head. “I 
have to drop the car off at the shop.” She pointed an accusing finger at 
Kyle, tried to look angry but didn’t quite make it. “What your stepdad 
left of my car, that is.”



“But it still runs pretty good, doesn’t it?” Mattie pressed.



“The door don’t open right. I don’t want it falling off halfway to the 
Salem Plateau.”



Kyle was looking back and forth between them. “What’re you talking 
about?” 



Mattie explained it to him. “Oh, it’s just this little thing we do to 
keep ourselves sane, keep from being bored. There’s this highway – 
Highway 44 – that nobody drives on at night. What we do is get tanked up 
– Rosie and me, that is, not the car – and we take us a little drive.”



“At a hundred and twenty miles an hour,” Rose added. “Like I said, we 
can’t do it today, but when my car’s ready, what do you think? Want to 
come with us?”



“I think…” Kyle searched for the right words, just as he had when Mattie 
he told Mattie he didn’t use drugs. “I think I want to go for a ride with 
two beautiful girls, that’s for sure-”



“Good answer!” Mattie hugged him.



“But that kind of ride sound awful dangerous,” he finished.



“No, it’s not like that,” said Rose. “Highway 44 is completely straight. 
It’s completely flat. If there’s another car – which there won’t be – you 
can see it five miles away. And there ain’t nothing but corn fields on 
either side of the road. Even if we went off the road, we’d be just 
fine.”



Mattie, in the end, had the most persuasive argument. “This is one of the 
things we do, Rosie and me. If you want to understand us, you should come 
with us.”



Kyle thought again of the potential danger – a drunk driver and two drunk 
passengers going down a state highway at top speed. And then he thought 
of being with Mattie Lee – understanding her, like she said; sharing the 
things that made her happy. That settled it. “I’m in.”



“Kyle Denton,” Rose said solemnly, “welcome to the club.” She gave him a 
karate chop on his right shoulder, like a queen knighting a hero with her 
sword.



V.

Kyle couldn’t have gone out that evening anyway. As soon as he returned 
to his trailer (after dropping Mattie Lee off at hers with a gentle 
kiss), he learned that he was grounded. Brian told him to go in his room 
until he was called for. Through his door, he could hear Brian shouting 
and Loretta crying. After listening for nearly a half-hour, he put his 
hands over his ears, closed his eyes and thought of Mattie Lee. 



Hours later, around eleven o’clock, Brian ordered him into the living 
room. Loretta was gone; the bedroom door was closed and Kyle guessed she 
was in there. He started to ask about his mother, about why she was 
crying. Brian ignored him and told him to explain why he’d backed up the 
Sullivans in the dispute last night. 



“Those were the police,” Kyle began. “They were taking down statements. I 
had to tell them the truth. You of all people should know that.”



“What I know is that I’m entitled to your loyalty, young man,” Brian 
countered. “You choose your family over three strangers.” He paused. “I 
saw you walking with one of them – that little girl. Melanie?”



“Mattie Lee, yeah.” 



Brian chuckled. “That’s a silly name.”



“She says it’s short for ‘Magdalene.’”



“They’re Catholic? Shanty Irish, like the rest of the people in this 
town?”



“Please don’t talk about her that way.” Kyle felt he had to come to 
Mattie’s defense. “Mattie’s very nice. She-she likes to read. She’s 
smart.”



Brian shook his head. “She’s white trash. A drunk and a pillbilly. So’s 
her friend Rose, the one who hit me last night. And in case you don’t 
know it, Rose is also a dyke. Ralph Chesney told me.” Chesney was the 
park’s manager, an old busybody who liked to spy on the other residents. 
Probably Mattie is too.”



Kyle wasn’t surprised at what Brian said about Rose. Nor was he surprised 
that Brian would bring it up. “Rose, maybe, but Mattie’s not a – she’s 
not gay.”



“And how would you know?” Brian raised his eyebrows.



“Do not talk about Mattie Lee that way,” Kyle’s voice rose a little this 
time, though realizing there was nothing he could do if his stepfather
wanted to continue insulting her.


Brian took a step toward Kyle, just as he had towards Rose last night, 
and shoved him with the palms of his hands, just as he had pushed Rose. 
Not very hard, but enough to make Kyle stumble backwards onto the couch. 
“First off, don’t you tell me what to say in my own house, mister. I’m 
sure Mattie Lee acts just like all the other girls around here. I knew 
people like that when I was your age. I stayed away from them. They’ll 
fuck anyone – even someone like you.” Kyle was getting angrier as he 
realized what Brian was trying to do – trying to make Mattie look dirty 
to him, tear her down for him, make him feel embarrassed to be her 
friend. He wondered if he would be justified in simply walking out. 



“And she owes you, she and her friend Rose. After all, you helped them 
get back at me for daring to tell them to keep their voices and their 
music down the other night!” Brian’s voice, loud to begin with, was 
rising too.



“Do you know why…” Kyle began, dismayed to hear his own voice sound so 
shaky. Part of him couldn’t believe that he was arguing back, trying to 
put Brian on the defensive. He swallowed and tried again. “Do you know 
why the other people here don’t like us? Why the other women won’t talk 
to Mom? Or why that man grabbed me and blew smoke in my face?” To his 
great embarrassment, he had begun to cry, not just out of sadness but out 
of frustration.



“I don’t care.”



“It’s because of you. You threatened them. You threatened…their parents 
and their kids.” He was sniffling and gasping for breath at the end of 
each sentence. “You told them you were cop. You lied to them. And they 
saw you…knock…Rose…down. They saw you…push a girl.”



Brian stood up. Kyle looked at his face, which was flooded red, and 
wondered for a moment if Brian was about do something a lot more serious 
than just pushing him. Instead, he said, “you go to your room.”



“No.”  



“What?”



“It’s your room. They all are.” Kyle was too outraged to care how his 
stepfather would respond. But he probably should have cared.


VI.


Half an hour later, Mattie was relaxing with Rose in her room, talking 
about the future. Mattie’s mother Sue was out that evening, working the 
evening shift – her second that day - at the Lux Electronics plant on 
Hewes Avenue. Rubidoux had been converted from agriculture to light 
industry during the Second World War, making bullets and artillery shells 
in the newly-built munitions factory. The town fathers hailed it as a new 
chapter in the “military tradition” of a town so many of whose sons had 
fought and died in the armed forces, starting with the Civil War. But for 
the first time in the history of the town, women had gone to work; a 
poster on the factory wall (which now hung in the U.S. Army Recruiter’s 
office) showed a woman, dressed for factory work, reaching across space 
and time to hand a giant artillery shell to a soldier, presumably her own 
husband, on the front. (Rose had excitedly pointed out the poster on the 
first of many times she’d dragged Mattie Lee with her into the 
recruiter’s; Mattie, whose father had died with a live grenade in his 
hands, could not look at it.) With the start of the Cold War, the war the 
factory had been retooled to make parts of aircraft guidance systems used 
in Korea and Vietnam. Now it made integrated circuit boards. Sue had been 
working at the plant when she married Jim; she’d gone back to work there 
when her husband’s reserve unit was called up and sent to Saudi Arabia 
for Desert Shield. And she’d stayed there, supporting herself and Mattie, 
ever since Jim Allen was killed in Iraq during Desert Storm. And that was 
the history of the town – everything and everyone connected in some way 
to fighting.



Mattie herself didn’t want to work at the plant. For one thing, she saw 
what it had done to her mother over the years. Sue’s hands were scarred 
and burned from various accidents with soldering equipment; and she had a 
bad back from leaning over her work bench for hours on end, day after 
day. For another, the work was boring; when Mattie was much younger, Sue 
had taken her to the plant a couple of times to show her what her mama 
did (“now try it yourself, honey – put them gloves on first, then the 
goggles – there you go!”) and Mattie always lost interest after touching 
up her first two or three circuit boards. And so often, Sue would come 
home exhausted and grumpy. She took pride in being one of the best 
workers Lux Electronics had, but Mattie knew her mom’s bosses exploited 
her for it. She often had to go back to work evenings and sometimes even 
weekends, usually to correct mistakes other workers had made or to finish 
orders the others hadn’t been able to complete. No, Mattie couldn’t 
imagine herself doing that for forty years. 



The Army – which would soon be Rose’s means of escape from the town – was 
probably out as well. Mattie and Rose badly wanted to stay together with 
Rose. When they were younger, they used to talk all the time about 
joining the Army together. But Mattie now realized she would make a bad 
recruit and a worse soldier. Mattie’s best friend had outpaced her in 
physical activity years earlier. Rose loved team sports and had led 
McKinley High’s girls’ volleyball team to victory in several games, But 
Mattie could only cheer her friend on from the bleachers. Mattie herself 
was in reasonably good shape – she was a natural swimmer and her dad had 
taught her to love fishing – but these were her hobbies, not her way of 
life. Generally, she preferred her mind to her body. She loved to read 
books and write little stories and draw one-page comic strips for Rose or 
her other friends at school – but none of those things made a good 
soldier. 



She didn’t think much about college either. It seemed a world away; 
almost no one in town in town, even the smarter kids, went there. The few 
people she’d seen in town with college degrees seemed to her like hostile 
aliens. They were “imports” from St. Louis or Jefferson City or someplace 
far beyond. They usually spoke with Yankee accents (Mattie always got a 
bit confused when she heard the phrase, “Southern accent”; after all, 
real Southerners like her talked normally; it was the Yankees who had 
that curiously flat, nasal thing to their speech). They had strange, 
expensive clothes and stranger manners, always impatient. They could 
usually be found behind a desk or coming out of the city’s tiny office 
buildings, doing no physical work (that part actually didn’t seem so bad 
to Mattie). Worst of all, they were usually brought to Rubidoux to boss 
around Mattie or her friends in some way: Mattie’s principal, the owner 
of Sue’s factory, the local judge, the city attorney. Mattie didn’t like 
them and didn’t want to become one of them.



No, as Mattie was now telling Rose, she would marry a man before too long 
(she told her friend, in detail, how sweet everything would be if she 
married Kyle); and she would have no work other than taking care of her 
husband and their two beautiful little children (one boy, one girl). In 
the evenings, she would have time to read and to write and illustrate her 
short stories. Rose would eventually come back from the Army; she and 
Mattie would continue to hang out together in their spare time; and on 
weekends they would all go fishing together in the Lake of the Ozarks.



“In other words, Mattie Lee,” Rose said as she took a swig of Old 
Traveler, “you want us to stay here forever.”



Mattie, who felt a little queasy even looking at the bright pink cheap 
wine her friend was drinking, opened her second can of ice cold beer. “If 
it’s not broke, Rosie, why fix it?”



“’Cause there’s nothing to do here except get hot and hang out, and 
there’s the world out there. Remember that time we were ten and my folks 
took us to St. Louis and we saw part of that Jazz Parade?”



“Jazz Festival,” Mattie corrected her.



“Whatever. But I bet you didn’t even notice, because you were starin’ up 
at all the tall buildings you’d never seen before! This was you-“ Rose 
got up from her bed, a little unsteadily, craned her neck back as far as 
it would go, and walked along the floor beside the bed, goggling at her 
own ceiling while pointing straight up. “’Whoa! Look at that, Rosie! 
Please Mr. Sullivan, I wanna go up in the great big building!’” It was a 
fairly good imitation of Mattie’s accent and rhythm of speech, although 
Rose had deepened the voice to make her sound stupid. “Or you were just 
starin’ at the people.” Then Rose started pointing at objects all over 
her room, gawking in wonder every time she turned her head. “‘Hey, look 
at those guys, Rosie, I think they’re from Japan!’” Rose flopped back on 
her bed, laughing, holding her thumb over the lip of the bottle so it 
wouldn’t spill.



Mattie rolled her eyes. Her first trip to a big city hadn’t gone as bad 
as that, but it had been close. “Very funny.” 



“Everyone else on that street thought so; they were laughin’ at you. And 
they laughed even harder when they realized you weren’t kidding.”



“The point is, some people – most people, I think – see stuff like that 
every day. Skyscrapers, real highways-“



“-with real traffic-“



Rose was on a roll “-big movie theaters, football stadiums, people from 
all over the world, not just the same stupid faces again and again for 
the rest of their lives. I want to live in one of those places someday, 
Mattie Lee. You know where I hope I get stationed?”



“Where?”



“West Germany.” It was a private joke, or at least a private reference, 
among the two of them. Although Germany had been reunified seven years 
earlier, they had gotten so used to seeing the “two” Germanies, West and 
East, on maps when they were kids that their minds still made the 
division. “Do you know what the nightlife is like in Berlin? In Hamburg? 
The dance clubs’re open all night long, playing new techno and heavy 
metal and not just that God-damn country western stuff they have here. 
They got dirty magazines all over the place, not like here where they 
can’t sell ‘em. I hear you can even get a hooker and it’s legal.”



“A lot of good that does you, Rosie. They won’t have no gay hookers.”



“No…I hear they do! Cindy McCain says she knew this girl who-“



Mattie clapped her hands over her ears and began to hum. Rose got the 
hint and broke it off. “Okay, okay. Let’s say they do. Why go to a place 
like that? Or if you’re gonna go, why not go for a weekend or so. Why 
move so far away?”



“Far from what, Mattie Lee?” Rose, beginning to sound exasperated, looked 
out the small, open window, towards the lights of Rubidoux beyond the 
trailer park. Crickets sang in a soft warm breeze; a loud argument was in 
progress a few doors down; and somewhere in the distance, a burglar alarm 
went off and voices yelled. Rose shrugged, as though the people outside 
had just proved her point.



“Far from home.” Mattie said slowly. That was her own point.



“Because,” Rose explained patiently, “I want to know what it’s like to 
really live in a place like that. Learn to speak another language. Find 
out about the folks there – how they dress, what they drink, what they do 
for fun. How they get laid. Are they nice?”



“’Join the Army,’” Mattie recited an old parody of the recruiting 
slogans. “’See the world. Meet exotic people and kill them.’”



“Well…if they give me any shit, yeah,” Rose laughed. “But before I killed 
them, I’d learn something from them. What other people are like.”



“What’s wrong with your own people? I know, some guy’s yellin’ at his 
wife – it sounds like Donald Duke – and somebody just got ripped off. But 
they got a lot more of that in the big cities. No one…trusts each other 
in those cities. Or cares about each other. You get people like – I don’t 
know – Kyle’s stepdad. 



“Here it’s different. Except for Kyle, everyone we know – their families, 
I mean - lived here since the Civil War. People know each other here. 
They’re friends, like you and me. Or the way your dad and mine used to be 
friends. I think our grandfathers were, too.” She paused. “We all grew up 
together. And we want to stay together.”



“Mattie Lee,” Rose shook her head, “it’s been what – a hundred and fifty 
years? – since our families came here and I don’t think no one’s grown up 
yet.” 



“Rose? Mattie? Let me in.” Through the window they could hear Tom’s 
voice, coming from the front of the trailer. He sounded like he was 
trying to stay calm, trying to keep his temper in check, and not quite 
making it. 



“Hold on, Mr. Sullivan,” Mattie called through the window as she and Rose 
headed for the living room. Even though he could doubtless hear her, he 
began knocking on the front door and didn’t stop until they had opened 
the door. When the girls saw his face – he looked worried, sad and very 
angry at the same time – they both began talking at once. He shushed 
them, and then told them to step back inside and close the door.



“Are you all right, Dad?” Rose asked. Then she noticed what looked like 
dried blood on her father’s right hand. “You’re hurt!”



He shook his head. “That’s not my blood. It’s…Kyle’s. I found him near 
the North Gate.” That was the main entrance to the trailer park. “He 
was…injured. He said he fell off a ladder, but I think someone-“ he held 
out the palms of his hands. Mattie initially thought it was a signal for 
them to be calm and quiet. Then she remembered how Brian had used the 
same “gesture” to knock her best friend down last night. “-I think 
someone knocked him down. More than once, I’d say.”



Mattie felt as though she herself had been knocked down. “How bad?”



“He has a couple bruises on his face, maybe a scrape from when he hit the 
ground. That ain’t so bad…” he trailed off.



Mattie could tell Tom had more to say. “But…” she prodded him gently.



“But, his nose is broke. That’s where all the blood came from.”



“It was Brian,” Rose wasn’t asking a question. She spat out the name like 
it was a curse.



“Maybe,” Tom said, but he was nodding affirmatively. “But we don’t know 
that, because he won’t tell me very much.” 



Mattie, who’d never had to take care of any living thing besides a pet 
turtle, inexplicably found herself feeling protective, almost maternal, 
towards Kyle. She also wanted to cry. “Can I see him?”



“Sure. He’s at our place. Actually-” Tom smiled in spite of the situation 
“-he asked for you. Like three or four times.” Rose smiled too, and 
punched Mattie in the arm. Mattie herself could not smile; she was too 
much in shock. 


If Kyle was asking for her, that had to mean…



“Mattie Lee,” she told herself, “don’t you get carried away.” But it was 
already too late.





VII.



“Joan’s looking after him now,” Tom explained on their way to the 
Sullivans’ trailer. “First thing, she’s trying to stop the bleeding. Then 
we can figure out if it’s really broke.” He paused. “I wanted to just 
drive him to Urgent Care.” Tom was referring to a small medical clinic 
near the town center, small and dingy but open 24 hours. Rose’s brother 
Mike had landed there twice, the first time with a broken hand and the 
second time with a billiard ball stuck in his mouth.



“Kyle, look who’s here,” Tom called as he pushed open the door. Kyle was 
seated on the couch where he had slept last night. Mattie could not see 
his face; Joan, sitting by his side, was leaning over him, dabbing 
something into his face. An open first-aid kit, a bowl of ice, and a 
pyramid of blood-soaked tissues, sat on the glass tabletop in front of 
the couch.



Joan turned around and saw Mattie Lee. “She’s here now, honey,” she 
whispered to Kyle and then stepped out of the way.



“Kyle?” His face was not-so-badly bruised, as Tom had said, and there was 
a scrape on his right cheek. But she was unprepared for what had happened 
to his nose. Even though he was holding something large and white (Mattie 
assumed it was ice, wrapped maybe in a paper towel) up against it, she 
could see it was badly swollen, almost shapeless, and had gone a dark red 
(the contrast with Kyle’s very light complexion made Mattie think briefly 
of Bozo the Clown). And despite the compress held against his nose, she 
could see blood trickling slowly down his upper lip, over his mouth, and 
onto his chin. Mattie realized, to her shame, she was staring at him, 
almost in fear.



If Kyle had seen it, he wasn’t bothered. He waved at her. “Meh,” he said, 
“Meh-Lee.” Mattie realized he was trying to say her name, with a busted 
nose, blood on his lips, and a face probably half-frozen by the ice. He 
smiled, though, and Mattie felt there was no place she would rather be.



“I’m here, Kyle.” She crossed the room, knelt down in front of him, and 
took his free hand. He started to move the compress away from his nose, 
maybe so he could talk a little better. Joan put her hand over his and 
pressed it back against his face. “Keep up the pressure. That’s how we’ll 
stop the bleeding.” She turned to Mattie, who asked if there was anything 
she could do.



“Just…” Joan picked up a clean tissue from a small pile, folded it in 
two, then four, and put it in Mattie’s small hand. “Just wipe all that 
off his nose and mouth. Do it gently. Don’t touch his nose.”



“What happened?” Mattie asked for the second time that night, as she 
wiped the blood off his lips. 



“Fell,” Kyle said, his voice still muffled but more intelligible. 
“Ladder.” He winced. “Hurts...to talk.”



“Then you don’t have to talk, baby,” Mattie murmured softly as she wiped 
at his upper lip again and squeezed his hand. She didn’t notice the 
glances between Rose, Tom and Joan. If she had she would have seen them 
looking surprised, but not terribly so.



Rose came closer to them. “Was it Brian, Kyle? Was it Brian done this to 
you?” Her voice was rising. Brian shook his head no, causing Mattie to 
smear some of the blood across his cheeks, giving him a handlebar 
mustache of sorts. Rose, having been pushed by his stepfather last night 
– the first time an adult had ever laid a hand on her – doubted that he 
was telling the truth. Perhaps his “no” headshake meant “I won’t tell 
you.”



“You can tell us, honey,” said Joan. “If it was him, you should tell us, 
or one of these days he might just break your head open.” Kyle merely 
shook his head again, looked away from her, and back into Mattie’s eyes.



“If you don’t stop bleeding in five more minutes,” Tom warned, “we’re 
gonna take you to an emergency room. I don’t want you losing any more 
blood.”



“No…” Kyle said, again in that muffled, nasal voice. “I’m…okay.” He took 
the compress away from his nose – it looked even worse than Mattie had 
thought – and sniffed, perhaps in an effort to stop the blood or maybe to 
show Tom that his nose worked after all. But the sniff turned into a 
sneeze. He screamed – briefly, before cutting himself off – and fresh 
blood, more than Mattie could wipe away, poured out of his nose.



“That’s it.” Tom shook his head. “I’m in charge here. Joan, pack up that 
first aid kid. Then put some ice in the cooler.” She disappeared into the 
kitchen area. “Rosie, bring the car around.” He paused. “My car; I don’t 
want you driving yours.” He tossed her the keys. If Tom was expecting an 
argument from Rose, he didn’t get one; she simply caught the keys in 
midair, nodded, and hustled out the door. “Mattie Lee, make sure he keeps 
that thing against his nose. I don’t want him bleeding to death, not on 
my couch, anyway.”



From beyond the front door, Mattie and Kyle heard the sound of an engine 
turn over, run briefly, and then stop. It was followed by the sound of 
ice being scooped into a large cooler in the kitchen.



Rose came back in as Joan emerged from the kitchen holding an oblong, 
red-and-white cooler. “All set,” Rose confirmed.



“Okay.” Tom paused as he tried to think of what to do next. “Kyle, can 
you walk?”



“Sure.” He got up, with some help from Mattie Lee. He was, she thought, 
surprisingly heavy for someone so skinny; and she could feel the muscles 
in his upper arms and chest. As soon as she took her hands off him, 
though, he swayed, his knees buckled, and he ended up back on the couch.



“Out of the way,” Tom spoke as gently as he could as he shooed Mattie to 
one side. He lifted Kyle back up – with a lot less effort than Mattie had 
used – and put Kyle’s arm around his shoulders, “We’re going into the 
back seat of my car,” he said as he helped Kyle out the door. “Mattie and 
Rose are gonna take care of you. Same drill as last night.” He cast a 
backwards glance at the girls, who were following him. Rose, he noticed, 
was holding Joan’s hand, something she hadn’t done since she was maybe 
nine. “Same drill as last night. But you’re gonna keep up the pressure on 
his nose.”



Tom maneuvered Kyle into the back seat as Mattie held the rear passenger 
door open. Almost as soon as he was seated, Mattie fell in beside him, 
holding the ice against his nose, holding his free hand. Rose, who had 
been standing behind Mattie, scooted around the rear of the car. In the 
second or so that Kyle and Mattie were alone together, right before Rose 
opened the other passenger door, he turned to her, spoke his stepfather’s 
first name, and nodded yes. 



Kyle, it turned out, not only had a broken nose but three loose front 
teeth. Dr. Collins, the doctor on duty at Urgent Care, gave him a shot 
for the pain (when he explained it was morphine, Rose grinned and told 
him some guys had all the luck); stopped the bleeding; packed his nose; 
and explained that if he wanted his nose to be straight again, it would 
have to be re-broken once it had healed. They had, he said, no dentist on 
duty; he advised Kyle to see one first thing in the morning.



“Do you want us to try your mom again?” 



“Sure.” Kyle could talk much better without the pain, but his voice was 
still nasal and a bit slurred. On the way over to Urgent Care, he’d 
become agitated as soon as Joan suggested calling his mother. (“They’ll 
have to get in touch with her, son,” Tom explained. “You’re a minor.”) 
Kyle had then said something – a few short, unintelligible words followed 
by one long word. He tried again, coming up with something that was 
either “you don’t understand,” “she won’t understand,” or – perhaps in a 
reference to the folks down at Urgent Care – “they won’t understand.” 
Then he began to cry. Mattie let go of his hand and gently wiped away his 
tears. They hadn’t called his mother; when the nurse on duty asked for 
his parents’ number, Mattie had quickly cut in and given them the number 
of a request line for a music station in Salem (Mattie and Rose loved 
that particular station but apparently lots of other people did too; 
every time they’d called the request line to ask for more music by Lynyrd 
Skynyrd, they’d gotten a busy signal.)



“Speaking of which,” said Joan, “Mattie Lee, do you have to get home to 
your mother? I could drive you home and come back.”



“I think I should stay here,” Mattie said without hesitation. The clock 
above her read five minutes to ten. Her mother, she knew, would be back 
around eleven, and would worry if her daughter was not there. But Kyle 
was not yet all right. He was doing better physically, and if she left he 
would still have Tom, Joan and Rose in his corner, but she knew that 
wasn’t enough for him. He needed love. “I’m gonna call the plant, get a 
message to my mama about what happened. Wait right here, honey.” Mattie 
gave Kyle a quick peck on the cheek (making sure to keep clear of his 
now-bandaged) and went into the hallway in search of a pay phone. She 
returned a few minutes later, explaining she’d gotten ahold of her mom 
and had her blessing to stay with them. 



“I’m glad you’re back.” Kyle sounded like he was in better spirits, 
perhaps because of Mattie Lee, because of the morphine, or both.



“I’m sorry I had to leave,” she told him. “I’m staying by your side ‘till 
this is over.”


IX.



In the days that followed, Mattie and Rose stayed as close to Kyle as 
they could. Keeping an eye on him, like Tom said, but also keeping him 
company. For the two days after his “fall,” he stayed home from school. 
Both evenings, they tried to visit him at home, but was told – first by 
his mother and then by Brian himself – that Kyle wasn’t feeling well 
enough to have visitors. On the morning of the third day, however, Mattie 
– who had more or less staked out the Donovan home, spending as much time 
as she could in the early mornings and the evenings on a nearby wooden 
bench, saw him, bandage and all, headed out his front door.



“Howdy, stranger!” She waved to him. He smiled shyly - or perhaps it was 
the straps of tape across his cheeks that kept him from smiling more. 
Mattie decided it was the former. “Not good enough, mister,” she chided 
him, then embraced him. He hugged her back with surprising strength, 
gently rocking her back and forth. Then he thanked her for staying with 
him the other night.



“It’s no problem,” Mattie said. “I want to be around you, Kyle Denton.” 
He squeezed her again. “Speaking of which, Rose is gonna drive me to 
school. Want to come along?”



Kyle lit up. “Sure. Because then, I get to be around you.”



“How’re your folks – I mean, your mom and Brian – treating you?”



He shrugged. “Okay, I guess. My stepdad’s being…careful.” 



“Not sending you up on no more ladders?”



“I think I had a bigger fall than he expected. No, I don’t think he’s 
gonna do that again. He remembers what Rose’s dad said. By the way, tell 
him thank you from me.”



He was speaking much more clearly; and now sounded as if all he had was a 
stuffy nose. “But…” he walked with her until the Donovan trailer was far 
behind, and even then he continued in a low voice. “Mom’s sad. She’s very 
sad. I tried to tell her what happened – what really happened, I mean – 
and she wouldn’t talk about it.”



“Jesus,” Mattie said.



“Nope,” he shook his head in mock rue. “Only Brian.” They both laughed. 
“But I understand where she’s coming from,” he continued. “I can’t make 
her choose between me and Brian.”



Mattie looked disgusted. “Some mother, if she can’t choose her own son 
over a stranger. A stranger who put him in the emergency room. What’s she 
doing with him, anyway?”



They were strolling, hand in hand. “My mother never finished school. I 
don’t think she ever even had a job. My dad used to take care of 
everything. So, when my dad died…” he trailed off.





“…Your mom freaked out.”



“She was helpless,” Kyle continued. “She didn’t know how we were gonna 
make it. We didn’t have much money to start with. And we had all these 
bills to pay. My dad’s doctor bills alone wiped out what she got from his 
life insurance. And then we had bills for his funeral, for electric and 
water and the phone. And taxes. So…my mom tried to get a job.”



“But she had no skills.”



“Right. So she couldn’t get a decent job. And if she got one, she didn’t 
want to work there anyway because she was used to my dad taking care of 
her. She got hired as a waitress and she quit on the second day. Or maybe 
they fired her. So all she could get were these jobs where you work out 
of your home – addressing junk mail envelopes, calling people on the 
phone during dinner and trying to sell them stuff. Things like that. And 
those jobs don’t hardly pay. I got a job, as a cashier in a music store, 
but that sure wasn’t enough. So I got a second job, in a department store 
in the same mall as the record store, selling men’s clothing I couldn’t 
afford to buy. That helped us a little - but then my grades took a 
nosedive because I was spending all my evenings and weekends working. I 
didn’t want to flunk out of high school and spend the rest of my life in 
a department store or record store. So I quit the department store job. 
All our money was going out, and almost none was coming in. We…” Kyle 
winced, and until he spoke again Mattie thought his nose was hurting him. 
“We lost our house, the house my dad had found for us. Couldn’t make the 
payments.”



“And that’s where we were when my mom met Brian. Sure, he was an asshole, 
but at least-“ Kyle broke off as Mattie started laughing.



“What?”



“I’m sorry. It’s just that – I think that’s the first bad word I’ve ever 
heard you use. And it’s one hell of a bad word. Did you pick it up from 
me and Rose?”



Kyle blushed. “No. I think from Brian.” And that set them both off 
laughing. “But anyway, he had a job, and he had some money saved, and he 
was looking to get remarried.”



“Remarried?”



“Yeah. He was married once before, to this lady named Nancy. I think she 
lives in St. Louis. They actually had a kid together. A daughter. He 
doesn’t like to talk about them much – and what he says about the wife is 
pretty ugly. But I don’t think that one is his fault. He says she took 
the little girl and left him.”



“Someone wanted to leave Brian?” Mattie sounded incredulous. “Imagine 
that!”



“Yeah, but she basically stole his daughter. He had to track her down, 
and then fight with her in court for about two years. He still has some 
of the court papers, and I sneaked a look at some of them once. It was so 
ugly, what they were saying about each other. No one should have to go 
through that. But when that was over, he wanted to get remarried. My mom 
needed someone to take care of her – and he said he could do that.”



“He took real good care of you the other night,” Mattie said bitterly. 



Kyle’s touched the bandage. “Maybe better than he could take care of her. 
It seems to me he always got angry, even when they were dating. But my 
mom keeps saying she didn’t know until after they were married. Maybe it 
got worse. He got fired. I heard he was just supposed to serve some court 
papers on this one guy and pulled a gun on him instead.“



Mattie shook her head. “Jesus. I mean, Brian.”



“And if that wasn’t bad enough, he got us kicked out of our apartment, 
for fighting with one of the other people in the building. So there we 
were, back where we started before my mom got married. Finally, after 
about four weeks of reading the want ads and looking online, he finds out 
about this job, working for the court.” Kyle shrugged. 



“So that’s how I find myself here. And the only good thing about it is 
that I met you and Rose.” He put his arm around her shoulders and she 
leaned against him.



“I don’t understand something,” Mattie said quietly. “Tell me.”



“Anything.”



“The night we met, you told the police exactly what happened. Told ‘em it 
was Brian smashed Rose’s car and not the other way around; and that he 
pushed Rose. You told ‘em that even though it got you into trouble. So I 
know you’re not afraid of him. But the other night, this guy breaks your 
nose, and you tell everyone – except me, of course – that you fell off a 
ladder. Why? Why stick your neck out when he hurts a bunch of 
strangers…and then lie to protect him when he hurts you?”




“I think you just answered that one for yourself.”


“No, I didn’t. I’m trying to understand you, Kyle Denton, and I can’t 
figure that out.”



“Okay. When Brian hit Rose’s car, then hit Rose, and then tried to lie 
about it, he was hurting perfect strangers. Trying to get Rose into 
trouble, and maybe also her dad, who seems like a great guy, by the way. 
Dragging them into his ugly little world where he threatens people and 
tries to make them worry about making him mad or about the cops coming to 
get them. He’d do the same thing to you if he could. He wasn’t your 
problem or Rose’s or her dad’s. I wanted to protect you guys.



“But suppose I told your dad, or that doctor, or even the cops, what 
really happened – that he hit me and I fell backwards and cracked my head 
on the floor. Maybe he gets arrested. Or he loses his job when they find 
out. Or he can’t come within five hundred feet of me and that wrecks the 
marriage. That doesn’t help you or the Sullivans. And it sure as hell 
doesn’t help my mom. In fact, it’d hurt her – remember, he’s the one 
making payments on the trailer she lives in. The only person it might 
help is me. That’d be selfish.”



“Most folks I know tries to help themselves first. They figure that if 
it’s bad for someone else, screw them.”



“Some people are like that, but not everyone,” Kyle said. “You and Rose 
aren’t like that. You’ve been taking care of me, keeping me from getting 
homesick, showing me around to your friends. You held my hand last night 
when I was in pain. And Rose’s folks let me sleep in their home that 
first night – I can’t get over that. They didn’t even know who I was and 
still they did that. And when Rose’s dad found me the next night, I was 
trying to walk to the bus stop so I could get to a doctor by myself. He 
stopped me, took me back to his home again, and he and his wife tried to 
stop the bleeding. And then they even drove me to the emergency room. And 
then, all you guys stayed with me until I could go home. If Brian was 
like you guys – in fact, if everyone was like you guys…” he trailed off.



Mattie remembered something she’d said to Rose the night Kyle’s nose had 
been broken. “People know each other here…”, she had said, “…and we want 
to stay together.” Kyle was saying she and Rose and Rose’s parents had 
lived up to that. But she thought of some of the other things she and her 
friend had done that were a bit less altruistic. For one, there was the 
work she’d done for Ted Maxwell, the hood from Jefferson City who 
employed Rose’s brother Mike, boosting three cars for him, in return for 
a hundred dollars each, all so she could afford to buy six OxyContin 
tablets from Val Starkey. What would Kyle think of her if he knew about 
stuff like that? And how was that consistent with the way she and Rose 
had stood by Kyle? For a few moments she was silent, and when the answer 
came to her, she had trouble fitting it into words, “You…you bring out 
something…good in me,” she answered at last. “In me, and Rose, and all of 
us.” 



Kyle tried to suppress a smile. “I’ve never heard anyone say that about 
me before. You bring out something good in me.” They were at Rose’s door, 
and Kyle knocked on it gently.



“I guess we’re good for each other,” Mattie said before the door opened 
up.





X.



That Sunday afternoon, Mattie borrowed Rose’s bashed Camaro and gave Kyle 
the dime tour of Rubidoux. (She’d also hoped to introduce him to some 
more of the locals, but because of the sticky heat, most everyone was 
indoors.) At first, there wasn’t much to see. Beyond the pink cinderblock 
walls of the trailer park, there were residential streets with 
dilapidated tract houses and two-story apartment buildings from the 
1950’s, junk cars and pickups parked on lawns of dying grass. These gave 
way to a few wide boulevards lined mostly with fast-food joints; liquor 
stores; bars and strip clubs; pawnshops and check-cashing places.  “We 
don’t even get us a Wal-Mart,” Mattie confessed as she smiled sadly. “But 
this here is where Rose and I hang out,” Mattie said as they passed a 
small strip mall with a 1950’s-style bowling alley.



“You like to bowl?” Kyle’s voice was still muffled a bit by the bandage. 
He felt better, he said; but he would have to wear the bandage for at 
least another month.



“Rose does. I’m no good at it. But we both like what’s next door.” To the 
left of the bowling alley was a small store with a large sign reading 
OUTER LIMITS. Its windows were covered with garish posters of comic-book 
heroes.



“Wait…you guys collect comics?” Kyle’s eyes widened.



“Of course. That’s why we were at that movie. We’ve been collecting back 
issues of Heavy Metal since we were nine. Other stuff, too.”



His eyes widened even more. “I love H.R. Giger. You know, the guy who did 
all the art for the Alien films-“



“I know who he is, silly,” Mattie said with mock annoyance before kissing 
him on the mouth.



“Yeah, and I’ve been goin’ crazy looking for someone else here who would 
know.”



“Well, you found her. Two of us, in fact.” And for a half hour or so they 
compared notes on their favorite artists and titles. It turned out they 
both had a particular fascination for the “X-Men,” a series of comic 
books about mutants who were ostracized from society because of their 
supernatural abilities (and while neither Kyle nor Mattie possessed any 
known super powers, they both readily identified with the mutants because 
they saw themselves as outcasts).  



At some point Kyle, after swearing Mattie Lee to secrecy, told her that 
for two years, he’d had a terrible crush on one of the characters in the 
X-Men, a curly redhead called the Scarlet Witch. “She was so pretty,” he 
said softly, “but never as pretty as you.”



“Oh, she’s gorgeous all right,” Mattie said as she traced an hourglass 
figure with her hands, “a lot prettier than I’ll ever be.” She shook her 
head ruefully. “She – wait. I’m blanking on something. What was her real 
name – her regular name?”



“That’s a good one.” Kyle’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember. “Wait. 
It was Wanda. Wanda Maximoff.” 



“I always liked that name. Wanda.”



“Do you want to go inside? Maybe we can find something and read it 
together.”



“How about later on? I want to show you something else first.” Mattie 
drove through a few more blocks of the run-down, post-war neighborhood 
and then parked the car. “Now you just close your eyes.” That turned out 
to be a bad suggestion. He stumbled twice, almost pulling her down with 
him the second time. She finally told him just to look down at his feet 
as she led him, by the arm, through an alley.



“Look.” Kyle raised his head. They were emerging from the alley into a 
square, small and crowded but somehow also stately, paved with 
cobblestones and ringed with nineteenth-century brick buildings, old-
fashioned streetlamps and benches, and leafy trees. In the center of the 
square was a tiny park, with bright green grass, a white latticed 
bandstand, and an old brass statue and antique cannon, in the center of 
the square. The square – like the other places they’d passed – seemed 
almost deserted; no one besides Mattie and Kyle seemed willing to brave 
the afternoon heat. It was a world apart from the trailer park and from 
the blocks of drab houses and stores that made up the rest of the town.



“Oh, honey,”



“This here’s the town center.”



“It’s beautiful,” he said as he squeezed her hand.



“It’s the only place in town that is,” she agreed. “To look at the rest 
of the town, you’d never know we had this here.”



“How old is it?”



“They built all this in 1883. Back then, they wanted to turn the town 
into a whole city. They were gonna build a railroad junction, and all 
these cattlemen and travelers and whoever would stop here. So they 
started to build a big old train station, a hotel, a bank, all that. 
Rubidoux was gonna become the seat of Meridian County, did you know 
that?”



“This place doesn’t look like a county seat. What happened?” 



Mattie shrugged. “They screwed us, just like everyone else before and 
since. At some point, they decided to build the railroad and the train 
station someplace else. Up in Riverside, where Rose’s dad works. 
Riverside probably bribed the railroad company. But by then they’d 
already built part of the train station and also a few other things. 



“See that building there?” She pointed to a white, columned building 
opposite them, perched on top of several flights of white stone steps 
that looked a miniature Roman arena. “It was gonna be the train station. 
Now it’s the courthouse.” Mattie didn’t know it, but in just over six 
months, a judge in that building would take her away from Rose, her mom, 
and everything she knew, sentencing her to spend a year and a half of her 
life in prison. For now, though, it was just a beautiful old building to 
her, like the others she wanted to show to Kyle: The Catholic church, 
with its bell tower and big stained glass windows, in one corner of the 
square; the old fire station, solid-looking with its golden yellow brick, 
in another corner; the historic Victorian mansion – originally the 
Mayor’s house but and now used by an Elks lodge - with a rose garden in 
front. As she showed him around the square, the wrought-iron streetlamps 
switched themselves on. “See those? They used to be gas. They had this 
old lamplighter guy – he’d fought for us in the Civil War – going from 
lamp to lamp in this horse-drawn cart, turning ‘em all on in the 
evenings.



“And this here’s our Civil War cannon,” Mattie took him past the green-
crusted bronze cannon perched in the park. “Probably never used; probably 
not even real - the town didn’t even exist until after the Civil War, but 
what the hell. Every small town has one.” She led him to the opposite end 
of the small grassy area. 



And this big fella here is our town hero. The namesake of our high 
school.” Now they were standing in front of a bigger-than-life, rather 
ferocious-looking statue of a man in a Civil War uniform, mounted on a 
rearing horse. The man’s head was wrapped in what first looked to Kyle 
like a turban but what he realized was more likely a bandage. He had a 
fierce-looking handlebar mustache and an expression of righteous anger. 
The man’s left hand was clutching both the horse’s reins and a rosary. 
His right arm, holding aloft a spiked mace, was raised outward and 
upward, as if to rally some vast army behind him. 



On the pedestal beneath the horse’s hooves was an oblong plaque with the 
words 



BENNETT H. MCKINLEY
1835-1879
Sergeant
1st Missouri Confederate Brigade, CSA
and Defender
of the
Sons and Daughters of Erin
WE WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER



A little plastic sign next to the statute discussed McKinley’s exploits – 
or at least a radically different version of them than Kyle had briefly 
gotten in his history class in Jefferson City - in detail.



“How come you know all this? About the town, I mean.”



“I went up to the library one day, about two years ago.” She waved her 
hand toward a red brick building a few doors away, with an arched 
entrance. “There ain’t a whole lot written about the history of our town. 
Mostly, it’d be about a hundred and forty years of poor folks going in 
and out of bars like the ones we saw back on Pyrite Street and sometimes 
killing each other. But I found some old newspapers on microfilm. It took 
me a whole week.”



“Sounds like one of your teachers was really into the town’s history, if 
they made you do all that.”



“Nope, that was my idea.” Mattie smiled at him proudly. “I love this 
place – this square, I mean, not this stupid town – so much that I had to 
know more about it.”



“It’s pretty here, for sure,” Kyle nodded. “But why do you care about it 
so much?”



“Well,” Mattie smiled again, but this time she turned red and looked away 
from him. “It’s like whenever I come here – really, whenever I think 
about this place, I-“ she looked down at her feet. “No, never mind.”



“What?”



“Forget it. I was gonna say something real dumb.”



“No, I want to hear it.”



“Yeah, but you might not understand. Or you’d understand but you’d think 
I was weird.”



“I already know you’re weird, Mattie Lee,” he ran his hand through her 
short red hair. “And I want to understand you better.”



“Okay. Being here…” She blushed; then tried again. “When I come here,” 
she explained, “it makes me feel like I’m not – I’m not just this stupid 
kid who lives in a trailer and loses all her jobs and gets drunk with her 
friends at night. It reminds me…that I’m Southern. A Southern girl. It 
makes me proud.”



He squeezed her hand. “What’s wrong with that? You should be proud.”  



“Yeah, but my mama, and even Rose, think I go way too far. And maybe 
they’re right.”



“What do you do?”



“Well,” Mattie took Kyle’s hand in hers and moved it gently up and down 
as she talked. “Sometimes I come here and I imagine it’s still like it 
was in the eighteen hundreds. Like they never ended. The women wear 
dresses – I’m always wearing’ a white-and-brown white one, with a big 
skirt. The men wear suits, or uniforms with sashes and swords and all 
that. Everyone wears gloves. There’s no cars, only carriages and horses. 
I swear I can hear their hooves on the stones when I think about that. 
The men tip their hats when they pass the ladies. If two men love the 
same woman, they settle it with a duel.“ Mattie fell silent, imagining 
the aristocratic figures moving back and forth across the square. “And 
the whole town – the whole country even – looks like this. No one’s poor. 
Whites, Blacks, nobody.” She paused and frowned for a moment. “Except in 
the North, of course,” she added, giggling. “Those guys can keep all the 
noisy cars and the crime and the bad manners. You know, I’ve met some of 
them and I swear that’s the way they like things. But down here,” she 
finished, “everybody’d be rich; and everybody’d treat everybody right.”



“Southern chivalry,” Kyle said softly. “That’s beautiful.”



“Tell that to Rose. Rosie thinks I’m crazy when I talk like that. And 
these days, if I try to tell her about it, she ruins it. All she wants to 
talk about is where the whorehouses would be, and how the women’s boobs’d 
be falling out of the tops of the dresses.”



“She shouldn’t make fun of you. She’s a great friend, but she knows it’s 
important to you. She shouldn’t try to…” Kyle hunted for the words. 
“dirty it up like that.”



“Rosie’s is the best friend I ever had,” Mattie assured him. “But she has 
a dirty mind.”



“Maybe one day you should go visit some of those old mansions in Virginia 
and the Carolinas. Or New Orleans. Maybe we could all go together.” Kyle 
unlaced his hand from Mattie’s and moved it around her waist. “Is this 
okay?” he asked uncertainly.



“Of course, silly! You’re practically my boyfriend.”



“I am?”



“At least,” she said, “I want you to be.”



“Well, I guess we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, then.” He paused. “I never 
really had a girlfriend before.” And for a minute they stood there, 
silently, together at the edge of the empty square at twilight, looking 
into one another’s eyes. Mattie looked around, and when she saw they were 
alone she gently moved Kyle’s hand upward and pressed it against her 
breast. 



“Mattie Lee?“ She felt his fingers flutter, then felt his wrist tense, 
and she realized he was trying to pull his hand away.



“Come on!” Her laughter died as she realized he wasn’t kidding. “What’s 
wrong?”



“It’s just…isn’t it too soon?”



“Don’t you want me?” She sounded confused and a little sad. “I want you.”



“I want you, Mattie Lee, yes. But I don’t want to just use you, just lay 
you down on our first date. You’re too…special for that. Those men you 
just told me about. The ones in the 1800’s who took their hats off for 
the women and kissed their hands? Don’t you want me to treat you like 
they would?”



Mattie again looked across the square, stared until she could see the 
Southern ladies and gentlemen, the ghosts that, until today, only she 
could imagine were there.



“You’re right,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”



“Don’t be. I just want to live in your world with you. Wait-” he took her 
arm again, linked it with his, and they strolled, like a proper young 
couple, to the gazebo in the center of the square. 



“Do you feel like dancing?” Kyle asked her.



Mattie laughed, embarrassed. “I don’t know how. Not the kind of dances 
they did in those days, anyway.”



“I know a little bit. They taught us once, for a school play.” And as 
night fell and the moon rose above them, Kyle gently put his right hand 
on her shoulder, took her right hand in his left, and guided Mattie Lee 
through her very first waltz.


XII.


They stayed in the town center holding hands, until the lamps came on 
after sunset. Kyle tried to imagine the people from Mattie’s fantasy 
world coming out for the evening, strolling around the old buildings in 
their nineteenth-century dress; maybe a horse-drawn carriage or cart 
rattling over the cobblestones. Instead, all they got was the rumble of a 
low-flying jet above them, its landing lights flashing, as it approached 
the airport in Salem.



“Welcome back to the twentieth century,” Mattie said, a bit forlorn, as 
they left the square and went back to Rose’s car.



“I should get home,” Kyle said as he got in.



Mattie looked disappointed. “How about going to my place? My mom’s not 
going to be home until about midnight.” Sue Allen, Kyle knew, did not 
feel comfortable about his relationship with Mattie Lee. She felt it was 
going too fast, for one thing. For another, she saw him as an outsider. 
Not just because of Brian – who certainly didn’t help his case any – but 
because to her, he was a Protestant of English descent who came from a 
big city and used big words. In other words, she didn’t like him for more 
or less the same reason that Brian didn’t like Mattie: His background was 
different. On both of the times Kyle had met Mattie’s mom (both times, 
Kyle was walking Mattie back to her trailer), Sue had been polite but not 
much more. He’d try to talk to her once and she had cut him off, gently 
saying “good night.”



“What’s she doing on a Sunday night?”



“If you can believe it, she’s at the plant. They have to complete an 
order by Tuesday, I think, and she’s helping to get it out.”



“She works very hard.”



“Yeah, she does. She needs the overtime, since Dad died. I suppose it’d 
help if I got a job but…” Mattie shook her head, “I don’t know how to do 
nothing.” 



When they reached Mattie’s trailer, Kyle asked, a little hesitantly, what 
she wanted to do. Mattie, remembering the misunderstanding earlier in the 
day, promised him they would just “hang out.” And, at first, that’s what 
they did. They were both hungry so they made themselves dinner (some 
slices of ham in the refrigerator, and two Cokes); held hands on the 
couch while they watched TV (King of the Hill, one of Mattie’s favorite 
programs); and then Mattie showed him around her home. In her room – Kyle 
was struck by how it much it looked like Rose’s, even with the same Heavy 
Metal poster on the wall; similar piles of comic books and graphic novels 
and almost the same set of CDs – she found a photo album. 



“Here comes the embarrassing ones,” she said, as she flipped through the 
first few pages which held her baby pictures. Kyle saw a plump, round-
faced little baby – who bore only the faintest resemblance to the young 
woman sitting beside him on the bed – at a baptismal ceremony (Mattie 
explained that was held in the old church they’d just seen in the town 
center). Next to it was the baby happily chewing on a ring of plastic toy 
keys (“I’m only a month old,” Mattie said proudly, “and I’m already 
destroying things!”). Sitting in a high chair with several different 
kinds of food all over her face (they both got a good laugh out of that 
one). Taking her first steps on her own as a redheaded young man and 
woman (“my folks; this here’s my dad”) looked on excitedly. The young man 
standing over what looked like a kitchen sink, giving Mattie a bath. “My 
dad again.”



“You miss him.”



“I sure do,” she nodded, serious now. “He only lasted ‘till I was eight.”  
She touched Kyle’s shoulder. “How old were you when-“



He knew what she was asking, about his own late father. “Fifteen,” he 
murmured, “two years ago.”



“It’s hard, ain’t it?”



“It’s the worst.”



She turned the page, hoping it would break the mood. “Here’s me and Rose, 
the summer we became best friends.” Mattie pointed to a picture of two 
young girls, maybe five or six years old, standing side by side with 
their arms around one another’s shoulders, grinning at the camera. 
Rose’s, then as now, was slightly taller than Mattie and her hair was a 
brighter shade of red. Other than that, they could almost have passed for 
identical twins. They even seemed to be wearing the same clothes.



“That’s right…Mr. Sullivan said you guys grew up together.”



“We did. Rose always lived next door to us. I don’t remember much from 
when I was real young – three, four – but my mama says I didn’t want to 
play with no one back then. But I remember the first day I played with 
Rose. When I was five, they were building a new front office for the 
park, and there was this big old pile of dirt. I went out to climb on it, 
and there she was. We started playing ‘war,’ throwing these big old 
handfuls of earth at each other, wrestling, you name it.” She smiled at 
the memory. “Our moms were pissed off at us because we’d ruined our 
clothes, but it was worth it. And we’ve gotten together to play almost 
every day since then.”



The pictures on the next few pages showed them growing up together, at 
what looked like elementary school graduations; singing in a Christmas 
pageant or maybe a church choir; wearing Girl Scout uniforms. Some of the 
pictures seemed fairly recent: One showed the girls with their signature 
high-and-tight haircuts, both dressed in black tank tops, their bare arms 
thrust at the camera, the forearms looking sore and slightly swollen, as 
the girls showed off their brand-new Celtic knotwork tattoos.



Mattie opened the book again, about midway through. One page was taken up 
completely by a large picture of a young man in a green U.S. Army dress 
uniform, posing unsmiling before an American flag. Close-cropped, 
reddish-brown hair exactly Mattie’s shade projected beneath his beret. 
There were Sergeant’s strips on his arm and his name plate read “Allen.”



“My dad, again.”



“He was very handsome.”



“I’m glad you like his picture, but that ain’t really what he looked 
like. He had longer hair, for one. And he smiled. He smiled all the 
time.”



“We had a picture just like that of my dad,” Kyle said. “But he was 
wearing his dress blues, and he had the Marine Corps flag behind him, not 
just the U.S. flag.”



“Can I see that one someday? I want to see how much he looked like you.”



Kyle shook his head, a little sadly. “I don’t think we have that one 
anymore.”



“You’re supposed to save those. There’s one of Mr. Sullivan in Rose’s 
house. That’s how people know you have someone in the service.”



“I know. It’s just that…my mom and I couldn’t really look at it anymore. 
After he died.”



“I’m sorry, honey,” Mattie was beginning to realize she’d opened a can of 
worms. “But you should remember him.”



“I think about him all the time. My mom does too, no matter how much time 
she spends around Brian. But that picture…“ Kyle paused and drew in his 
breath. “I can’t look at it anymore. Because that was the picture, the 
one they used…showed everybody-“ he drew in another breath. This one 
sounded like a sob. He said something else but it was choked off. Mattie 
looked over and him and saw tears running down his cheeks. He forced 
himself to breathe more slowly, to try again.



“It’s okay, honey,” she put her hands gently on his shoulders. “We don’t 
have to-“



“It was the one they used at his funeral!”



“Oh my God,” Mattie said to him. “I’m sorry!” And now Kyle began to cry, 
harder and even louder than she’d ever heard a boy his age do. She 
imagined the picture of Kyle’s dad, the official portrait in his dress 
blues, mounted on an easel, maybe, in front of his father’s casket in a 
darkened room filled with flowers and mourners, the last look Kyle would 
ever have of his father’s face before he said goodbye to him forever. She 
tried to say something, to comfort him, and then she was crying as well. 
For Kyle’s dead father, for her own father, for Kyle himself. 



“I want him back, Mattie,” Kyle said as he wrapped his arms around her, 
squeezing her. “I want him back so bad.” She hugged him back and they 
clung to one another, weeping in each other’s arms. When Mattie 
eventually stopped crying minutes later, Kyle was still crying. “That’s 
right, honey,” she whispered, “let it out. Just let it out.”



Mattie held him, rocked him, as he cried. And then she began to sing 
softly to him, an old Irish folk song that her mother used to sing to her 
when she would cry as a young girl:



O can't you see yon little turtle dove

Sitting under the mulberry tree?

See how that she doth mourn for her true love

And I shall mourn for thee, my dear,

And I shall mourn for thee…



Bit by bit, Kyle began to calm down. Mattie sang to him until his tears 
had stopped and his breathing was slow. “There,” she began “we-“



Kyle started to pull away. “I should go,” he sounded guilty and very 
embarrassed. “I made you cry. Probably…scared you. That’s the last thing 
I wanted to do.” Mattie pressed her fingers against his lips, gently 
shushing him. 



“I was eight years old when my daddy was killed,” she said finally.



“I know. Mr. Sullivan told me.”



“I cried for him. Every night for a week and for a long time after. So 
did my mama. It was...the right thing to do. And sometimes I still cry 
when I think of him. The places we went, and stuff he taught me - how to 
fish-“ and then she could go no further because her own eyes were 
starting to tear up again; and she knew she herself had to stay calm, to 
reassure him, talk him down from this. 



“You loved your dad and I’m sure he loved you,” Mattie continued. “He’d 
be so proud of you. For telling the truth, for protecting your mom. And 
he’d be glad that you remember him. But-but he’d also want you to be 
happy, wouldn’t he?” She pulled away from him briefly so she could look 
him in the eyes. “Huh?”



“He would,” whispered Kyle.



“And he’d want you to make new friends. And now you have, baby. You’ve 
got me, and Rose, and Rose’s folks. You’ll have us always, okay?” And for 
the next ten minutes, they just sat together on the bed, leaning against 
one another, saying nothing. 



Kyle, at last, broke the silence. “I love you, Mattie Lee,” he said 
haltingly, as though afraid of how she would take it.



For a moment, Mattie felt dizzy. Her heart had begun to pound, her hands 
felt numb and her face filled with blood. And then she smiled so broadly 
her cheeks hurt. “I knew. When you said you’d dreamed about me. And I 
dreamed about you. I love you. Almost right from the beginning.” She 
kissed him again, this time on the mouth. He kissed her back and their 
tongues met, first probing, then wrapping around one another.



“Now you just lie back, Kyle,” she said after they finished their kiss to 
come up for air. “Just lie back like you was sleeping. Here, put your 
head on my pillow, the nice soft pillow.” She put her palms on his 
shoulders and gently pushed him backwards. “Now your legs.” Mattie put 
her arms under his knees and swung them over onto the bed, as if she was 
putting a baby to bed. She pulled off his cowboy boots, then untied her 
own black Doc Martens and got them off with considerably more effort.



Kyle didn’t realize what Mattie was doing – what she was really doing – 
until she leaned over him and began to unbuckle his belt. He sat up. “Do 
you mean-“



“Yeah.” She smiled, looking just a little bit embarrassed, and pushed him 
back down onto the bed. “Don’t fight me. Not now.”



“Oh, Mattie, should we? You want me to be a gentleman. It’s too soon.”



“No it’s not. It has to be now. The night you told me you love me. We’ll 
always remember it.” She was sitting on him now, leaning in close, 
unbuttoning his shirt. 



“Sorry. Wait a sec.” She carefully got up off him, ran over to her window 
and drew the curtains, then switched off the light. Kyle helped Mattie to 
pull off his shirt, his pants, everything else but his boxer shorts – but 
he did not know how (and, he admitted to himself, he was more than a 
little afraid) to help Mattie out of her own clothes.



“You don’t have to do that, honey, I’ll do it for us. Just…watch me.” 
Mattie moved off him again, walked over to the vanity mirror next to her 
small desk, and slowly began to undress. The door to her room was shut 
and the blinds were drawn over the window, but his eyes were getting used 
to the dark and he could make out her slender white figure as she neatly 
draped her clothes over the back of the chair.



“Do you like me?” she asked.



“You’re beautiful.”



“Then don’t be afraid of me.” She lay down next to him on the narrow bed. 
Their legs touched. She felt good, warm. 



He remembered something. “I didn’t bring a…do you have a-?”



“Hush. We don’t need it. Don’t be scared.” 

And with that, Mattie settled herself above him. She took the lead, doing 
what felt right to her, with a few refinements she’d heard about from the 
other girls at school (or seen on television or in the movies). And then 
it was over. She lay down next to him, pulled the covers over both of 
them, and for several minutes they lay there, looking into one another’s 
eyes.



“You make me so happy, honey,” Mattie said at least. 



“I’m glad. If I have you…I won’t be lonely anymore. I’ve been lonely 
since my dad died. He was my best friend.”



“You have me, now, sugar,” she assured him. “You’ll always have me.”



They lay together in silence for another minute or so when Mattie spoke 
his name. He turned and saw her smiling at him, but looking a little 
nervous. He thought back to what she’d said right before they began, 
“don’t be scared.”



“What’s wrong, Mattie Lee?”



“Was I…” she grinned, as if embarrassed by what she was about to say. 
“was I good?”



“Oh, yes, yes.” He leaned over and kissed her again.



“Was I your best?”



“You’re my first,” he admitted. “I told you, I was shy.”



“Well,” she smiled, looking comfortable again, “you did just fine by me.” 
And then, as if anticipating his next question, she told him, “this was 
my first time, too. I never met a boy before you that I wanted to make 
love with.” She paused. “I guess we’re growing up together.”



Mattie and Kyle wanted to drift off to sleep in one another’s arms but 
they knew they couldn’t. Mattie’s mom would be back by midnight (by now 
it was almost eleven) and Kyle didn’t want his mother to worry. They 
forced themselves to get up, changed the sheets, showered together (as 
much to save time as for any other reason), and then Mattie saw Kyle out 
with a long kiss and a promise to do this again tomorrow evening.



At first, they were both too excited, and longing too much for each 
other, to rest. When sleep finally came – at around three in the morning 
for Kyle and almost at four for Mattie – they dreamed of one another 
until morning came. 


XIII.



“Where are they?” Rose, dressed in an olive-green tank top and fatigue 
pants, glanced for the third or fourth time at her watch, and got up 
impatiently from the breakfast table, slinging her book bag over one 
muscular shoulder. Mattie and Kyle were supposed to have been there at 
eight o’clock, to hitch a ride to the school in Rose’s still-bashed 
Camaro and get there by 8:25, when the attendance bell rang. Her watch 
now read 8:10. It was already probably too late for her to get a parking 
space in the school’s small lot – and if they dawdled much longer, they 
would be truant, and wouldn’t be allowed into their classes without 
having to check in at the front office. Maybe brighter students like 
Mattie Lee or Kyle could afford that, but she couldn’t. Rose was in 
enough trouble already in nearly all of her classes except gym – for 
sleeping in class, talking in class, or for turning in homework done at 
the last minute, often when she was drunk or stoned.



“I see them,” Joan, who had been looking out the front window, caught her 
first glimpse of Mattie and Kyle coming up the path to their trailer.



“Well, what’s taking ‘em so long?” Rose admitted to herself that she 
wasn’t just upset about being late. She was also upset because Kyle, bit 
by bit, was getting a hold of Mattie’s mind.  He was all her friend 
wanted to talk about the last two times they’d hung out. She somehow 
found a way to work him into every conversation. And on Sunday – a day 
they’d spent together since time immemorial – Mattie had stunned Rose not 
only by not making plans to see her that day, but had actually asked to 
borrow the Camaro so she and Kyle could drive around town together. Rose, 
beginning to feel jealous had thought of inviting herself along, until 
she realized that would only make her feel worse. Mattie and Kyle, she 
knew, wanted to be alone together. Rose could force them to take her with 
them – after all, it was her car – but if she did so she wouldn’t feel 
welcome or comfortable. Mattie wanted to talk to Kyle, maybe do other 
things with him as well. She wouldn’t want to talk about any of their 
special things, their private jokes. Mattie, at least for that day, 
wanted to be Kyle’s girlfriend, not Rose’s fellow tomboy. She wanted Kyle 
to play a role in her life that Rose couldn’t play – a role Mattie had 
emphatically told Rose, in their worst fight of their friendship, that 
she didn’t want her to play. No, Rose didn’t belong with them that day, 
and they all knew it. And now, Mattie Lee seemed to be telling her that 
even their morning ride to school together would soon be a thing of the 
past.



Twenty seconds later, the door hadn’t opened and Rose saw her mom still 
peering out the window. “Oh, honey,” she sounded surprised and more than 
a little amused. “Just look at this!”



“What!?” Rose had flopped back down into her chair at the table.



“Rose, come right away! You have to see this. I just wish your dad was 
still here.” Tom had gone off to work ten minutes earlier.



“Look at them,” Joan said softly as Rose took up a position at the 
window. Rose saw, almost immediately understood what had gotten her 
mother’s attention. Mattie and Kyle were walking up the path, but very 
slowly, arm in arm, almost like a couple making their grand entrance at a 
cotillion. And all the while, they were looking into each other’s eyes – 
a couple of times they even veered off the dirt path because they 
couldn’t quite see where they were going – and smiling softly, gently, at 
one another.

“Will you look at that!” Rose exclaimed in a mixture of mock and real 
contempt.



“That’s what I said,” Joan sounded considerably happier than her daughter 
– but then, it wasn’t Joan who was losing her best friend. “Mattie Lee,” 
she began, “is-“



“Please don’t say it, mom-”



“-in love,” her mother finished. “She’s growing up.”



That was maybe the last thing in the world Rose wanted to hear. For the 
last several days – and certainly since yesterday morning, when Mattie 
had borrowed the damn car – Rose had been fretting about them growing 
apart. Here was her mother, not only confirming her worst fears but 
rejoicing in them. And Rose just knew the next thing up would be a high-
pressure sales pitch from Joan to give up her silly interest in other 
girls and look for a boyfriend of her own.



“Well, look at you two,” Joan said as she opened the door for them. Rose 
saw, to her surprise and mounting concern, that Mattie – who normally 
just said hello to Joan – actually embraced Rose’s mom.



“Oh, Rosie.” And before Rose knew it, Mattie was hugging her too. The 
last time she’d hugged Rose like that was when they’d both gotten their 
tattoos on the same day. And the time before that was when they’d both 
tried OxyContin at the same time. A hug like that was, Rose suspected, 
Mattie Lee’s way of saying, “this is a new phase of our life together.” 
But this time, Rose wasn’t sure that was what she wanted to hear from her 
friend.



“Morning, Rose,” Kyle, at least, didn’t try to touch her (part of Rose 
hoped it was because he didn’t dare, or at least because he felt guilty). 
But he smiled at her, a little sheepishly.



“Whatever,” Rose said grumpily. “We’re late. Are y’all ready? Can we roll 
out now?” She looked at both of them, half-expecting and half-daring them 
to take one another’s arms and stroll slowly to her car, maybe taking 
until eight thirty to get there.



“I’m sorry, Rosie,” Mattie began. “We just-“ But then she grinned – to 
Rose it looked like a silly, empty grin – and her voice spiraled upward 
into a gasp or a squeal.



“It’s my fault, Rose,” Kyle said. “We won’t be late again.”



“You two looked so happy,” Joan chimed in, smiling even as Rose turned 
red.



Rose banged the front door open and marched down the steps. “Roll out,” 
she said, as if to her troops. Mattie and Kyle followed her – a glance 
over her shoulder showed Rose they were still holding hands but at least 
they were moving faster, as if they had remembered that the world 
included her as well.

Rose yanked the passenger door open and looked at Mattie. “You do want 
shotgun, don’t you?” 



To her credit, Mattie – who of course would prefer to sit in the back 
seat with Kyle – realized why her friend was so irritable. She smiled and 
nodded. “You know it.” Kyle slid obediently into the back seat as Mattie 
put her backpack on the car floor. “Wait a minute,” she said suddenly.



Rose sighed, a little louder than she’d intended. “What now?”



“I’m…a little stiff, that’s all,” Mattie explained. “My back. My lower 
back. Just give me a sec.” She slowly, painfully, maneuvered herself into 
the front seat.



Rose looked away from her, not sure if this should make her angrier still 
or whether it was actually kind of funny. “Jesus Christ,” she said 
finally. And she turned away from Mattie Lee so her friend wouldn’t see 
the smile that had unintentionally broken out on her face.



XIV.


“The booze goes in, the secrets come out.” Rose Sullivan proclaimed as 
she opened a tall, icy-cold can of Olde English 800 and handed it to 
Mattie. The two of them were hanging out in Rose’s room, drinking, 
smoking, and barely watching a distant, static-laden broadcast of the 
film Alien playing on Rose’s old TV. “So, you want to tell me what you 
did last night? As if I didn’t already know?”


Kyle could not, as it turned out, get together with Mattie that evening. 
His mother had complained about all the time he was spending away from 
home (a ridiculous complaint, thought Mattie, considering what had been 
happening in his home) and wanted to see him that night. Kyle, obviously 
torn, had explained to Mattie that his mother sounded lonely and sad and 
that he didn’t want his relationship with her to suffer. Mattie was more 
than a little disappointed. True, she and Kyle had spent almost every 
spare minute together that day, eating in the cafeteria with Rose but 
then going off together for a long walk around the school for the rest of 
the lunch period. But she’d been looking forward to making love with him 
again, her stiff back notwithstanding; and this would be the last day for 
a while that her mom would be working a late shift. But she argued only 
briefly and good-naturedly with Kyle. She remembered what he’d said about 
his mother – unable to take care of herself since Kyle’s dad had died; 
stuck in an increasingly unhappy marriage to Brian Donovan; having to 
find her bearings in a strange new town. Mattie wanted badly to see Kyle 
that evening; but she knew his mother needed to see him. Mattie reasoned 
that if Kyle was so considerate of his mother, he’d likely be considerate 
of her when – not if – they were married. So she’d let him go, but not 
after taking him back into her room and giving him several kisses and a 
small picture of her. And then she’d turned up at Rose’s place, to her 
friend’s obvious relief.


“Well…” Mattie began, and then trailed off. Part of her was bursting to 
tell Rose, just as Rose had excitedly told her when she’d lost her own 
virginity (to her first, and according to Rose her last, boyfriend) the 
previous Spring. She’d meant to tell her while at school, but she’d spent 
most of the day with Kyle and she knew Rose would want to talk about this 
at length. Also, though, Mattie wasn’t sure if she had a right to tell 
Rose about what had happened between her and Kyle, at least without 
asking Kyle first. Kyle didn’t brag; he do things for show; and he was 
also one of the shyest people Mattie Lee had ever known. He might feel 
uncomfortable if Mattie regaled Rose, over drinks and cheap cigars from 
Duke’s Liquor, about their night together. He might even be hurt, feeling 
that Mattie had betrayed his trust. Then she remembered a kind of 
compromise that her mother Sue had once struck in a similar situation. 
Sue, in the good old days before her husband died, had always enjoyed 
hearing and then spreading a good story or rumor. One day, she’d seen or 
heard about something very bad at the plant. Mattie never found out 
exactly what because her mother never told her. All she would tell Mattie 
Lee is that “it could put somebody in jail.” Later that evening, when Jim 
Allen came home, Sue had nicely asked seven-year-old Mattie to go to her 
room and close the door, bribing her with a Hostess lemon pie. The last 
thing Mattie heard before reaching her room and shutting the door was her 
mother telling her dad not to repeat what she said to anyone else. About 
fifteen minutes after that, she’d told Mattie Lee it was okay to come out 
again. Sue never, to Mattie’s knowledge, told Joan or Tom Sullivan or any 
of her other friends, during their lengthy phone conversations and 
visits, about whatever it was that she’d seen or heard. 


“What’s the matter, honey?” Mattie realized that Rose was looking at her 
with concern. She had only been quiet for about ten seconds, but even 
that was an unusually long lull in their conversations. When they hung 
out, they usually talked and laughed almost incessantly during a visit.


“Can you…keep a secret, Rosie? I mean really keep it secret? Not tell 
fifty people like you did the time I sunburned my butt?”



Rose shrugged. “Maybe.”


“Then I can’t tell you. I can only tell you if you promise to keep it 
quiet.”


“Honey, if it’s that important to you, of course I can keep a secret.”


Mattie leaned forward, and told Rose, in her quietest voice, while trying 
not to blush.


Rose shrieked with joy, embraced her friend in a bear hug, and lifted her 
nearly six inches off the ground and swung her halfway around before 
collapsing back on her bed, dragging Mattie down with her.


“You’re a woman now,” Rose said in a solemn tone. Mattie couldn’t tell if 
she was trying to be funny or not. “Let’s drink to that.” They did. “You 
feel any different?”


Mattie knew the answer to that one. “I do. Kyle’s a part of me now. I 
care about him. I love him.” But then she remembered how Rose had looked 
that morning when she had come in with Kyle – shut out, jealous, probably 
hurt – and she quickly added, “I love you too, Rosie. You were my first 
friend. You’ll always be my best friend.”


“I’m glad, honey.” Rose hugged Mattie again. “I’m happy for you, but I 
don’t want this to be…” she hunted for the words. “…the end of that 
wonderful time. You and me playing war all summer, hanging out, our 
cartoons, the rides at night. Just don’t forget me, all right?” Rose’s 
voice broke, and for a moment Mattie wondered if she was about to cry.


Mattie squeezed her hand. “’Course not. We keep hanging out. That’s a 
promise. I’ll see him sometimes, but whenever I’m not with him, we’ll be 
together. That’s a promise.” She held out her arms to Rose, nodded toward 
the black band tattooed on her upper left arm, then towards the one on 
her right – bands just like the ones tattooed on Rose’s arms.


“Amen,” Rose said quietly. Then she clapped her hands together, as if to 
break the mood. “And now, I want to know everything about everything, 
honey. Don’t just say something like ‘one thing led to another.’”


“What do you want to know?” Mattie was both honored and reluctant to tell 
her friend the details.




“Well…I guess…” Rose tried to sort through a hundred questions going 
through her mind, “who was on top of who?”


“I was.” Mattie was so surprised by the question – she was expecting 
something a little less personal – that she answered it rather than 
dodging it. That set the tone for the rest of the evening. Rose wanted to 
know – and Mattie told her, leaving out only a few of the more intimate 
specifics, where they had done it; how long it took; whether they took 
off their clothes (she laughed when Mattie told her how Kyle had no idea 
how to undress her); and whether they had used protection.


“We didn’t have to do that,” Mattie assured her. “It’s not like I wanted 
to get pregnant or something the first time.”


“Yeah,” Rose sounded just a bit confused. “That’s what I figured. That’s 
why I asked.”


Mattie seemed shocked that she herself knew something about sex that Rose 
didn’t. “You only get pregnant,” she explained to her friend matter-of-
factly, “if you want to get pregnant. If you think about the child. What 
it looks like, if it’s a boy or a girl.”


Rose started to laugh until she realized Mattie wasn’t joking. Then she 
looked away and smacked her palm against her forehead. “If that’s what 
you think, Mattie Lee, you just thank God your time of the month don’t 
come for another two weeks.” She took a swig from her own can of malt 
liquor, set it down on the nightstand, and leaned forward. “Did Kyle tell 
you that? Most guys’ll do anything, say anything, to get out of wearing a 
rubber.”


“No. In fact, he wanted to use something and I had to tell him – it was 
his first time too, remember – why we didn’t need it. Am I the only one 
around here who knows anything about sex?”


Rose shook her head. “Not quite. You’re the only one around here dumb 
enough to believe something like that. Getting pregnant don’t have 
nothing to do with whether you want to get pregnant, honey. It has to do 
with whether he fertilized one of your eggs. Don’t you remember? We only 
spent, like, three weeks on that during ninth grade!”


“I know that,” Mattie nodded, “but that ain’t gonna happen if I wasn’t 
thinking about a beautiful baby boy or girl; and what it’ll look like, 
and what to name it. That’s why those magazines call it ‘conceiving.’ 
Conceiving means thinking.”

Rose groaned and made the sign of the cross. “Will you do me a favor, 
Mattie Lee? If you do it with him again-“


“I sure want to-“


“-or with any other man, make sure he puts on a rubber. You can get ‘em 
at the gas station, the market, the women’s room at fucking Starlight.“ 
Starlight was a seedy country-western-themed bar they sometimes went to 
with their fake IDs. “And if you don’t want that, go to the doctor and 
have him write you a prescription for some Norinyl or Yasmin-“


“What in hell are those?”


“Birth control pills. Just do it for your good friend Rose. Promise me?” 
Rose put her palms together in a praying gesture.


“Sure. But you never talk about using protection-“


“That’s because I do it with girls. Can’t get pregnant that way. The time 
I made it with Sonny, I made sure he had one on.”


“But isn’t it against the faith?” Mattie had long ago given up on 
religion. Rose at least claimed she still believed in it.


“Well, but that’s not…” Rose trailed off. “So’s having a child out of 
wedlock. You don’t want that, do you?”


“With Kyle…I’m not sure. Maybe. He’d make a good father.” Mattie, in her 
mind’s eye, already saw herself living with Kyle, both of them just a few 
years older than they were now, fussing over a beautiful little girl with 
Kyle’s blonde hair and Mattie’s bright green eyes. It just seemed 
so…right to her. She smiled as she imagined the child suddenly, 
unexpectedly, speaking her first word, imagined her and Kyle’s delight. 
That’s all I want, she thought. Kyle and that little girl, maybe a little 
boy, and Rose coming back to the park after her tour of duty had ended. 
That’s all I’d ever want.


“If you want to have his kids,” Rose cautioned her, “make sure you marry 
him first. That way, he can’t just run away if he wants. He has to take 
care of you.” 



“He don’t want to run away, not from me. We’re already talking about when 
we’re gonna do it again.” Mattie paused as something occurred to her. 
“You know, my mom’s gonna be home at night for the next two weeks – and I 
know Brian won’t let us come into Kyle’s place. Rosie, can we-“


“Y’all can’t borrow my car, if that’s what you’re thinking.”


“No, I was thinking…your room?”


Rose jumped off the bed. “No way! You want me to sleep in this bed after 
you and Kyle…no. I don’t wanna hear this. No. No. No…” She clapped her 
hands over her ears as Mattie laughed at her. “No. No. No. You go home 
during the lunch break; or use the equipment room in the gym, or the 
teachers’ lounge when they ain’t there.”


“That sounds awful, Rosie.” Mattie wrinkled her nose. “It’s like doing it 
in public. Help me find someplace else. Where do you go with Jill?”


“We use my car, mostly. Sometimes Mike’s place.”


“Well, how about that?”



XV.


Two days later, Mike Sullivan walked Mattie and Kyle up the steps to his 
second-floor apartment. “Here we are, kids” he said as he unlocked the 
door – Kyle noticed it had two locks – and pushed it open. The apartment, 
built sometime in the late fifties, looked like a seedy motel room. The 
single room was sparsely and cheaply furnished with a card table, folding 
chairs, and some old wooden cabinets and a dingy sofa on top of a 
stained, burned carpet that might once have been white. A small icebox 
sat on the floor and a TV rested on top of a crate. On the wall above the 
TV was a Confederate battle flag. Directly across it, above the sofa, was 
a green flag with a gold harp and the legend ERIN GO BRAGH. The rest of 
the walls were decorated mainly with posters advertising various heavy 
metal groups were tacked up on the wall. The late afternoon sun filtered 
through the uneven plastic blinds drawn over the two small windows. A 
ceiling fan churned the heavy air, which smelled strongly of tobacco and 
a hint of cloves.


“I’m sorry, honey,” Mattie whispered to Kyle as she touched his hand. She 
wasn’t sure if she wanted to make love in a place like this.



Mike held out his hands. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and 
you’re probably right. “Truth is, I had a bigger cell in Boonville. 
Nicer, too, even though I had two roommates.” A week after his eighteenth 
birthday, Mike and a friend had been pulled over by the Missouri Highway 
Patrol for driving down the highway at a hundred miles an hour. The 
officer might not have searched the car – or found the kilo or so of meth 
in their trunk that they were going to sell for good old Ted Maxwell – if 
they hadn’t decided to sample the merchandise before embarking on the 
drive back from Jefferson City. Mike had gotten eighteen months for 
possession with intent to sell, driving under the influence, resisting 
arrest and assaulting a police officer. And that had only been his first 
stay in prison. Since then – he was now twenty-five – he had done a one-
year stretch for breaking and entering and eight months for dealing. But 
unlike his hot-blooded sister Rose, Mike was an even-tempered fellow and 
seemed to take it all in stride.


Kyle asked him, haltingly, what that had been like. He was looking at 
Mike’s crudely tattooed arms as he did so.


“Boring, mostly,” Mike laughed. “I’m a pretty big guy, and I had some 
friends inside, so I wasn’t in no danger. But it was crowded, it smelled 
bad, and the food sucks. My second time in, they had me working in the 
kitchen, and we had a little problem with rats. And that wasn’t the worst 
of it. The worst part was how much I missed my folks, and Rose, and 
Mattie Lee. And, of course, I missed getting laid.” He paused. “Crime 
don’t pay. At least not for me it don’t.


“And speaking of getting laid,” he added, “I’m usually gone in the 
evenings, until about eleven or so. Check with Rose first - she knows 
when I’m away, and she’ll know if it ain’t safe to come here. Also 
remember, she and her friends use this place sometimes too. You can do 
whatever you want – sorry there’s no bed – but just clean up afterwards. 
There’s a laundry room on the first floor if you need it. And whatever 
you do, don’t go through my stuff. The cabinets, the nightstand, my 
desk.“ he gestured toward a rickety wooden desk with an ashtray and a few 
scattered papers. “There’s stuff in there – well, it’s better you don’t 
know.” He didn’t have to say any more; Mattie and Kyle could imagine the 
details. Mike had a loaded gun in his apartment and there was almost 
always some illegal substance he was delivering to or from Maxwell or his 
clients. “And no smoking pot, or PCP, or crack, whatever you do. It’s not 
the principle of the thing. It’s the smell. If someone calls the cops and 
they search this place, I could go back to Boonville for a long time. And 
if they decide you two had something to do with it, so could you.”


“Of course not, sir.” Kyle hadn’t been planning on smoking pot, let alone 
anything stronger.



Mike laughed again and clapped Kyle on the back. “What’s with this ‘sir?’ 
Just ‘cause I’m a few years older than you?” He turned to Mattie. “Mattie 
Lee, you okay with those rules?”


Mattie had wanted to smoke pot with Kyle – partly to get him his first 
high; partly because it made her feel sexy – but she nodded.


“Good. Then here’s your keys.” He took out two metallic-red keys, handed 
one to Mattie and one to Kyle. “And now, I got to get to work – and I 
imagine there’s something y’all want to do.” He shook Kyle’s hand, gave 
Mattie a bear hug, and headed out the door.


Mattie and Kyle looked around the new environment, held hands in the 
silence. “We can pretend we’re Winston and Julia,” Kyle suggested.


Mattie blinked, confused. “Who?”


“Winston Smith and Julia. And this is the room above Mr. Charrington’s 
shop.”


“What’s all that?”


“From Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four?” When he got no response from Mattie, 
he pressed on. “’Big Brother is Watching You’, all that?”


Mattie had, of course, heard that phrase before, but she’d always 
imagined it was some kind of public service announcement, maybe having 
something to do with the cops who stayed hidden behind bushes and signs 
along the highways, checking your speed with their radar guns. “Oh, 
sure,” she said vaguely.


Kyle smiled, moved closer to her, brushed his hand against her cheek. “I 
love you so much,” he said.



XVI.


Mattie told Kyle about her fantasy – the life together, the beautiful 
little blond girl with the baby brother - as they lay on the lumpy 
mattress, sweating, in a tangle of arms and legs, looking up at the 
ceiling fan. “How’s that sound to you?”



“What I’d like to do,” Kyle answered, as he traced his finger gently, 
slowly, down the white skin of her arm, “is take you, and my mom, and go 
someplace beautiful. How about the banks of the Mississippi? And then we 
build a home, and then have those kids.”


Just to hear him say that, to know Kyle wanted much the same thing as she 
did, made Mattie feel serene, secure about the future. But Kyle didn’t 
have it quite right. “This is my home,” she said. “Rubidoux. I was born 
here. I’ve lived my whole life in that park. I love the town center. I 
can’t- I’d be lost anyplace else. Homesick.”


“I know you love this town.” Kyle himself saw it much differently than he 
had only a few weeks earlier, before he’d met Mattie Lee. “But there’s so 
much else outside. Forests and mountains and cities full of people. You 
deserve all that. The whole world out there.”


“But this is a world,” Mattie insisted. “I can walk to every place I’ve 
ever been. Visit every place I remember. The paths I used to walk on with 
my dad; the lot where I played with Rose when we were kids. So it’s 
like…it’s like none of those things never really ended. It’s like they’re 
still going on – little Mattie’s still walking with her dad - and I can 
go back and see all those things again. And I can walk through the places 
where my folks, and their folks, going all the way back, grew up, and 
made friends, and had their own fun. So we never have to forget anything 
here; we never have to say goodbye to anyone. Can’t I keep that forever?”


Kyle nodded. “That’s like Dreamtime.” 


“What’s that?”


“The aborigines - I mean, the natives down in Australia - believe in this 
thing called ‘Dreamtime.’ Like the past, and the present, and the future 
all going on at once. The living can meet with the dead; and they can 
also see their great-great-great grandkids who haven’t been born yet.”


Mattie let that sink in. “Well, they’re right,” she said at last. “But if 
I go away – even with you – I lose that. I end up in some place where 
I’ve got no memories, walking down streets that don’t mean nothing to 
me.”


“So we’ll build our own memories. Our first house, the backyard where our 
little girl takes her first steps-“


Mattie suddenly sat upright. “Wanda!”


“Huh?”


“It just came to me. The little girl. Our daughter. We have to name her 
Wanda. Like Wanda Maximoff. ‘Cause that’s something we share, a memory we 
both have.”


“We’ll name her anything you want, Mattie Lee.” Kyle ruffled her hair. 
“But the longer we’re together, as the little girl – Wanda, I mean – 
grows up, we’ll have more and more memories of our own. Don’t you want 
that?”


“I want to be with you, Kyle Denton, no matter what” Mattie kissed him, 
carefully avoiding the bandage that still held his nose in place while it 
healed. “But I can’t say goodbye to little Mattie and little Rosie and my 
dad and my whole history. If we moved, I’d remember all those things, all 
those people, sure, but I couldn’t…couldn’t walk by the places where it 
happened and watch them live again.”


Kyle was quiet for a while. “I know what you mean,” he said at last. 
“That’s just how I felt about my dad, the house where I grew up. I got 
taken away, and I wasn’t ready. I don’t want that to happen to you. So…so 

I guess we’re gonna live our lives here. I want to become a part of that. 
Part of your Dreamtime.” He shrugged. “Welcome to Rubidoux, I guess.”



Mattie beamed at him. “My dad, all my people, are gonna love you. You’ll 
fight with us in Civil War with us, then you’re gonna help us fight off 
the Klan. ‘Round 1890, we’ll get you a little dirt farm so’s you can go 
broke and lose it to the bank. And then you’ll fight with my great-
grandpa, and Rose’s, in World War II. And then you can fight in Korea and 
Vietnam.”




“I like that idea. And when I go overseas I’ll carry a lock of your hair 
– if you had any hair, that is –“ Kyle flicked his hand over the top of 
her head, making her laugh “-and I’ll tape your picture to the butt of my 
rifle.”


Mattie pretended to get it wrong. “You mean a picture of my butt on your 
rifle?”



“No, silly! Your face. On the butt of the rifle.“



“I know. And I’ll be there for you on the day you come home. And we’ll 
make love again and again, all…afternoon…long. Just like we’re gonna do 
now.” She rolled on top of him, lacing her fingers with his.



Kyle grinned. “I still can’t believe…I just can’t believe this is 
happening to me. That you happened to me.”



“Hush,” Mattie said gently. “It’s like I told you. Don’t think too much. 
Don’t talk it away. Just…do.”





XVII.



“A week later, Kyle, accompanied by Mattie and Rose, went back to Urgent 
Care to have his bandage removed. “About time, too,” Rose observed, as he 
sat down on an examining table, legs dangling over the side, as the gray-
haired nurse went to get her equipment. “You look like a damn fool with 
that on. Like a parrot, maybe, but with a white beak.”



Kyle nodded. “Can’t breathe too good through this, either. And I can’t do 
nothing when my nose itches.”



Mattie began to giggle, stopped herself by clapping a hand over her 
mouth. “Rosie,” Mattie said in mock dismay. “Did you hear what Kyle just 
said?”



“Yeah,” Rose shrugged her broad shoulders. “He said his nose itches. So 
what?”



“No, not that. I mean-“



“I don’t get it,” Kyle put in. “What’d I say?”



“You said,” Mattie explained patiently, “you can’t do ‘nothing.’ That’s a 
first for you. A month ago, before you started hanging out with us all 
day and all night long, you’d’ve said you can’t do ‘anything.’” She 
squealed. “We’re teachin’ you how to talk!”



Kyle lifted Mattie’s hand and kissed it. “I’d rather hang with you two 
than speak good English.”



“So let’s see that nose,” Rose said as the nurse came back in with a 
scissors, a small hand mirror, and some other gadgets. “Now you hold 
still, Mr. Denton,” the older woman cautioned him as she stepped behind 
him and lifted the scissors. 



“Will it look the same?” asked Mattie.



“It should,” the nurse assured her. Maybe it’ll be a little swollen. Only 
one way to find out.” And with one motion, she snipped through the band 
of gauze on the back of his head. She cut through a few strands of his 
long blonde hair, which drifted to the floor.



“And now-“ the nurse walked in front of him and gently pulled the bandage 
off his nose.



“Ta-dahh,” Rose said as she and Mattie broke into applause.



“How’s it look?”



The nurse shone a penlite up one nostril, then another. “So far, so 
good.” She reached out and, as gently as she could, wiggled his nose from 
side to side. Kyle winced a bit. “That hurt?”



“Only at the bridge.”



“Yeah. It’s healed nicely, but it’ll be a little tender up there for a 
few more weeks. Time to look in the mirror. I don’t want you to be 
scared, but it’s maybe just a little bit crooked. If you want to fix 
that, we’ll have to-”



“Rebreak it.” Kyle shook his head. “No thank you.” He took the mirror 
from her. His nose, hidden from the sunlight for a whole month, was a bit 
pale, and now bent over so slightly to the right, but other than that it 
seemed as good as new.



“Oh, baby, I get to see your whole face again.” Mattie turned to the 
nurse. “I’m his girlfriend. Can I kiss it?”



“Probably best if you didn’t, young lady. Give him a few more days.”



Mattie made a show of being disappointed. “Well, you’ll just hafta settle 
for this,” she leaned into him and kissed him on the mouth.



“Mattie Lee,” Rose began in mock disgust, “you should be glad he didn’t 
kick him in the-“



“That’s enough kidding around, Rosie,” Mattie said sharply.



Kyle smiled and forced a laugh for the nurse’s benefit. “Yeah. I mean, 
it’s bad enough I fell off that ladder. I’m glad some guy didn’t kick me 
while I was down.”



The nurse looked perplexed. “So which was it? A ladder or a fight?”



“Ladder,” Kyle and Mattie said at the same time. Rose, embarrassed, 
looked away, but not before she mouthed the word “sorry.”



“That’s what I thought. You don’t look like the kind of young fellow who 
goes around looking for fights.”



“That’s why I like him,” Mattie told the nurse.



The older woman smiled and nodded. “He’s a keeper, all right.” And with 
that, she let him go. As she prepared to leave, Mattie reminded her that 
Kyle had said the bridge of his nose still hurt, and asked if he 
shouldn’t have another prescription for painkillers. Rose turned away so 
the nurse wouldn’t see her smiling. Mattie, deliberately thinking about 
what had happened to Kyle, kept her poker face. Kyle looked confused, and 
then smiled and shook his head as he made the connection. “No, I don’t 
think-“ he began. Mattie stepped on his foot. “You sure, honey?” 



“Really.” He took her hand in both of his. It only hurt when she wiggled 
my nose. I think I can go for a few more days without doing that.” He 
turned again to the nurse. “Don’t need none.”



Mattie – never one to pass up a chance to get some painkillers - started 
to say something else. Rose cut her off. She knew Mattie had presented at 
the emergency room at least twice in the last year, one with a concussion 
and a broken finger from diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool 
while stoned; another time complaining vaguely of back pain. Both times, 
they’d sent her home with “something good,” Vicodin the first time and 
Percocet the second. Rose didn’t know whether this particular nurse would 
recognize Mattie Lee from her earlier visits, but she didn’t want her to 
get suspicious. And Rose certainly didn’t want the nurse to become 
suspicious of Kyle, who didn’t even use the stuff the way she and Mattie 
did. That would be just plain unfair, the sins of the girlfriend visited 
on the boyfriend.



“Did you hear what he said, Mattie Lee?” Rose asked, changing the 
subject. “’Don’t need none.’ That’s your influence, honey, your bad 
influence. When we first met him, he’d have said, ‘I don’t need any.’”



“I’m new in town,” Kyle explained to the nurse. “She’s teaching me a 
lot.”



“Next week,” Mattie told them both, “we’re gonna work on swearing.”



“Well, not in here, you won’t,” the nurse was laughing faintly as she 
said it. “You come on back if you feel any pain or if there’s any blood, 
you hear?”



“Yes, ma’am.”



Mattie looked at him in mock annoyance. “Kyle Denton, I ain’t done with 
you yet,” she said in her best lecturing tone. “What’s with this all 
‘ma’am’ stuff?”


XIX


“I can’t believe you didn’t get no more painkillers,” Mattie said, 
deliberately bumping against Kyle after they had left the clinic and were 
walking towards Rose’s car out on the street. “I love you, Kyle, but 
sometimes you’re so…fucking…” she broke off in confusion.



Kyle knew from her tone that she wasn’t really angry with him. He was 
laughing. “What? Finish the sentence.”



“Sometimes you’re so…” She broke off again and ended up shaking her head. 
“I don’t know what you are. I don’t know anybody who don’t like to take 
that stuff.”



“After all,” Rose concurred, “that’s how my brother makes his living.”



“Yeah, but…” For a moment, Kyle had considered asking Rose if that’s how 
Mike got sent to prison, but he didn’t. Mike himself seemed to look at 
his time inside the joint in a humorous light, but Kyle didn’t know how 
Rose would react to teasing on that subject. And besides, something else 
about Mattie’s hobby concerned him more. “People get addicted to that 
stuff,” he said, hoping he wasn’t moralizing. “Or it just stops working 
and you have to take more and more to get the same high. And sooner or 
later, your liver blows up.”



Rose used her share of drugs but she’d always preferred booze, which was 
relatively cheap and universally available. “I’ve tried to tell Mattie 
Lee about that,” she nodded. “It’s called ‘chasing the dragon.’”



“Great,” Mattie sighed. “The two’ve you are gonna gang up on me. A poor 
girl who’s in constant pain. Ever since I hit my head while swimming-“



“Honey,” Rose said patiently, “that don’t explain all your other pain. 
That toothache you got the summer before; the pain in your knee; the 
really bad cramps. And it sure as hell don’t explain why your back was so 
stiff the other day,” she winked at Mattie, who had clapped her hands 
over her ears and was humming to drown out Rose’s voice.



Rose, however, could sing louder than Mattie could hum. “’If any be 
offended by what I have to sing; then surely her own conscience applies 
the bitter sting.’” It was a line from an old Civil War song about 
highfalutin’ officers leading lives of privilege while poor brave 
enlisted men suffered in silence.



“All right, all right,” Mattie conceded. “But it’s like you said: Is 
there anyone in town - except Kyle, here, of course – who don’t use that 
stuff?”



“How about Ben White?” As the son of the City Engineer, Ben tried, a 
little harder than most of his friends, to act respectable.



“I’ve seen him high,” Mattie insisted. “Remember that party last summer, 
the one with the barbecue, at Tamara’s place?”



“I think that was pot. And in any case, he doesn’t use it all the time.”



“Rosie, the only person I know who don’t get high is your dad. He just 
gets drunk. I swear, he don’t know how to have fun.“ They had a laugh 
over that. 



“Speaking of which,” suggested Rose, “We’ve been promising Kyle here a 
midnight ride in my new car.”



“Can I take a rain check on that? I don’t want my mom to worry, and she’s 
gonna want to see what my nose looks like.”



“We don’t ride until late at night, so there’s time to show your new nose 
– your new crooked nose – off to your mom,” Mattie assured him. “And if 
you hang with us, you’re gonna be doing a whole lot of things that’ll 
make her worry.” And then, sounding more serious, “Kyle, this is 
something that me and Rose’ve done, night after night, for years. It’s 
part of who were are, how we live. You said you wanted to understand me. 
Come with us tonight.”



At about ten o’clock, after dinner, Mattie and Rose came for Kyle. There 
was a moment of awkward silence when Brian opened up the door. He didn’t 
invite them in – Mattie would have loved to see Kyle’s room – but he told 
them, more or less politely, that he would get his stepson. 



The girls doubted that Brian had had a change of heart toward them. When 
he’d spoken to them, he sounded as though he was trying to stifle his own 
anger. Rose understood why. Shortly after Kyle had returned home from the 
emergency room, his bloody, broken nose covered by the huge bandage, Tom 
Sullivan had had a few words with Brian. Tom calmly explained that Kyle 
had not fallen off a ladder. Even if he had, and landed directly on his 
nose, that wouldn’t explain the bruise on the back of his head. He 
pointed out that none of their neighbors had ever seen Kyle in a 
fistfight and that he wasn’t on McKinley High’s boxing team. Deputies 
Anderson and Sanchez, the two cops who had investigated the car crash, 
would know that Brian had a motive for breaking his nose. And yes, he 
told Brian in response to the bigger man’s question, he was indeed 
threatening him. The good news was that Brian simply had to leave Kyle 
alone. That was all the Sullivans wanted. But if anything further 
happened to Kyle, he would tell the Sheriff’s Department, the people at 
the courthouse where Brian worked, and anyone else who might be able to 
make trouble for Brian.  So far, thought Rose, her dad’s little speech 
seemed to be working.



Mattie embraced Kyle, and kissed him on his now slightly-crooked nose, as 
Brian shut the door behind him. “What do we do?” he asked as they headed 
towards Rose’s car.



“First off,” Mattie explained, “we get us something to drink. Then we go 
slow, get out of town, while we get a buzz on. Then, when we’re finally 
drunk - and far enough from town that no one can see us – we just go 
faster and faster, until we’re flying.”



“Wait…” Kyle seemed to be running this through his head as Mattie led him 
into the back seat and Rose secured herself in the front. “Driving under 
the-?”



“Influence, yeah,” Rose assured him. “Get us all in the right frame of 
mind,” added Rose. “Or we can get stoned, if you want.”



“But is that…safe?”



“’Course not, silly!” Mattie kissed him again. “It’s better than that; 
it’s fun!”



Kyle didn’t look terribly convinced. Rose squeezed his shoulder gently. 
“Don’t you worry, Kyle. We’ve been doing this since we was fifteen. We’ve 
never got pulled over, never had an accident – not unless you count that 
time Mattie Lee puked in the front seat of my brother’s car. We’re going 
someplace where there’s no other drivers, nothing to hit.”



“That’s right,” Mattie nodded. “I love you, baby, don’t you know that?”



“Of course I do.”



“And there’s no way I’d let you do something where you could get hurt. 
Just sit back, do what we do, and enjoy it.” She leaned closer to him and 
whispered, gently and quietly, so Rose wouldn’t hear, “you were scared 
that other night, too.”



“You’re right.” She was talking, of course, about the first night they’d 
made love. Kyle, for reasons he still didn’t understand, had been afraid 
of Mattie – first afraid to look at her naked as she climbed into bed 
beside him; afraid that he wouldn’t know what to do; and then afraid he 
would hurt her by touching her wrong. But he hadn’t hurt her, of course; 
and now he was in the closest, most precious relationship of his life. 
So, once again, he let himself follow Mattie’s lead, trying to relax as 
the car took off with a roar.

Their first stop was at Duke’s Liquor and Beverage Company, a large, 
seedy-looking store a block or two from Rubidoux Park. Like so many of 
the stores and buildings in town, it seemed to date from the 1950’s. 
That, Mattie felt, was one of the best things about her home town: It was 
a timeless place, where the past blended into the present and nothing 
ever quite died. She knew her own parents, and their friends had gone 
into this very place to buy their booze when they were Mattie’s age. She 
was sure her grandparents had done the same thing. And maybe someday, an 
unruly teenage girl, a beautiful Irish-English hybrid with Mattie’s pale 
skin and freckles and Kyle’s golden hair and deep blue eyes, would sneak 
out of the Dentons’ trailer and get something at Duke’s to drink with her 
friends.



To Kyle, it didn’t look quite so inviting. “Be 21 or Be Gone,” warned a 
large sign hung on the door. Underneath was a smaller sign with a wordier 
warning, explaining that the store respected the laws of the State of 
Missouri, carded all customers, and would sell no alcohol or tobacco to 
minors. Yet another sign reminded the kids that possession or use of 
false I.D. was a misdemeanor.



“You have one of these, don’t you?” Rose asked him as she took a fair 
likeness of a Missouri driver’s license out of her Velcro wallet. The 
picture was Rose, all right, but it proclaimed her to be Rosemary Ann 
O’Brien, age 22, of Jefferson City.



“Well…” 



“I didn’t think so,” Rose shook her head reprovingly. “Go see Val Starkey 
– he’s in your history class, and he’ll take care of you. Or just give me 
your picture and fifty bucks and I’ll get it for you, if you don’t want 
to get your hands dirty.”



Once inside, Kyle saw why Rose liked this place. The dimly-lit store had 
the largest collection of cheap booze he’d ever seen. Rack after rack of 
Thunderbird, Night Train, Mad Dog 20/20, even a few flavors of 
Manischewitz - and of course Rose’s favorite, Old Traveler. Enormous 
bottles and cans of malt liquor sat cooling in the refrigerators on the 
side walls. The hard stuff – vodka, whiskey, Everclear, and Galen’s Grain 
Alcohol – was stocked on the shelves in back, behind the proprietor-



-the proprietor, who Kyle had met once before. A tall, fat, crew-cut, 
baby-faced hulk of a man, wearing another loud Hawaiian shirt and smoking 
another smelly cigar as he listened to a Cardinals game on the radio and 
flipped through a newspaper. “Tell your daddy to go fuck himself,” the 
man had said to him the last time they met, before blowing a cloud of 
smoke in Kyle’s face and knocking him down.



Mattie, holding a small green basket that was now full of bottles of Cave 
Man malt liquor, saw Kyle freeze and could feel him tense. “What’s wrong, 
sugar?”



“That…man-“ Mattie knew Kyle had had some bad experiences in town because 
of Brian, but he hadn’t told her about that one encounter. 



“Him?” Mattie shrugged. “He’s nice. Don’t you worry about those signs in 
the window; it’s all for show in case some cop walks in.”



“Maybe, but…” Kyle whispered the rest to her, facing her so that the man 
wouldn’t recognize him. Mattie giggled, then clamped her little hand 
around his wrist and began pulling him forward. “No, you don’t,” she 
said, her voice rising slightly. “He’s your neighbor now. I’m gonna 
reintroduce you. 



“Mister Garvey…? Hey, Mr. Garvey!” By now, Mattie was talking – 
practically shouting - loud enough to be heard anywhere in the store. The 
fat man pulled the cigar out of his mouth and smiled and waved at her. “I 
got a surprise for you,” she continued. “We got us Brian Donovan’s 
stepson here!”



“Who?”



“Brian Donovan,” Mattie continued, as Kyle looked this way and that for 
Rose, hoping she could quiet his girlfriend down. “You know, the guy who 
tried to shut you down!”



Kyle looked up and was dismayed – but not terribly surprised – to see 
Garvey scowling at him. “Well, you bring him on back here, girl. I wanna 
talk to him. Again.” He spoke with the same lilting accent as Mattie and 
Rose and most of the other natives of town, three parts Southern and one 
part Irish.



“Mattie,” Kyle begged her softly, “please stop this, honey, okay?” But 
she wouldn’t. She went right on talking, in a loud, gay voice he’d never 
heard her use before, as she dragged him the rest of the way to the 
counter. “And he’s my boyfriend now. I love him, and we’re gonna get 
married just as soon as we’re done with school.”



By now, they were at the counter, with Garvey less than two feet away 
from Kyle. The fat man, still scowling, took another drag on his cigar, 
and Kyle waited for another cloud of smoke to blow into his eyes.



To Kyle’s great surprise, Garvey turned his head, blew the white smoke 
harmlessly to one side, and set the cigar down in the ashtray. He reached 
toward Kyle – and it was a moment before the boy realized that the man 
was not trying to grab his shirt again, but merely offering his hand. 
Kyle took it. 



“When Jim and Joan Sullivan told me about everything that’s happened – I 
mean, what  you did and what your dad did to you-“



“Stepdad,” Mattie corrected gently.



“Stepdad, yeah, I knew I’d given you a load of shit you never deserved. 
You’re a victim, not a villain.”



“That’s all right,” Kyle said, even though he wasn’t quite sure how he 
felt. Garvey had gone out of his way to embarrass him, to frighten him, 
the last time they’d met.



“Do you know what that was all about?”



“No, sir.” Kyle had asked Brian about it twice. The first time was just 
hours after Garvey had accosted him, as he related the story to Loretta 
and Brian while trying not to break down in front of his mother and 
stepfather. The second time was about a minute before Brian had broken 
his nose.



“He told me – in front of about twenty other people – that I was selling 
alcohol to minors. He told me he was gonna get my liquor license 
revoked.” The fat man shook his head. “I don’t sell no liquor to minors; 
and even if I did, what business it is of his?” As he spoke, Rose brought 
her purchases – a bottle of Old Crow whiskey and a six-pack of 
strawberry-flavored Old Traveler – up to the counter. Garvey rang her up 
with only the briefest of glances at her fake ID. “You can’t go into a 
new neighborhood and start telling everyone else what to do,” he 
finished.



“My mom and I wish he didn’t do things like that.”



“Well, you kept him from making that kind of trouble for Rose and Tom 
Sullivan. I guess you’re okay.” He put the whiskey bottle in a small, 
brown paper bag and the Old Traveler in a plastic shopping bag before 
handing them back to Rose. “But if he keeps this up, he’s gonna get in 
real trouble. With all respect to you and your mom, I’m just waiting for 
him to do something wrong. See how he likes it if I call the police.”



“Whatever you do,” said Mattie, as she put her bottles of malt liquor on 
the counter, “don’t do nothing that’d hurt Kyle. I want him as my 
neighbor; I like him where he is.” She kissed him, then dug out her own 
wallet and a Missouri State ID proclaiming her to be Tamara Allen, age 
twenty-one. (Tamara, Kyle later learned, was a much older cousin of 
Mattie’s who had left Rubidoux at the age of eighteen to pursue an acting 
career in Los Angeles. She rarely returned home or called – sending only 
the occasional postcard or E-mail bragging about how wonderful everything 
was in Hollywood. Mattie explained that Tamara thought of herself as 
having escaped her backwards hometown and built a new life for herself in 
the big city. Ironically, though, Tamara was almost always cast in 
supporting roles as a poor uneducated Southern girl, often one living in 
a trailer park, or as a dustbowl Okie.)



“Now don’t you drink and drive, now,” Garvey cautioned them as she shook 
Kyle’s hand a final time and went back to his newspaper.



“I still don’t like him,” Kyle said to Mattie as soon as the door had 
closed behind them. “If he hurts Brian – and I can see why he wants to – 
he also hurts my mom. And me. Who do you think is paying rent on our 
trailer?”



“Honey,” Mattie took his hand in hers. “That’s all over. He tells a lot 
of hero stories – about how he’s gonna do this and do that. He ain’t 
gonna do nothing unless Brian comes after him again. And I hear Brian’s 
on pretty good behavior these days.”





“I wouldn’t know,” Kyle shrugged. “I haven’t gotten any complaints for 
the last couple weeks – at least no one’s blown smoke in my face – but I 
don’t know what he’s up to. He doesn’t talk to me much anymore.”



“What about your mom?” Rose was already uncorking the bottle of Old Crow. 
“Does she remember you’re her son?”



Kyle honestly wasn’t sure. His mother hadn’t exchanged three words with 
him in as many days. “She doesn’t know what to do,” he said finally. 



Rose took a swig of the cheap whiskey. “How about standing by her own 
flesh and blood?”



“It’s not that easy,” Kyle explained patiently. “She loves me…but she 
needs Brian. You think I can pay the rent on that trailer? I’m hoping 
someday...” he trailed off.



“What, sugar?”



“She’ll find someone else who can take care of her. Maybe take her back 
to Jefferson City, to a home like the one she had when my Dad was alive. 
That’s what she deserves.”



Rose shook her head. “Not if she turned her back on you,” she said 
sternly. “You should move out. Once high school is over. You could live 
with Mike, or maybe even with Mattie Lee.”



“I’d like that,” volunteered Mattie.



“And your mother can stand by Brian and pretend you’re not her son-“



“Rose,” Mattie said gently.



“-until death-“ 



“Rose,” she said it more sharply this time.



“-do they part.”



“Rose!” Mattie was yelling now, trying to drown out her friend’s voice. 
For a moment she was afraid that Kyle would begin crying, as he had on 
the first night they’d made love.



“I know what you’re trying to say, Rose,” Kyle said quietly, “but I’m 
just gonna go home if you keep talking about my mother that way. It has 
nothing to do with you – I like you. But she needs me. And she’s all I 
have left of…of the life before.”



“I’m sorry,” Rose sounded more defensive than repentant. “I won’t say 
those things about her again, Kyle. But I don’t like her, ‘cause she’s 
hurting you. You deserve better.”



They had reached Rose’s car. “We’ll make it up to you, baby,” Mattie 
promised as she followed Kyle into the back seat. “I love you, and Rose 
likes you, and her folks are crazy about you. And your mom…she’ll come 
around. She’ll remember how you stood by her.”



“I hope so,” Kyle nodded. “But Rose is right. Kind of, anyway. I’d get 
mad at my mom myself, if I didn’t need her so much.”



“You’re too kind,” Mattie kissed him gently.



“All right,” Rose said from the front seat. “I’m sorry – again - for what 
I said. I think we all need to relax. And Kyle, here, needs to have some 
fun. Now what we’re gonna do is be real good boys and girls – no 
drinking, no speeding – until we’re out of town. Then we’re gonna take 
you on the ride of your life and get you wasted besides. Mattie Lee, I 
want you to hold onto him real tight to make sure he don’t jump out the 
window.” That brought a laugh from both of her passengers. “And Kyle, 
Mattie Lee tells me you’re still not drinking enough. I just had the car 
fixed; I just washed it; so I don’t want you puking all over the backseat 
if you have a little too much. Here-“ She opened the glove compartment, 
which was crammed with papers, CDs, napkins, and at least two small 
metal-and-glass pipes, and took out a white paper bag bearing the words 
UNITED AIR LINES and handed it back to Kyle. “Just for you.”


XX.



True to her word, Rose did not drink, and carefully observed the traffic 
limits and stop lights, as they drove down Hewes Avenue and then Pyrite 
Street. She got on the ramp for the I-44 East at a safe and law-abiding 
thirty-five miles an hour, speeding up only to sixty miles an hour. There 
were, she proudly explained, an unusual number of drunken drivers in 
Rubidoux, and the town’s streets and nearby highways were carefully 
watched by the Missouri Highway Patrol.



“But there’s whole stretches of highway nearby, with nobody and nothing 
on ‘em, that they can’t watch,” she added, winking. “Look behind you. 
Look out the back.” Kyle did. The lights of Rubidoux were only a faint 
blue glow on the horizon. He could see only one or two cars behind them. 
“As soon as those lights disappear, I’m gonna hit warp speed. But while 
we’re waiting for that-“ she reached under the seat, took another swig of 
Old Crow, and passed the bottle back to Mattie. Mattie, using a small 
bottle opener on a key chain, opened one of the bottles of Cave Man and 
held it between her legs. She took a shot of whiskey, winced slightly, 
and washed it down with the malt liquor. Then she turned to Kyle. “Your 
turn.” Kyle looked reluctant, started to protest. “You did so good the 
night we met. You can do it.”



He lifted the bottle and took a sip just as Rose ran over a pothole. The 
sip turned into a gulp, and the next thing he knew Kyle was grimacing and 
coughing. Mattie, laughing, pounded him on the back, then brought the 
cold bottle of Cave Man to his lips. The malt liquor itself was pretty 
strong, with a rather evil taste of its own that reminded him of cloves, 
but after two swallows he had stopped coughing and his eyes had stopped 
tearing. Not knowing what to do with the whiskey bottle, Kyle handed it 
back to Mattie, who passed it forward to Rose. Rose took another large 
swig of her own and then put it down in the large, foam-insulated 
beverage holder in the front seat.



“Now look behind you,” Rose directed. “What do you see?” Kyle turned 
around and looked out the back window. “Nothing.”



“No lights?”



“No.”



“No other cars?”



“No.”



“Then here…we…go!” Rose stamped on the accelerator. The car made a 
roaring noise and pitched forward as the speedometer leapt from sixty-
five or so to ninety. Kyle thought of a plane accelerating as it sped 
down a runway, preparing to leave the ground.



“Hold on, kiddies.” The road ahead of them, visible only through the 
Camaro’s headlights, had begun to curve. Rose, who had driven that 
stretch of road more than a hundred times since she was fifteen, actually 
sped up as she moved into the fast lane and took the curve. Mattie and 
Kyle (neither of whom were belted in) were thrown against the driver’s 
side, Mattie ending up in Kyle’s lap, almost knocking him onto the floor. 
She whooped.



As the curve straightened out, throwing Mattie and Kyle over to the 
passenger’s side, Rose turned on the radio. After getting static when she 
punched the first button and a warbling whistle when she pressed the 
second, she got a song with a heavy, pounding beat on her third try. 



“Perfect!” Mattie shouted. “Leave it there, Rosie.”



Kyle, who was beginning to feel the effects of the booze, nodded his 
head, trying to keep time with the beat. “What’s that?”



“You’re kidding, right?” Rose took her eyes off the road to stare at him.



“That’s ‘Kashmir,’” Mattie explained, “by Led Zeppelin.”



“Oh…sure,” Kyle said vaguely, as Mattie and Rose exchanged pitying 
glances. Whatever it was, though, he liked it – the steady rhythm, the 
exotic instruments, the way the music built itself to a climax again and 
again. He liked even more that he was here with Mattie Lee, listening to 
it with her as she clung to him and their car shot through the darkened 
countryside.



“Hold it, hold it,” Rose barked, slowing down, as a cluster of lights 
came into view on the left side of the road. “Roll your window down. The 
passenger window.” Kyle cranked it down an inch or two; Rose instructed 
him to lower it all the way. A cool wind buffeted them from outside. 
Before Kyle could ask why she wanted the windows open, Mattie reached 
over him, sticking both arms, middle fingers extended, out the window 
towards the lights. In the seat in front of her, Rose had taken both 
hands off the wheel to make the same gesture.



“That there,” she gestured at the lights as she and Mattie cranked up 
their windows again, “is the next town over. Bavaria. They’re our 
enemies,” she said matter of factly.



Kyle had never heard of the place. “What’d they do?”



“What didn’t they do?!” Rose asked rhetorically as Mattie began laughing 
again. “Legend has it they fought for the Union. And then, during World 
War Two, they tried to fight for the Germans. Or at least spy for them. 
That’s where they’re from, originally, they come from Germany around the 
time our people came over from Ireland. They’re a bunch of Nazis, Aryan 
Nation types. They don’t like Catholics, nobody who’s not just like them. 
They shoot at us when they drive by our town on the frickin’ freeway; 
they beat up our football team – I don’t mean in a game, neither; they 
try to control the pill trade…” she took her right hand off the steering 
wheel and began counting off Bavaria’s many faults on her fingers.



Mattie nodded gravely. “They vandalized our church last year,” she added. 
“Stove in the big stained glass window, if you can believe it.”



“Is the whole town like that?”



“Pretty much. I know you don’t like sayin’ bad things about a whole group 
of people – but I ain’t never met one who was any good. Or one who was 
even nice.”



Kyle wasn’t buying it. “What if there’re three good friends there – a 
sixteen-year-old girl, her boyfriend, and her best friend – and they just 
like to go for long drives like us-“



Rose held up her hand, signaling for him to stop. “I’d be tryin’ to run 
‘em off the road. The problem with you, Kyle, is that you don’t think 
there’s no bad people out there. Even with Brian, you try to make excuses 
for him. One of these days that’s gonna get you killed.”



“We just want to keep you safe, baby,” Mattie leaned into Kyle as the 
lights of Bavaria disappeared into the distance beyond the back window. 
“Punch it, Rosie.”



“Here we go again, kids!” Rose gave a Rebel yell as the car sped back up 
to eighty, ninety, and then a hundred miles an hour as it shot across the 
Salem Plateau. After another ten or fifteen minutes at this speed, the 
freeway narrowed to a two-lane road, and became almost completely 
straight. It seemed to stretch directly in front of their car, all the 
way to the horizon. In the distance, looming over both sides of the road 
were the Ozarks, silhouetted black against the faint bluish glow of the 
moon. And above them was the Milky Way, of little interest to someone 
like Rose but a beautiful sight to Mattie and Kyle. (Kyle saw far more 
stars on that night than he’d seen on the clearest of nights in Jefferson 
City.)



A small white sign flew past the Camaro on the passenger side. In the 
split second between its appearance and its disappearance, Kyle, a little 
nervous about the whole trip to begin with, thought he made out the 
numbers “65” and the word “enforced.” Rather than asking Rose if she 
oughtn’t to slow down a bit (a rhetorical question, almost a warning, one 
he was sure she’d resent), he asked if the State Police patrolled such an 
isolated stretch of road.



“I guess,” Rose shrugged. “Who cares?”



So much for diplomacy. “Well, what’re they gonna to do you if they catch 
you going a hundred miles an hour?”



“Same as they always do, sugar,” Mattie assured him. “Nothing.”



“That’s right. Honey, we must’ve done this a hundred times. You don’t 
want speed near the cities or the towns, no way, but who cares what we do 
in the middle of nowhere? Watch this-“ Rose turned on her high beams and, 
to Kyle’s horror, swerved off the road, began to drive on the wide strip 
of gravel running alongside it, and punched the accelerator again. Within 
seconds, thick dust enveloped the Camaro like a gray mist, taking the 
softly-glowing Ozarks and the Milky Way and everything else with it. For 
ten full seconds they were flying blind. Kyle clung to Mattie Lee for 
dear life, but the girls seemed to take it all in stride. And why not, 
reflected Kyle: Mattie and Rose were happiest when they were off in their 
own private world – a world which he had now joined.