Marva Jo laughed. “And I bet you dropped down on your knees and apologized and made nice, didn’t you?”

“I plowed right into his house and told him he was a horse’s ass,” Liz told her. “His best friend is this awful woman named Becca and she hates me. At least Blaze treated Raylen like an equal. Becca looks down on me like she’s so much better than I am.”

Marva Jo laughed even harder. “How’d he react to a woman calling him names?”

Liz had backed herself into a corner. She took a deep breath and spit it out. “When I went into his house, I saw his hat on a rack, so I slapped it on my head and plowed right into the bathroom like a bulldozer. He was in the shower, so I threw back the curtain and we had our fight right there. When I got my piece said, he pulled me into the shower, clothes and all, and kissed me.”

Marva Jo really guffawed. “Now that’s a man I could like. He’ll keep you on your toes. What happened to the hat?”

“He pitched it on the vanity before he jerked me in the shower.”

Marva Jo couldn’t stop laughing.

Liz didn’t think the story was all that funny. “What did Blaze tell you about Colleen?”

Marva Jo swiped at her eyes with the cuff of her jacket. “He is smitten. Something I never thought I’d say about him, but after he told us about where you work, that girl was all he wanted to talk about. Here we are. I’ll run the cord out to the main box and plug it in. You check the inside and out for burned bulbs. If it’s all good, we’ll snap it down.”

Liz knew exactly what to do, and when she’d made sure everything worked, she yelled out across the lawn where Marva Jo was talking to Tressa, “It’s all good. Where we goin’ next?”

“To the midway. Fred needs someone to unpack and hang stuffed animals,” Marva Jo said.

Liz hopped down from the porch where she’d danced at least twice a week for the past decade and walked with her mother toward the middle of the grounds. She’d always liked the Bowie gig. They had lots of room, and the grass was nice. She didn’t like playing in Denton where they set up on concrete. Spilled drinks and food were messier to clean up on concrete than grass, so they had to hose it down every morning. When they set up on dirt and grass there was little cleanup except for picking up paper. The birds ate what food was dropped, and the ground soaked up the liquids.

Marva Jo hopped up into the back of a semi and handed Liz a cardboard box. “Are you as smitten with Raylen as Blaze is with Colleen?”

She held the box in her arms and said, “Maybe. Stack another one on top. They aren’t heavy. I can carry two or three.”