Cover

Title Page

Dedication

In memory of Eric Matthew Hailey

(1973–2020)

Mazzy Brower

I ANSWERED THE PHONE, AND THERE WAS A WOMAN’S VOICE on the other end, a voice that I didn’t recognize. “Is this Frances Budge?” she asked, and I was certain it was a telemarketer, because nobody called me Frances. In the living room, my seven-year-old daughter had made her own set of drums, including a tin plate for a cymbal, so it was loud as hell in the house, with this ting-bang-ting-ting-bang rhythm she had going on. I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested,” and started to hang up, but the woman, understanding that I was done with her, tried her best to pull me in.

“The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers,” she said, her voice rising in pitch, and I froze. I nearly dropped the phone. And together, in harmony, we both completed the phrase, “We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”

“So you know it,” the woman said.

“I’ve heard it before, yeah, of course,” I said, already trying to run away. I could feel the world spinning around me. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, fuck, no in my head, a kind of spiraling madness, because, you know, it had been so long ago. Because, I guess, I’d let myself think that no one would ever find out. But she’d found me. And I was already trying to figure out how to get lost again, to stay lost.

“I’m writing an article for the New Yorker,” she told me. “My name is Mazzy Brower, and I’m an art critic. I’m writing about the Coalfield Panic of 1996.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Mom!” my daughter Junie was shouting. “Listen! Listen to me! Listen! It’s ‘Wipe Out,’ right? Doesn’t this sound just like ‘Wipe Out’? Mom? Listen!”

“And I think you made it happen,” the woman said, treading carefully. Her voice sounded nice, honest.

“You think I made it?” I said, almost laughing, but it was true. I had made it. Not just me, but I was part of it. Me and one other person.

“I’m almost one hundred percent certain that it was you,” Mazzy Brower said.