Eddie Taylor came out of the bar and whistled at her. Jules Bart glanced at her and then got in the pickup with Eddie. At that moment, she hated Eddie Taylor with his funny pinched nose he claimed was snapped when the hooves of a bucking horse had punched him in a fall. Whenever Eddie told the story he spoke with such serious eyes Louise could tell he was lying. Louise could see them a long way down the road. She watched the truck as it blended with the thinning trees that lined the hills to Perma.

It was the first summer Eddie Taylor had let her into the bar. He had poured her a beer so cold it made her teeth sing.

“Don’t matter your age,” he had told her. “Your looks will boost business.” He had poured her another beer, then another, until the bar air spun cool and sweet over her head and the warm talk buzzed her ears.

Eddie had slammed some nickels into the jukebox and she had danced with a rancher who snagged his work-worn hands on the seat of her skirt. It was her first time in the bar drinking, and school was out. Baptiste seemed gone and the hot day sun leaned through the barroom window. She felt a new strength. She half hoped Jules Bart would find her there, that he would pull her up to a good jukebox tune.

That afternoon when she left the bar Eddie Taylor had walked her to the screen door, and with a wet smile, told her to come back. And she did go back, sometimes to have a pop, sometimes for a beer, but always with the hope she would see Jules Bart up close. She became a bar regular, returning so often Charlie Kicking Woman began to scout for her there.

It was a cold night without wind, a rare summer night cracked by winter, the next time she saw the cowboy. She had counted the days between seeing him, had marked each chance time on the outhouse wall with the stub of her cigarette. The cowboy had become a way to lift routine for her. Jules Bart was deliberate and slow that night. He no longer moved the way she remembered him, the way that relaxed her. He wasn’t the man she had watched in the fields. He had become almost ugly and dull in the gray bar light. It was a new side to him that fascinated her with disappointment. She wondered how some men could change so quickly, become someone different because the night was long or lonesome, or because they had had too much to drink.