The sky was gray with morning when she heard someone calling to her from the screened door. She knew it was Baptiste. She recognized his hard, insistent voice. She pulled on her skirt and slipped her arms into a blouse. She stepped out on the porch and frowned at him.

“Louise, don’t be mad,” he said. “I’ve missed you. I’ve brought you a surprise.” He disappeared behind the house and came back with his horse. Champagne was a beautiful horse, a quarter horse stallion that everyone envied. Baptiste had several horses but he knew this horse was her favorite. She could see the sun over the mountains, golden trails of light lit the high hills. Her grandmother was still sleeping but she would be up soon, would have been up hours earlier had she not waited up for Louise to come home the night before. Baptiste was on the horse in one easy movement. He reached for her.

“Come on,” he said. “Ride with me.”

She thought about Jules Bart, drunk and sleeping still. Men, Louise thought, were all the same. “Before I come with you,” she said, “we have to get one thing straight.”

Baptiste bent forward to hear her.

“If you ever harm anyone in my family again,” she said, “I’ll kill you.”

He leaned back on Champagne and smiled at her, and it came to Louise that he was different. He hadn’t been drinking.

“OK, Louise,” he said. “I believe you would.”

She grabbed his hand then and he pulled her up on the broad, bare back of the horse. She hugged his waist tight and dug her knees into the barrel of the horse. She thought for one brief moment and then she clutched his balls hard enough to make him squeal. “I’m serious,” she said. “I’ll kill you dead.”

“I understand,” he said. “I get your point.” She let go of his crotch then, and Champagne was running. Baptiste slapped his thighs and Champagne ran faster. They were running dead speed, the ground passed quickly beneath them: pale rocks, twigs, sage, the highway, the railroad tracks gleamed beneath them. She felt light. Her hair whipped her face. She had never ridden a horse so fast. She heard the spray of gravel, the hard ground was passing. She held her breath and held on.

Charlie Kicking Woman THE HARD TRUTHS