The sun had moved behind them, a yielding light now that carried a tint of coolness. She began to believe she was there by herself. Alone, listening to her heart, the sound of far water.

Louise THE FALLING PLACE

She left Baptiste Yellow Knife at Dixon with the idea that she would head to Missoula and shake Charlie. She was surprised Baptiste had told her to go, had let her go. She thought if she could stay in Missoula for a while she could head back home and have a better chance of fooling Mr. Bradlock. She didn’t get a ride right away and she was worried Charlie would spot her on the roadside with her thumb up.

The stranger had picked her up at the hour she imagined her grandmother was washing her face at the spring. The man was tall, big-boned, and broad hipped. His thinning hair was widow peaked and made his strain-lined forehead longer. After each curve he patted the steering wheel with the palm of his hand but said nothing to Louise. She closed her eyes to see the green edge of water clearing in the pool of her grandmother’s hands. The gray dusk of cottonwood trunks turning the color of salt clay.

She could feel night cooling the road. The muggy smell of nettles and jimsonweed hissed through a window crack and made her lonesome. It was dusk and growing dark fast. It seemed things were moving closer. The fields and the highway, the trees and the river blended toward sky and to earth again. She put her hand to her forehead and pulled back her hair. Eventually they would find her and they would take her back to Thompson Falls, back to the scaled face of Mrs. Finger, the tight frown of Arliss who would find a way to blame Louise for their problems with Warner Phillips. She remembered how Mr. Moxy, the music teacher, once put his hand on her shoulder and in a hushed voice more intimate than a whisper told her she could pass for white and had hooked his finger and nipped Louise’s breast as if he were cuffing her chin to be proud. She had never told anyone about Mr. Moxy. She had learned to take care of her own problems. She kneed him hard in the crotch. He left her alone after that incident, although he would smile at her at times, a cool glimpse of a smile as if they shared a secret. They could take her back to Thompson Falls a hundred times. She would not stay there.

Her throat pulsed at the collar. She shifted in the seat and reached back quickly and unhooked the top button of her blouse. From a side glance the man smiled at her and when she turned to smile back he looked away. The green panel light of the car lit his pale brown hair, the angular planes of his cheekbones. He had looked older when he had stopped to offer a ride. Now she saw the smooth skin of his face, how his chin shined from razor burn. His forehead had relaxed with the hum of tires, the long straight road, the distance of a day passing toward evening.