But Lady Mae didn’t move. She stood there, her feet dug into the ground, her hips squared to the crowd. This was her chance to show the residents she couldn’t be beaten. She leaned forward on her front leg to brace herself against the first blows that were coming her way. She balled her fists and steeled her shoulders. She was no match for all the residents, but she’d put up a fight. Her mother had fought, and Lady Mae still saw it as clear as day. She had kicked and punched and thrashed and when they’d bludgeoned her, she had called to her daughter the words promise me always; those words, so puzzling and permanent, carried Lady Mae to sleep nearly every night.

“Arbuckle,” she said. “What if we did?”

“Are you saying…?”

“Think so.”

The sound of the residents’ feet grew as they shuffled through the red dust of the alleyway toward her. Some had canes, others crutches propping them up. They lugged their good feet along the road, swung their dismembered legs forward, pulled their bodies closer and closer to Lady Mae. Arbuckle leaned his head to hers, and they stood as one as the residents inched forward. She could feel Arbuckle’s heart racing against her back.

The children passed them first. They did not look up, did not speak as they circled ghostlike around Lady Mae and Arbuckle. They made no physical contact; Lady Mae felt only the breeze off their bodies as they moved. The others were almost upon them; she could see their sunken, thirsty eyes. The adults were only a few feet away and Lady Mae felt the heat coming off their filthy, sweaty skin. They were old and worn, worked hard by the Deputies for little in return.

“Do you mean…” he said as he huddled in close.

“Arbuckle,” Lady Mae said, and then the crowd dispersed all around them, weaving in and out of each other like snakes, silent and knowing and satisfied.

13

They returned to Lady Mae’s shack both soaked in sweat. They had walked quickly, arriving with an unearthed determination. Once safely inside, Lady Mae bolted the door and put her finger up to her lips. Then she moved to close the windows and pull the curtains shut, and when she was satisfied, she sat upon the sofa. Only then, in the hot dim of the room, did she speak.

“I mean it, Arbuckle. I want to go. Up there,” she said and nodded to the east. “Where you were.”

Arbuckle wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, and when he brought his arm back down his eyes were wide. “You mean it now?” he asked softly.

“Never meant nothing more than I do right now,” she told him. “Don’t think I can do it no more. I can’t just up and go to the depot tomorrow as if it were nothing but an ordinary day. Not after old Edmonds—you see him in there? What’s to stop him from doing something?”