She watched him think of how to answer her, then decide not to. She liked him for that. No empty platitudes like the sweaty minister at the food pantry who talked up the rewards of heaven while sneaking peeks down her flannel shirt. She didn’t say anything because she needed the mac and cheese. Caught between pride and hunger, she didn’t have much choice.

John Deere tipped a thumb toward the door and his coat fell open. She caught a glimpse of a gun on his belt, not unusual in Montana, where half the population carried a pistol and the rest had a rifle in their truck or at home. Somehow she knew he wasn’t a lawman. “I need to fuel up, too,” he said. “Sign outside says pay in advance?”

Bogaloosa had long ago decided that it was cheaper to be open all night, paying his employees next to nothing, rather than upgrade the ancient pumps to self-serve automatic.

Helene picked up the cheap binoculars chained to the counter and peered out the window into the relentless night. A big four-door pickup was parked on the far side of the pumps, hitched to a long windowless cargo trailer, a newer truck than most driving that lonely road. Judging from the mud splatter and dead bugs, he’d come a long way. She wondered where he’d been and where he was going.

“Gas is free today,” she said. “You want cigarettes? A pint of Jim Beam? Video rentals? On the house, I won’t say a word.”

He took off his hat and used the brim to scratch his head. He had good hair, blond and wavy. Movie star hair, her mom would have called it. He regarded her steadily. “I guess you’re some kind of hard case,” he said.

“Damn right I am.” She stuck her chin out. She had her daddy’s gun in her bag. “You want to find out, you just try me.”

He smiled then, a bright ray of sun that warmed her in the cold night. “Honey, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Most men couldn’t stop staring at her tits, full-grown and bothersome in more ways than one, no matter how she tried to hide them under baggy clothes. Back when she’d still gone to school, she watched the way older girls used their bodies, how they arched their backs and twitched their hips to get boys to look at them. By the time Helene turned thirteen, she had the opposite problem. Too many men paying too much attention, thinking they could reach out and touch her any time they wanted. It only got worse every year. The late-night customers, the food-pantry preacher, the old farts at the library, goddamn Bogaloosa. Especially Bogaloosa.