I sit at the bar and watch. Many eyes from the shadowy depths of the bar follow her every move. She has all the attention in the room. She looks so confident, it’s hard to believe she was ever stupid enough to be with a guy like Mike Lyle. Soon enough, there’s another five on top of hers, put there by a guy with long sideburns and a leather vest and a red scar on his cheek. She chalks her pool cue. As she leans over the pool table to break the triangle, she shoves her hair back and it catches the light. She lifts her eyes to meet mine and winks at me. I smile back at her. This is going to be good. I spent many hours in the basement of her little home by the highway, watching her play pool. Of all her brothers, Ruby was the only one who could ever beat her.

All of a sudden, it hits me: I won. We’re gone, and Mike Lyle has no idea where we are. We’re safe now, and we’re free. I went way behind enemy lines, and I won the whole damn war. I harpooned the white whale, and now I am the white whale. A sense of victory washes over me that is so pure and so sweet and so unfamiliar that I’m not really sure how to handle it. For me, this is the high honor roll. I turn around to face the bartender.

“You might want to turn that smile down a couple notches,” the bartender observes. “You don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I’m not afraid of trouble,” I tell him, still smiling.

“No?”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“If that’s the case, there’s a guy at the end of the bar who wants to buy you a drink.”

“Okay.”

Soon a man named Smokey is sitting on the stool next to me. Smokey is not young. Smokey has a very large black cowboy hat, which when he lifts it up to say hello, reveals a very shiny bald head. His hands are so smooth and brown they look like they’re carved out of wood.

“You two not from around here?” Smokey asks me.

“No.”

“Travelin’ through?”

“Basically.”

“Your friend sure knows how to handle a pool cue.”