Smokey and I watch Grimshaw sink the eight ball, and then another guy puts a ten on top of the fives that are now hers. I get my groove back for my independent study and ask Smokey a couple of questions about upward mobility. He says his parents were wheat farmers in South Dakota and as soon as his feet could reach the pedals, he was running a combine fourteen hours a day, and as far as he’s concerned, it’s been upward ever since. I try a guy a couple stools to my right, but he just shakes his head. At closing time, our rodeo rider takes us to a doublewide trailer, gets his mother out of bed, and she throws sleeping bags for us down on the living room carpet. When we get up in the morning, there are about half a dozen kids around the kitchen table, and one old man asleep with his chin on his chest. Grimshaw and I squeeze in, and Doris—that’s the mother’s name—feeds us fried rice and fried eggs and fried bread. I think she even fried the coffee.

Grimshaw looks up at Doris from across the table and smiles. “I’m from a big family, too,” she says. “I’m the youngest.”

The old man wakes up. He lifts up his cup of coffee. He clears his throat. “Here’s to Mother,” he croaks. He raises his coffee cup. I reach across the table and touch cups with him and Grimshaw.

After the children are gone, we have another cup of coffee, take showers, have another cup of coffee, and then Doris drives us out to the road, a two-lane highway threading through the Lone Pine Indian Reservation, which is where it turns out we spent the night. The road is empty in both directions. Our shadows stretch halfway to the horizon. The hills to the west have snow on them. The sun coming in low paints them gold. Grimshaw faces them with her hands on her hips.

“I wish Mike were here right now,” she sighs. “Can you believe it? I really miss him.”

Maybe it’s because it is so unexpected, but the sound of his name has a profound physical impact on me. I see the black body stocking coiled around his hands like a rope, and the victory I was celebrating last night turns to ash. She wouldn’t go back with him, would she? I hear a roaring in my ears, and all the blood drains out of my head. I have to bend over with my hands on my knees to keep from falling down.