Mike watched all this with a wary eye. These guys were troublemakers. Poor old Martha, she didn’t hurt anybody; she was just a poor lost soul. These guys got no right to get her drunk. When she had finished her beer, a white mustache rimming her smeared upper lip, he said to them, “Okay. You’ve had your fun. Now get out of here.”

But Martha, with a new feeling growing inside of her, put her hands up to the bartender’s face and simply said, “Stop.” The bar was unearthly quiet, with just the ticking of the clock in the background, while she tried to concentrate, wrestling with this new feeling, a new concept. It was a new idea, it was just out of reach, please, where did it go? Her eyes started to bulge a little bit, and perspiration stood out on her powdered forehead as she worked so very hard to grasp that one thing, but like a fine wire, it had sprung from her mind. It was lost.

“Lost,” she said, slumping a little.

“C’mon, Mike,” said the one missing a front tooth. “She just needs a little fun. Retards are entitled.”

“Retard?” Martha picked up her head and examined each of the faces. “Daddy?”

“Oh, Christ. Come on, Martha, maybe you better be getting on home.”

She remembered. “Chickens gotta eat,” she said.

Mike smiled and handed her the sack. She left the bar, her feet unsteady, strange thoughts confusing her as she walked home. She walked toward her tiny little house with weeds up to the windows and scrawny chickens picking at beetles. She felt the warm places where the man had touched her arm and then her back. She walked toward the faded memories of shame and disgust and tears and sorrow, and suddenly she remembered the thread of her thought. She let it come, let it find its own way through the crevices of her mind, tried not to block the path of new understanding, tried to remember her mother’s words. “Just relax, honey. It’ll come. Be patient.”

There it was, but not an idea—an overpowering feeling, a flooding of emotion, of understanding. The companionship in the bar, the nice Mr. McRae offering to buy her bread. Her breath came in short gulps. She wanted more of it; she wanted more people, more talk, more laughter. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t keep up. She knew she couldn’t. A hot, solitary tear of loneliness squeezed out the corner of her eye.

The moment passed. Martha swiped at the tear with the back of her hand as she trudged home. “Dust,” she said to herself.

2

CHAPTER 2