Page 13 of Road Refugees

Kelsey had to admit, “Yeah. He’s my man.”

Orchid stuck her thumbs in her back jeans pockets and declared, “Hell yeah. I’d rather be a sweetbutt than married to this poor excuse for a cesspool. I put out for guys who treat women with respect, not lock them in a fucking closet and rape them.”

I was surprised she said “rape” aloud. In Cornucopia we all danced around the facts. We said Orson had “used” us when the facts were, he’d drugged us and anally raped us with objects more suited for chicken farming or mining

Byron sliced his arm through the air. “Ain’t no raping of any kind gone on anywhere.”

Kelsey took her husband’s side. “Yeah, Orchid. Where’d you get this idea from, anyway? Byron’s been with me since he got back from Utah.”

Orchid pointed at the ground. “With a fucking comatose nurse in his sidecar.”

All heck broke loose then.

“He didn’t drug her!” yelled Kelsey. She was a sassy horse-riding woman with a Texas twang.

“She was like that when I found her!”

“I’m not really a nurse,” I tried to protest.

Orchid shouted, “Why don’t we ask her if she was raped. She’d remember!”

The rumble went silent, like someone hitting “pause” on a party scene. Everyone stared at me, enormous expectations coloring their faces.

“I, ah,” I said. I smoothed down the nurse’s skirt, which by now was covered in highway filth and footprints. “When I just now woke up, I do believe there was some, ah, substance on my, ah, gash. Yes, there was. Is.”

Kelsey just hauled her leather vest off and nailed her slimy husband with an open-handed slap. It resounded up and down the dark hallway. In turn, Byron grabbed both her wrists and slammed her against the wall. I began to shrink toward a light at the end of the enclosure that seemed to promise freedom. Town means freedom kept repeating in my head like an earworm.

“Come on,” said Orchid, catching my hand in hers.

She didn’t need to convince me, and we both headed toward the light.

The last thing I saw was my savior Byron cracking his wife across the face, and not with an open hand but his fist.

I was confused. This man had most probably saved my life when I had a fit in the middle of a highway. Now it appeared he’d used me and was beating up his wife for it.

As it turned out, I’d been in the back hallway of a bar. Front windows lit up the interior of polished wood and pool tables. A neon sign on the wall behind the bar said “It’s 5:00 somewhere.” A metal sign like a license plate said “Alcohol. Because no great story ever started when someone ate a salad.” A bartender with a cut patch that declared he was a “PROSPECT” wiped glasses clean.

I asked him, “Do you know Arkie?”

He just screwed up his face at me and turned his back.

“Do you know Arkie?” I asked Orchid.

She pulled me to take a barstool next to her and snapped her fingers at the prospect. “Hey! You! Dipshit motherfucker! Two Coors, and I don’t want to tell you again!”

I was shocked at the new set of rules that governed Flagstaff. The Prospect lifted his lip into a sneer, but he poured us two cold ones. I gratefully gulped mine. I did not want to come out of the coma that had delivered me from Orson Ream. But had it deposited me into a realm that was just as heinous?

“I’ve never heard of an Arkie,” said Orchid, foam on her upper lip.

“Byron claims he’s part of your . . . club.”

She shrugged, gulping her beer almost as fast as me. “He could be around. I don’t know everyone’s name. They use street names. How long ago do you think he joined?”

“Well, I heard about it when I went into the mountains. So, eight years.”

“Eight years?” Orchid shrieked. “I’m sure I would’ve heard of him by now. You were up in that fundy polyg community? Were you married to anyone?”

“Yes,” I said, emotion draining from my voice. “I was his servant. He made me wear this costume.”