1.

I didn't kill the dirty hayseed. A shame though. I liked her. She had true eyes you get from bumping around too long.

She stomped in here the middle of the night, cramping my trance, her car in a ditch, rasping out steam, crumpled nose and sagging old eyes. Alone, so I guess she snatched the car someplace, and no one would miss a flappy-rust like that. She was droopy herself, red hair heavy and wet. She was a stick, crooked knobs, strange angles, all elbows and knuckles, bright green eyes, crusty bark skin, asking about a place to clock out until she could get a ride. Her owl eyes and sideways lips said steal everything in sight. I though about shoving her off, but gave her the barn, on the condition I could lock her in, more for my mind, enough rat holes in there a bull could stroll through.

While she fluffed her feathers in the barn I checked the car, empty, Washington plates, and if she pulled it down from there I was impressed, it was beat down, out of gas and punched into the ditch, crushed motor mounts, oil dumping down, mixing with brown leaf sludge and discarded sucked-up needles. The bumper stood in the road, crooked up on edge, creeping with the wind.

Local hooligans, camped in the woods at night, pumping junk into their veins, not much hot around here, just whatever they could snag from the local pharmacies; amphetamines and like. I couldn't tell if the ditch needles were hers or theirs.

In the morning she was gone.



A rhinoceros could have easier picked up a caterpillar.