“I take it you haven’t met your neighbors yet.” Laverna cackled, and then she was gone.
Rachel wondered if her sponsor had been right, that this insistence on proving herself was a mistake. She glanced nervously toward Red Mabel, who fairly resembled a black bear, burly, all haunches. Her face got dark brown in the summer, but year-round her hair was massive and black. The people of Quinn called her Red Mabel because she had Kootenai blood. The people of Quinn had chosen black to distinguish the other Mabel, because of her rotted smile, teeth long dead from too many amphetamines and too little floss. Black Mabel was a drug dealer and a thief and a pool shark and a terrible drunk driver. Not terrible because she did it often, but because she did it so poorly.
Rachel had always loved Black Mabel. Both of the Mabels were barflies, but they were never seen together. There was a begrudging respect between them, a draw. Their personalities had arm wrestled and neither budged.
The Chief of the QVFD emerged from the restroom and nodded curtly at Rachel as he passed, drying his hands on the legs of his wool pants. He had several chins and was fleshy, but not fat. He was completely bald, and his eyebrows were each as thick as a thumb.
When Rachel had been a junior in high school, this man had been the grand marshal of the Fourth of July parade. He had ridden in the back of the oldest known truck in town, and Rachel had been behind him, clomping down the streets in the marching band, attached to a bass drum, the harness pinching into her shoulders with every step. He was chosen to be the grand marshal that year because he had put out the most chimney fires in one winter, more than any volunteer who had come before him.
A creature with no eyebrows approached Rachel, chomping gum, fearless. Della Dempsey. Rachel could never forget such a face, smooth brow like a burn victim.
“Rachel? Rachel Flood?”
Rachel sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know who that is,” she said. And it was true, in a way. She would not have to call her sponsor; she did not tell a lie. After she sobered up, Rachel had no idea who she was anymore. She didn’t know what really made her happy. She was figuring it out as she went along.
The Chief yanked at an extension cord until it dislodged itself from the wall, and the music stopped, mid-song. In the corner, the lone couple continued their clumsy dance. Della waited for Rachel to say something, anything, but just like in high school, Rachel stared right past her.
He stomped to the center of the room and pulled a flashlight from his back pocket, illuminating the cement around his feet.
“Raffle,” he announced.
One of the volunteer firemen leaped to his feet, coming forth from the shadows, clutching a coffee can that was filled with ripped halves of ticket stubs. A brand-new rifle was slung across his back.
The Chief barked again: “Remington Model 870 Super Mag twelve-gauge shotgun.”
Rachel did not know what most of this string of words meant; it sounded like an incantation, a curse.
“Check your stubs,” said the Chief, and that was it. He was so no-nonsense that Rachel was absolutely certain she had never had sex with him. She never had sex with men who knew what they were doing.
The Chief pinched a half ticket between his giant fingers, shone his flashlight and squinted.
“Six-two-seven,” he proclaimed. The revelers examined their numbers.
Some people had entire handfuls of ticket stubs. Others bolted out the door to grab tickets from the jockey boxes of their automobiles. This was going to take some time.
Rachel tried to make herself as small as possible as she slunk toward the exit.
“Six-two-seven,” bellowed the Chief again, obviously annoyed, as purses were emptied onto the floor, and hands were jammed deeper into pockets of blue jeans, digging desperately.
Rachel had memorized the string of salmon-colored tickets she had bought from the schoolchildren. They had been attached to each other, spun off the roll in one long chain, numbers 624 through 634.
“Six-two-seven,” shouted the Chief. She could hear the exasperation in his voice as she passed him, as she made her way out into the cold, clear night. A small brown dog darted away from her, no collar, no tags. The dog ran under a fire truck as she approached. Even the strays of this town were frightened by Rachel Flood.
She walked across the frozen gravel. She’d never had luck of any kind. She supposed she was lucky that she had escaped this town. But that had not been luck—Rachel had been driven out. There probably would have been townspeople coming after her with torches, if it hadn’t been fire season.
Sweet Thing