Page 74 of Small Town Hunter

I don’t have a weapon. Crash took all his guns.

All humor drops from the man’s voice and he starts to get off the bike. “Maybe you ought to rephrase that.”

“It means,fuck off!”I scream.

Thankfully another car comes blazing up the road. We both turn to squint at it.

“Not again,” the biker curses.

The car stops alongside us. It’s black, a sports car. The plates say NEVADA. A black lady around my age is sitting in the drivers’ seat. “Is he bothering you?” the woman hollers to me. And she looks…familiar?

That’s good enough for me. I bolt towards her car, and the biker makes a motion like he’s going to stop me, but there’s aclickand suddenly he stops dead.

The lady has a gun on him.

“Keep it moving,” she tells him, stone cold.

“You bitch– you better hope we don’t catch you or that redhead fuck in Cimarron County or it’s your life.”

“Tell it to your Mama,” the woman replies fearlessly, and watches Mister Biker ride off, her face feral as a mountain lion.

It’s only later I realize whatredhead fuckmeant. But for the moment…

The woman’s face is round like an apple and she has kind eyes now, not pits of fire and fury. I open the passenger’s door.

She’s already set down the gun. “Are you alright?” she asks with genuine concern. “They got some real fucked-up people around here! I swear to God!”

I ignore her blasphemy because she definitely just saved my butt.

“Thank you so much, sister. I’m fine, just rattled some. Are you going to Tippalonga?” I say in one breath.

“Unfortunately yes,” the woman says. “You’re not weird or nothing, right?”

Her accent isn’t local.

She sounds…like Crash.

And she looks familiar.Wheredo I know her?

“I just really need to get back there today.”

“Come on in. I have my baby in the backseat so no funny shit, okay? I wouldn’t have stopped but I recognized you and I know you ain’t the type to be entertaining that bastard. Those men freak me the hell out. They’ve been harassing my husband and I for days.”

“Thank you so much.”

The inside of the car smells like spiced bread. It’s a sports car like Crash’s, but newer.

I turn and see the cutest baby ever buckled into a brand new car seat in the back. Thank God that standoff didn’t turn for the worse, and Thank God this nice lady decided to stop and defendme even with her baby back there. Good people still live in this world.

The baby is cute as a button. She has reddish brown hair and tanned skin and a little apple face like her Mama. The daddy must be white. If Crash and I had a baby she might look like that.

A day ago I would let myself fantasize.

But it’s never happening.

So I don’t.

“Ah, ah!” The baby shakes a stuffed pig at me, kicking with her feet.

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