Marydale sat in a plastic chair in front of her parole officer’s desk, a Bookmobile library book clasped in her hands. Behind her, the door was open to prevent false allegations of misconduct between parolee and parole officer. The office hummed with the sound of copiers and muffled voices.
“What do you think you’re up to?” Cody Densen folded his arms across his chest, obscuring the word parole stamped there in white block letters.
Marydale looked at the book in her hands and then back at Cody. They had gone to the same high school although he had graduated the year before she started. She had been in Future Farmers of America with his sister.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Cody asked.
“I report on Tuesdays,” Marydale said. “I’m reporting.”
The office was stuffy. A high, narrow window behind Cody’s head let in the sun but no view. Cody leaned back in his chair and twiddled a pencil between two fingers. His thinning hair was slicked with gel.
“I heard you were talking to that new DA.”
“I talk to all my customers,” Marydale said. “I’ve been demonstrating pro-social behaviors by maintaining regular employment and staying within the county lines unless in possession of written permission to travel.”
The last time she had left the county—by accident, because she’d forgotten that State Road 7 dipped into Harney County for two miles—Cody had sanctioned her to fifteen days in jail.
“Are you telling me how to do my job?” Cody demanded.
He had small, close-set eyes that made him look piggy, like an underfed American Landrace.
“No, sir,” Marydale drawled.
“Don’t you get fresh with me. I will sanction you,” Cody said. “Do you want thirty days? I’ll give you thirty days.”
“Cody.” Marydale sighed. “Sir. Mr. Densen. I’m reporting. What do you want?”
Cody’s lips tightened into a thinner line. “Don’t think she’s going to find some loophole and get you off supervision. You are on supervision. Period. You can’t bribe your way out of this.”
“Bribe?”
“You offered her a room.”
“I rented her a room.”
Cody pressed his palms to the top of his desk. “Ronald Holten found out that she turned down his rental to live with you. Does she know about you?”
Marydale tried for her best competition smile. “I thought you’d be happy. I’m not supposed to associate with criminals. If I get out of line, she can have me tried and convicted without leaving the house.”
“Does she know?”
“I don’t know,” Marydale said. “I don’t have to tell her. That’s not a condition of my parole.”
Did she know? The question was like bad news in an unopened letter. She knew it was there; she just hadn’t looked. When truckers came through the diner for a coffee and a shortcake, they’d glance at her, then lean in to the waitresses and whisper, Heard she was the rodeo queen for three years running. Youngest queen west of the Rockies, and she did six years out at Holten Penitentiary. That a true story? Then Glenda or Janice or Frank would fold their arms and say, Her mother was a good woman, bless her. It was a way of saying yes and we don’t talk about it all in the same breath. And Marydale was always meant to overhear.
“She wouldn’t be looking at renting a room from you if she knew, unless she’s looking…” False realization dawned on Cody’s piggy face.
“It’s not like that,” Marydale said quickly. “She’s not.”
She thought of Kristen’s kind refusal. I’m flattered, really. Her body ached.
“She better not be. You know the conditions of your parole.”
Marydale clutched the book in her hands. “I’m not allowed to enter into a relationship without your permission.”
Somewhere in the building a phone rang and rang. In the hall outside, two women laughed, and one said, “I swear I’ll go crazy if I don’t get to Disney soon.”
“You are not allowed to enter a female relationship without my permission,” Cody said.
“I know,” Marydale said. “But you can’t stop me from renting a room to a respectable citizen. Even if Ronald Holten doesn’t like it.”
“You may be out, but you are not a free woman.”
“I know!” Marydale said.
“You better. And she better know about you and not some whitewashed version you want to tell her, because I might come by and pay you both a visit. Remember, I can come in your house any day, anytime, and I will tell her the truth.”
“I’m sure she knows! Everybody fucking knows!”
“Watch your language.”
Marydale’s heart raced in her chest.
“She’s the DA. They’ve got Aaron Holten’s name on the courtroom and on every bench on the square.”
“There are two benches on the square.”
“Yeah. The Aaron Holten Memorial Bench and the Other Aaron Holten Memorial Bench. I can’t believe they haven’t made a bronze cast of him doing the Heisman.”
“You shouldn’t talk about him that way. He was a good man.”
“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about my life. She knows!”
Marydale’s truck skidded to a stop in the gravel outside the Pull-n-Pay. She leaped out of the cab and banged through the gate and into Aldean’s shed.
“She doesn’t know!” Marydale cried.
Aldean was kneeling on the concrete floor, an acetylene torch in one hand and a piece of scrap metal held in a pair of tongs in the other. He thumbed the gas, and the torch fizzled out. He pushed the welder’s hood away from his face.
“What?”
“Kristen Brock. She doesn’t know about Aaron Holten. She doesn’t know about me.”
Outside the autumn sun was right overhead, and the little shed held the heat and the smell of paint thinners and gas.
“You asked her to live with you, and you didn’t tell her?” Aldean stood up and set his torch down on the workbench. “She’s the DA. Mary, what were you thinking?”
Marydale sat down on an empty metal drum. It tipped precariously. “I thought somebody’d probably told her.”
“And you didn’t check?”
“No. I didn’t,” Marydale said glumly. It had just felt so nice to be Marydale-the-waitress, not Marydale-the-felon, Marydale-the-pervert. “But they didn’t tell her, did they? Because of my mother, bless her damn heart.” Marydale leaned her head back against the wall. “I’m such a fucking idiot. I knew she didn’t know. How could I not know? She would never live with me if she knew. She would never talk to me if she knew.”
Aldean ambled over and stood beside her. “Aaron was an asshole. If she knew that…”
“It doesn’t make it okay.”
“Only it kind of does.”
Marydale kicked the heels of her boots against the metal drum.
“Careful of those.” Aldean pointed toward the metal pieces on the floor near her feet. “They’re hot. I’m working on the reflux for the still.”
“It looks like a muffler fucking a drainpipe,” Marydale grumbled.
Aldean lit a cigarette, insensitive to the faded warnings on the acetylene tank.
“So she doesn’t know. You served your time. You paid your debt to society, right?”
Marydale hesitated. “I kissed her.”
Aldean took the cigarette out of his mouth. “I knew I’d lose this one!” He slapped her shoulder.
“She said no.”
“Don’t they all say no to you?” Aldean affected a soprano. “Oh, Marydale, I can’t. What would Jesus do? Well, okay, maybe just this once.” He blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. “Damn, girl, I lost a lot of tail to that we’re-just-girlfriends-who-really-love-each-other routine back in the day.”
Marydale couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Aldean said.
“She said no, but she was cool about it. If she finds out…”
“You got to just get in there before she does, do what you girls do, and get out. Then you can tell her. Maybe she likes it a little rough,” Aldean suggested. “Maybe she watched that Netflix show, and now she wants to feel what it’s like to do it with a criminal.”
Usually Marydale would give Aldean a friendly punch. Now she just stared at the ground. A few shards of shattered windshield glass had made their way into the shed, and now they reflected the light from the door. She slid off the drum, picked one, and held it up to her eye so the shed fractured into a dozen visions of itself.
“I want more than that.”
“I know,” Aldean said quietly.
Marydale thought about how many hours she’d spent in the junkyard with Aldean, playing as children, sneaking beers as teenagers, crying in his arms the night before she had to report to court.
“I think she liked it,” Marydale said finally.
“That’s right.” Aldean put his arm around her, enveloping her in the smell of cigarette smoke and burnt acetylene. “You know why I’m not a happily married man?”
“Because you’re a slut.” Marydale leaned against him.
“It’s because the only woman who’s really worth having won’t play for my team.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
Aldean laughed. “Well, if she doesn’t fall madly in love with you, she’s an asshole and a damn fool.” He squeezed her a little closer. “Just don’t get your hopes up too high. Okay, princess?”