CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

We were hours in, many miles down the road with maybe five hours left to go, depending on pit stops. We’d played I Spy, the Alphabet Game, and Cows on My Side, which was a silly game that no one was into but Summer, who yelled “Cow!” at every billboard just to be funny. After an hour Summer lost interest, fell asleep, and I must have too.

When I woke and shifted in my seat to release my tingling left butt cheek, I realized the car wasn’t moving. We were parked under the yellow lights in the parking lot of a decrepit gas station, the keys were in the ignition, and the car was idling almost noiselessly. Holly must have run inside to relieve herself. Summer was asleep in the passenger seat with her neck bent in what looked like a very unpleasant position.

Peanut sat alert, panting and staring out the windshield. His thick pink tongue dripped stringy goop onto the center console. Peanut’s heavy breathing transitioned into a high-pitched whine, and I reached back to give the dog a scratch under his chin. He pushed my hand away with his nose.

“What’s up, Peanut?” He licked his lips, flicked his gaze at me, and returned to staring out the windshield. I reached forward and opened the glove compartment for a paper napkin to wipe the dog’s chin, and that’s when I saw it. The shiny red cab of an eighteen-wheeler parked near the diesel fuel pump. I recognized the decal, Tiger Paw Trucking.

“Holly? Summer! Is that the blow job truck?”

Summer popped up from the back seat, seemingly fully alert. “Maybe? It could be. Yeah, I think it is.”

“I’m going to look for Holly. Lock the doors after I leave. Watch the dogs. If we come out running, unlock the doors and let us in. Okay?”

Summer nodded, eyes wide.

I launched myself out the door of the Prius. The ground was wet, and heavy drops of water fell from the one streetlamp above our car. My tennis shoe skidded as I slammed the car door. Head down, I jogged the short distance to the convenience store that was attached to a one-door garage. The place appeared empty. No one stood behind the counter. I couldn’t see Holly. I eased the door open a crack, smelled something deep fried, and slipped inside, my body tingling with adrenaline.

The brightly lit interior was crammed with shelves filled with cases of beer and rows of chips, beef jerky, and candy. Against the back corner, near a carousel of sunglasses, stood Holly. She cowered, her back against a dingy wall, and said, in a voice I’d never heard from her before, “Please give me my cat. She’s just a baby.”

I crept to the side, tried to see who she was speaking to. Beyond the rotating hot dogs and dry jumbo pretzels dispenser stood a man. He was a full head taller than Holly and wore a ratty mesh ball cap on his head.

“I think she wants to go home with me.”

“Give her to me.” Holly looked like she had in college minutes before throwing up, either from drinking or the flu. There was no joy in seeing the imperious, regal Holly taken down a notch.

“I’m just trying to be friendly. Smile, sweetie.” He lifted Utah, and the kitten’s tiny body dangled unsupported.

All I wanted to do was get in there and empower Holly, see her rise up and take him down. I swept through the candy aisle, knocking a Twinkie packet off the shelf on the way. The good, careful girl in me almost stopped to pick it up, but I thought, No, Spider-Man does not pick up sponge cake. He does not tidy.

When I got to Holly, I threw my arms around her, and surprising both of us, I said, “Hey, lover. What’s taking so long?” Then I kissed her on the lips. Almost. I caught Holly on the corner of her left nostril, missing her lips altogether. I knew enough about emergency situations not to try to stick the landing. I pivoted and threw my arm over Holly’s shoulders. She grabbed me around the waist and said in a surprised voice, “He has Utah.”

I turned to face the trucker. “Oh, you found our cat,” and I plucked the kitten right off the man’s hand.

“Sweetie,” I said, tucking Utah under Holly’s neck. “You’ve got to do better keeping an eye on this girl.” Holly secured Utah on her shoulder and murmured something. I could feel my friend, my friend , pull herself up straighter, fill her lungs with air.

The man had a colossal beer gut and mustard-stained fingertips from years of smoking from packs just like the one that pushed against his breast pocket. There were two burn holes on the right jacket sleeve of his brown Carhartt coat. He needed a good toothbrush.

My brave-ish display of support for my friend did not intimidate the man. “Your friend lost her way. I caught her coming out of the men’s room.” He slid his eyes over Holly. Sure enough, we stood in front of the closed door of a men’s room and within a foot from a hall that led to what would surely be the moldy shower stalls of a truck stop.

“The women’s bathroom is clogged.” Holly cleared her throat, sounded stronger. Held me around the waist with a firmer hand.

“I told her we could share.” The man leered at both of us. It occurred to me that the attendant of the gas station was out of sight on purpose. This situation had a surreal quality to it, as if it was happening to someone else, say on a movie screen.

Maybe that’s what finally did it, the dreamlike feel of the moment. That, and my general fed-up-ness of feeling powerless for no real reason. I was so sick of men who thought they could rule with intimidation, like my father. Or felt entitled to a sick woman’s dog during a divorce just because he had money.

I stepped between the man and Holly. Sweeping my arm like an usher, I said, “We don’t want to keep you from showering. Off you go. Grab a toothbrush on us.” And I winked. For the first time in my life, I coordinated my eyes in a one-two punch.

He dragged his eyes over my body from the top of my head all the way down to my sneakers. “You’re a bitchy thing.”

“You’re a trope,” I said. “A cliché,” I clarified for his tiny brain. “A troll! A troll who picks on women and kittens and probably babies too.” My rusty insult skills were cringingly on display.

He took a step forward. I had no plan. The wall behind us too close. I could smell diesel fuel, and I spotted a piece of taco chip in his beard. Which was not a useful detail.

Holly grabbed my arm with cold, viselike fingers, tugged me so we were standing side by side, and Tough Holly Ballbuster reborn said, “Get out of our way, you troll.”

It must have sounded so much better in her head. The trucker took another menacing step toward us and raised his fist. I shrank back and closed my eyes for impact at the same time that Holly shoved him in the center of his sternum.

We heard Summer before we saw her.

“Hey, dirtbag,” her Disney voice rang out.

The three of us turned, like an ungroomed synchronized swimming team. Summer held a red-and-white plastic baseball bat, with the cardboard packaging on it, over her head. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so astonished.

Summer took a wide, uncoordinated swing and knocked a bag of Lay’s potato chips onto the floor. I watched as she regrouped, raised the bat again, and although she didn’t say it, we knew she wasn’t finished.

“Get away from them,” Summer said through clenched teeth. A brown head of hair and black-rimmed glasses emerged from behind the cash register and Plexiglas barrier.

“You!” I called. “Hiding like a coward. Call the police!”

“Call the police!” Summer repeated with her eyes locked on the truck driver. She took another swing; this time she was oddly precise in her aim. A bag of chocolate-covered pretzels flew from a hook near the beef jerky packages and took flight. We all watched as it slowed at the peak of its arc by a sprinkler head, then dropped somewhere out of sight.

“What the . . . ?” the trucker said.

“Hey!” the man behind the counter shouted. “Leave the merchandise alone.”

Summer lifted the bat over her head and brought it down on the top of a display of Funyuns. And, oh my God, at that moment I finally got it. Fun Onions! Uninhibited and into this vigilante justice, she swung the bat and toppled the revolving sunglasses display. Plastic frames skittered across the floor followed by a loud crash of the flimsy tower. “That’s for not calling the police.”

“What is wrong with you bitches?” the trucker said with real wonder, backing away from Holly and me.

“Bitches?” Summer yelled. “Bitches?” She looked between the manager and the trucker, who was now making a break for the door while grabbing the keys that hung from a chain at his pocket.

“We bitches are getting our friend and her kitty and by hook or by crook getting out of here.”

“By hook or by crook?” I said. Don’t get me wrong. I was in full admiration mode. Summer was rocking a baseball bat in the middle of Nebraska, scaring the bejesus out of a big, imposing man, but the phrase by hook or by crook was a buzzkill. Honestly, it was worse than trope .

The manager hit the button on his intercom-microphone. There was a loud static-feedback screech followed by a nasally voice: “Ma’am, please put the bat down, and come up and pay for your snacks.”

Summer slammed the baseball bat on top of the ice-cream novelty case and shouted, “We will not pay for the snacks.”

And I thought, Oh, what the hell . “We will not pay for the snacks!”

“Blow job,” Holly shouted.

“Blow job!” I shouted.

Holly and I joined hands and grabbed Summer and ran out of the gas station breathing hard like three ecstatic high school girls who’d just stolen condoms.