Fiction
Mary Bethby Tyler McGaughey
Goddamn, she thought, it feels good to drive this fast.
All around the highway were gray mesquite fields dotted with pumpjacks, the whole of it penned in by barbed wire. Ahead of her, and behind her, was empty road. She was seventeen miles out of San Angelo, grinding down hard on the pavement.
She looked over at the passenger seat, at her fresh unopened Dr Pepper from Reba’s Gas Food N More, her packet of cheese crackers, her old pearlsnap Wrangler shirt rolled up tight and speckled with blood. She switched on the radio.
Caught a station out of Sterling City, forty minutes in the other direction. It was Sunday, top of the two o’clock hour, time for the news. County sheriff and other local election results. Water levels were low at Garner reservoir,
