There was something about that Monday that brought things to a head. A new cynicism had filtered into my being and it came from a variety of sources. The three hags—the skunk mulleted sss, the white-haired witch and the indomitable old maid—with their cautionary tales about bad men from out of town, had me thinking that they’d overlooked another, because they’d been focussing in the wrong direction. Pete was my salvation. He was the one, the only one who’d offered a realistic alternative to my caged existence at the roadhouse. Miriam’s casual suggestion that she might have given me a lift if I’d been heading the same way as she didn’t count because it was vacuous. Besides, I doubted her sincerity. Without Pete, I was stuck in that roadhouse, suffering the weirdest human being I’d ever enco
