skulls than making biscuits. “She’s just got the wrong idea about you. That’s all.”
“I don’t care if she is your wife,” Moira replied. “She’s two parts hen and one part gator. All beak and a big bite.”
“It’s just that not everyone understands how you…” He paused to scratch the back of his neck, hork, and spit into one of the many discarded wrappers littering cab before continuing. “How you help folks.”
“When she caught you in Earl Jr.’s hospital room that night—”
“He woulda died,” Moira insisted. “He was more tore up than a trailer park in tornado season.” The memory of Earl Jr.—Little Earl’s son—jacked into a multitude of tubes and machines surged back to her. Big Earl—Earl Jr.’s granddaddy—had only nodded as he cleared the room, knowing of Moira’s abilities firsthand. At least, it had been her hand that pulled the Earls’ eldest statesmen back from a heart attack he’d suffered on her porch one sticky evening.
“I know that,” Little Earl assured her. “But seeing as he’d just rolled his truck and was in the intensive care waiting for surgery you bein’ on top of him like you was just didn’t set well with his momma.”
“Surgery,” Moira pointed out, “that he didn’t end up needing after all, if you’ll remember.”
“Oh, I remember.” Earl’s easy laugh filled the truck like a floodlight. “That doctor did get mighty fetched up at you, though. I think he was actually looking forward to doin’ something other than sewing up a bar fight for once.”
Sudden exhaustion crept over Moira like a fog as the sensory memory of Edna’s disgust and rage filled her head with broken glass. Lord, was she tired of other people’s psychic backwash. The trees on either side of the road seemed to sag with it as well, their hanging Spanish moss making them look like mourners at a procession of which she was always the deceased. “I don’t like the means any better than Edna does.”
“Neither would your Uncle Sal,” Earl said.
They were coming to ruts they had already worn in the road now. A conversation as at home in this old truck as the chain of beer tabs hanging from the rear-view mirror.
The cracked ridge around the old truck’s bench seat pinched the back of Moira’s thighs. She readjusted the coarse saddle blanket that doubled as a seat cover. “You swore you wouldn’t tell him.”
“And I won’t. I’m just sayin’ you might oughta think about what helpin’ folks has cost you. That’s all.”
“Would you rather Earl Jr. had died?” Moira asked.
A rim of white appeared around Earl’s thin lips as he pressed them together. He squeezed the steering wheel like it might give back some reassurance in return. “No, Moira Jo. I’m glad of what you did. I’d be lyin’ if I said otherwise.”
He paused, but Moira knew better than to speak into the silence.
“Earl Jr. was the fool who drank a twelve pack with his buddies and thought it’d be a good idea to drive home in the dark.” Earl’s eyes fixed on hers for as long as the road would allow. “You understand?”
Cheeto’s small hooves folded down the edge of the bag closest to Moira as his wet, pink nose twitched in the direction of the chips she held at her side. “No more,” she said. “You’ve been eatin’ like a—” she paused, looking down into his shining black eyes. “Well, you haven’t been eatin’ very good.”
“Moira?” Earl pressed.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why I can do these things if I’m not supposed to help people. I don’t understand why helpin’ people brings nothing but trouble to my door. I don’t understand one goddamn thing.”
The truck bumped along in silence for the space of a few moments.
“It ain’t your job to save everyone, Moira. Sometimes folks need to experience what they’ve got comin’ to them. Sometimes that’s what it takes to learn.”
“And if they won’t learn? You’re just supposed to sit back and watch them hurt?”
“Pain ain’t the problem for most people” Earl answered. “Pain is just the booby prize for dancin’ with their demons.”
Moira shivered despite the oppressive wall of body-temperature humidity beginning to kick up from the marshes. “Or for dancin’ with me.”
“You can’t think like that, girl. You was made the way you was for a reason. I believe that.” Engine grease hid in the creases of the thick finger Earl brushed by his eye. “We all do.”
“Thanks, Uncle Earl,” Moira said.
Little Earl’s uneven smile hitched up further in her