She walked to the rich man, her head down, and he took a step toward her, pulling her from the red dirt road and onto the shoulder where he stood. He wore a checked gray suit with a red tie and a straw cowboy hat. He smiled at her, looking down at her face, as he brought it up with a light finger and smiled for a long time.
She didn’t smile back on account of the big space between her teeth.
“How old you, girl?”
“Thirteen, sir.”
“Well, you look to be sixteen from where I’m standin’,” he said. “Turn around.”
And she did, as stupid and blind as a trained dog waiting for a rancid piece of meat, and he looked at her long legs and scabby knees in that dress made out of old gingham and flour sacks. The man pulled her hair back and twisted her head from side to side.
She pulled away and looked into the corn for her father, but he was gone somewhere into the woods. Or was it town?
“You want to take a ride?”
“No, sir.”
He reached into his gray coat, and she could see he’d been sweating the way big men do, soaking their fat stomachs and under their arms, and she saw the flash of two golden pistols, as gold as pirate’s treasure, and he saw the smile, too, and handed her a card.
“Can you read?”
She shook her head.
“’Course not.”
She looked at him.
“You bring yourself to the big city,” he said. “You hear me? What’s your name, girl?”
And she told him, but she’d soon forget that name because it was so country that it made men laugh, and he laughed, too. It would be a couple years before she’d start calling herself Lorelei, after a nickname they’d given her at the Rabbit Farm.
“You come lookin’ for me,” he said. “Anybody in Phenix City will know where to find me. Bert Fuller. I’ll make sure you get some work.”
She nodded and, despite herself, felt her lips spread against that space in her buckteeth, and he kind of winced at her and said, “Don’t smile so much.”
She dropped her head.
“Come on, come on,” he said. “No need to be frownin’, with a face and legs like that. I bet them country boys chase you plenty, huh?”
“Naw.”
“Naw?” he said, laughing. “You are as country as corn bread. You in those sacks and bare feet. You ever feel what it’s like to wear a real pair of shoes? Look at that mud caked between your toes. You’re too good for this, little girl. You hitch a ride, you take a bus whenever you want, but you come see me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir?” he said. “Honey, hush.”
She looked at him again, as if her chin had been lifted again, only feeling that he wanted to see her eyes without even the slightest touch. His face was broad and fat, pink-skinned and fleshy. His hair was buzzed above the ears, up to the cowboy hat, like men in the service. He winked at her, knocked back some more from his flask, and passed it to her.
She shook her head.
“It ain’t the demon’s blood like they tell you,” he said. “It’s just bourbon.”
And she looked down the endless red-dirt road for another car coming or her father or any sign of life by the clapboard house made from wrecked cars and trash. But there was only the wind and the unbearably hot sun, and as she took a drink the bourbon was hotter than the air and made her face turn hot and glow. But she kept drinking, not knowing it wasn’t like water, and the muddy-colored stuff ran down her chin and on her dress, and it smelled like the way her daddy smelled on Saturday nights, only without the cigarettes.
Bert Fuller took back his flask, wiped her chin with a scarred knuckle, and opened the door to the big, long Cadillac.
“See that star on the card?” he asked. “That means I’m the assistant sheriff. That means I’m real important. You understand?”
And then he pulled away, giving her a preacher’s wave before disappearing into a cloud of dust and becoming a black ink spot on the horizon that burned away into the molten sun.
Two months later, she found a ride.
She’d never been to a city before, and she’d saved pennies to buy shoes and borrowed a cotton dress from her best friend at church, May, who’d also given her a dollar she’d been saving since she was twelve. With the dollar, the new shoes, and the old dress, she hopped out from the Chevy pickup truck loaded with hay and chickens and turned and looked at all the buildings and people milling about. It was Friday afternoon, and there looked to be plenty of men from the Army around and she felt safe with that, finding one boy and showing him Deputy Bert Fuller’s card – now so crunched and wrinkled it was soft in her hand – and the Army boy just shook his head, chewing gum with a cocky smile, and winked at her.
The wink made her pull the dress tight against her chest, and she kept walking toward the lights, past bars with signs reading GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS and QUICK MONEY, and she got a few whistles and catcalls, and pretty soon she was sweating with all the noise of the music and the ringing of slot machines and the sight of things she’d never seen – like a big black-haired woman dancing on a stage with tassels on her titties, whipping them around in circles. Pretty soon, she was down by the bridge and could see the big, wide Chattahoochee, and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and the city beyond it, over the river, just shined with light so bright that it hurt her eyes.
More Army boys passed her, and one bumped into her, slapping her little rump with the flat of his hand, and she hugged herself, because the dress was thin and the wind had kicked up on the bridge.
She walked back into the city, asking a girl in a dark corner if she’d heard of Mr. Fuller, and the woman looked at her, smoking a cigarette, almost looking through her, and said: “No.”
But there was something about the no that made her keep walking, and she soon left the neon lights and bars and music and service boys and followed the train tracks. There were train tracks near her house, and she figured if she kept walking maybe she’d make it back home before morning and maybe her father would not take her to the smokehouse and beat her with the horsewhip.
The houses were rickety and old, with broken wood porches where negroes sat and drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes and called out to her or just laughed and pointed. She could only see the rocky track. Then she heard a train and wandered off the railroad and right into the path of a car that skidded to a stop and honked its horn. She’d fallen to her butt and stared into white, hot headlights and searched into them before there was the sound of a siren and red lights and the voice of a man.
“You lookin’ for me, doll?”