All the Sky by Susan Fanetti

language. He’d been swearing in front of her since he was eleven, and she truly didn’t care. She cared much more about name-calling than simple expletives. She wouldn’t tolerate hearing him call somebody ‘stupid’ or anything like, but she didn’t get heartburn over ‘fuck.’ Still, she’d tried to teach him to choose his audience carefully, to recognize that, while she didn’t mind the occasional frustrated, therapeutic ‘fuck,’ most of the rest of the world was offended.
    And every time he swore around her, the church lady in her head puckered her lips in judgment.
    “Bonnie’s not judging us, Nolan. She’s helping us out. You know she’s cool. And we’ll have some time on our own tonight after she goes to the bar. We’ll get this RV set up like a proper little home. And then I’ll kick your ass in Pente. Okay?”
    He finally nodded again and stood, and they went out to unload the Beast.
     
    ~oOo~
     
    Cory heard him get up late in the night—or down, more like, sliding open the privacy curtain on the loft and climbing out. She’d left the door to the little bedroom open a little, to maximize what cross breeze could be found on a warm, still, muggy Missouri night at the end of June.
    It was a night too hot to sleep, so she’d been lying on top of the bedspread, her eyes closed, letting her mind roam. She felt pretty good—better than she had in awhile. A solution for her problems, a balm for her cares, seemed to be on the horizon, so she could set them aside. What she’d been doing, then, instead of worrying, was writing a song in her head.
    She never wrote a song down until it was finished. Her head worked better like this, left to move how it wanted, without being forced into lines on a page. She hadn’t been writing much lately at all, really. Online and in the bars and coffeehouses where she gigged, people mostly wanted covers of songs they knew. Whenever she posted an original online, it got maybe a third the hits of a cover, if that. And people tended to start to chat again when she played an original at a gig. A couple of the managers had very pointedly told her to stop, if she wanted to keep the gig.
    She tried not to take it personally. She knew her stuff was good, and the feedback she got from those who would listen confirmed what she knew. But for the most part, people liked what they already liked.
    The music thing wasn’t going to happen, not in any real way. Cory knew that. She knew she should give it up, focus on finding some kind of steady work that would provide some security for Nolan.
    She simply couldn’t. Her head was quiet and calm only when she was creating something. She’d lose her marbles if she gave it up. Sometimes, she felt right on the edge of marble-lessness as it was.
    So on this heavy, still night, Cory was gathering her marbles, writing a song in her head, seeing the chords emerge as the lyrics did, when she heard Nolan climb down, dress, and leave the RV. Except that they were in a new, unfamiliar place, she wasn’t worried much. This was a thing he did, his way of gathering his marbles. She wrote songs in her head; Nolan walked. She wished he’d taken a flashlight, at least, because this was deep country, and it wouldn’t take much to walk beyond the reach of the dusk-to-dawn lights in each front yard on Bonnie’s little one-street neighborhood of mobile homes and end up in blackness.
    But he was a smart boy, so he’d be okay.
     
    ~oOo~
     
    He was gone about two hours. By then, Cory was up, still not exactly worried, but certainly curious. She’d pulled a beer from the little fridge and gone outside to sit in a plastic Adirondack chair, under a nearby tree. The mosquitoes were in fine fiddle on this early morning, but as much as she could, she ignored their feasting on her bare arms and legs.
    Finally, he came trudging up from the back, having apparently crossed a weedy field from the woods beyond it. He didn’t see her until he was almost at the