Dakota by Gwen Florio

dropped to her knees and stroked him. “It’s okay, Bub. I won’t be away for long.”
    “You’re leaving the dog with me, too? Did you even think to ask?”
    “He’ll just slow me down. Besides, he’s better off here than hanging around in the truck all day.” Lola zipped the duffel shut and turned her attention to her book bag. Laptop. Notebooks. Pens—and, of course, pencils, along with a small sharpener, the kind she’d used in elementary school. Chargers and spare chargers. When Lola had been stationed in Kabul, she’d had to lug a camera, too, in the event she couldn’t find a photographer to accompany her to an assignment. But smartphones were everywhere when she returned from her overseas posting, making her life considerably less burdensome in that regard. The Express, like so many papers, had long ago dispensed with photographers, relying on Jan and Lola and Tina to provide photos and videos with their own stories—although Jorkki ran Lola’s cluttered, off-kilter photos only as a desperation measure. Lola went into the kitchen and retrieved Charlie’s Thermos, the size of a small fire hydrant, from a cupboard. A steady supply of caffeine was the only solution, she told herself. She could sleep when she got home. She held open the cupboard doors, seeking more plunder. Charlie’s kitchen was a place of mystery to her, stocked with all manner of ingredients in rows of mason jars. Flour, both white and whole wheat. Cornmeal, again white, and yellow, too. Rice, white and brown; likewise with sugar, and a veritable rainbow of beans. The problem, Lola had learned early on when she went looking for snacks, was that everything required some sort of preparation and assembly.
    “It’s called cooking,” Charlie said when she’d remarked upon that fact. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.” After which, dinner became his responsibility.
    Lola located a jar of almonds and shook a handful into a baggie. Useless to hope that Charlie would have squirreled away a bag of chips someplace. He blocked her way back to the bedroom. “I just think it’s interesting that you chose to focus on workers from the rez.”
    Bub wormed his way between them and leaned against Lola’s legs. Lola nudged the dog away and stepped around Charlie. “I cover the reservation. So it makes perfect sense. All of those jobs have affected the rez in a big way.”
    Charlie’s voice followed her. “I ran into Joshua. That’s quite a shiner he’s got. He said he punched out a guy who called his sister a whore. Guy told him she’d been working someplace. But I forget where.”
    Lola turned around. Charlie had a hand to his head, as though trying to remember. “Wait. It’s coming to me. The patch. What a coincidence.”
    “Yes, it is. And that’s all it is.”
    Lola sat on the bed and looked at the clock. It was eleven. The hours before her departure stretched dark and interminable. She never slept well the night before heading out on a story; preferred, in fact, to leave the night before and drive through until morning. But when she’d said as much to Charlie, he’d threatened to report her to a suicide hotline. “Bad enough you’ve got almost no experience driving in this kind of weather and now you want to try it at night? Do you want to end up like Joshua’s sister? Or that poor trucker?”
    Lola had to concede the point. She’d already experienced too many days in which even the short commute between the newspaper and Charlie’s small ranch just outside town turned eerie and unrecognizable in wind-driven snow. “Fine. Come to bed.” She switched off the overheard light, and wet her fingers and framed the candle flame between them, counting down and smiling as the fire licked at her calluses before she pinched it out.
    Charlie walked to the window and scraped at the icy ferns patterning its surface. “Stars are out. If it’s clear, it’ll be even colder. Lola, I need you to promise you’ll stick to the one story. If this