Homesick Creek by Diane Hammond

drain.
    She and Bunny had started heading in different directions right out of high school, Bunny mostly up and Anita mostly down. Anita tried not to notice how many things Hack bought Bunny, or Bunny bought herself, and not just the piano and the rabbits. Over the years he had bought her and Vinny lots of nice things: a top-of-the-line microwave, new cars, dental care. Several years ago he had given Bunny lizard-skin cowboy boots with flames up the sides. He’d even given her panties with little jewels that spelled SEXY, though that was probably a gift for himself as much as for her. Hack was like that sometimes, could turn even a present into the chance to come away with something for himself.
    Anita and Bunny had both been there that day when Hack first came up to borrow a blanket. He could have chosen either one of them, and he had chosen Bunny. If he had chosen her instead, what would Anita be like now? She pictured everything she’d become being swept off the table to float away on the wind like milkweed: the awful house, the beater car, the ugly clothes that were never new, the smoker’s cough, the squint, the lines in her face, all of them pointing down.
    She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue and looked at the clock. It was four thirty-five, black and oily as creosote outside. Bob had risen like the dead from his hangover three hours ago and gone out. She knew he was at the Wayside. Whenever he went farther away, he took his toothbrush, his comb, and a fresh change of clothes. All of them were still in the house.
    The old wall phone went off in the corner of the kitchen like a bomb. She figured it was Roy calling to tell her to come get Bob, but it was her daughter, Doreen, instead, sounding hysterical.
    “Slow down, honey, I can’t understand you,” Anita said, squeezing her temples with her free hand. She’d been telling Doreen to slow down ever since Doreen could talk. The girl started crying, and in the background Anita could hear her three-year-old granddaughter, Crystal, sobbing too. Anita gave her a minute. “Honey, just take a deep breath. Breathe.”
    The girl drew a shuddery breath. “They just arrested Danny.”
    “Crap.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What for?”
    “Meth. Apparently his fucking buddy Bruce has been running a goddamn meth lab in his basement, and they say Danny was helping him. Crystal,
shut the fuck up
.”
    Anita could hear Crystal whimper. She made her voice low and soothing. “It’s okay, honey. She’s just scared. You want me to come over there and get her?”
    “Yeah . . . no. I don’t know. I mean, how are we going to make bail? We’re broke. Plus if he can’t work tomorrow, they’ll fire him, and then we’re fucked, we’re just totally fucked.” Danny was a stock boy at the Sentry Market over in Sawyer. It was his fourth job in a year and a half, fifty cents above minimum wage. “I can’t believe this. If he did do it—the meth thing, I mean—
then how
come we never have any goddamn money
?”
    “I don’t know, honey. Have you called that attorney he had last time? He’ll tell you what to do.”
    “Yeah, right. He’ll tell me to go to hell is what he’ll tell me, because we can’t come up with a thousand bucks in cash like we had to last time before he’d even talk to us. We still owe nine hundred dollars from the trial, and Danny got convicted anyway,” Doreen said bitterly.
    “Well, then the court will give you somebody for free. They have to do that, honey. Danny’s got rights.”
    “Yeah, they’ll give us some broken-down old guy who doesn’t give a shit.” Doreen started to cry again, in an odd, flat way. From what Anita could hear in the background, Crystal was still crying too.
    “Listen to me, honey,” Anita said. “Are you listening? You need to call the police station and find out what’s going on. That bondsman you got last time, see if you can find him again. Do you remember his name? Wasn’t it Larry something? Those people must