Maggie Boylan. Michael Henson

      Maggie Boylan

      1

      JAMES CARPENTER had just hung the gas pump back in its cradle and he had one foot in the door of his truck and here came Maggie Boylan, straight as a bullet, foul-mouthed, skinny, death-head-looking, Oxy-addled, thieving Maggie Boylan.

      “Are you headed into town?” she called. “Can you give me a ride into town?”

      He looked around him. He hated to turn down anyone in need of a ride, but still . . . this was Maggie Boylan. He thought, This could be a big mistake in the making.

      Maggie was bundled into an oversized denim coat that must have belonged to her husband. It was a bright, late October day with a big wind and she staggered a moment as the wind gusted off the hills and down the highway. It tossed her hair into her eyes and she pulled a hand from the pocket of her coat to brush it back.

      “I sure could use a ride,” she said.

      James Carpenter was, in fact, headed into town. There was no way to disguise it. He had no handy lie he could use to put her off. So he told her, “I got to drop off some papers at the courthouse and I’m coming straight back.”

      “That works for me,” she said. “I just got to pick up some medicine for my mother-in-law.”

      Later, a friend would remind him: Maggie’s mother-in-law had died a month before, and she had no truck with Maggie when she was alive. Later, he would see how Maggie had fooled him all along. But now, he could not see how he could turn her away.

      “I got to go right now,” he said. He was on a deadline and he hoped that she would have to go back to her house to get something together. Maybe she had to get her purse or maybe some papers of her own and maybe he could dodge her that way. But then, what did Maggie Boylan have left to get together?

      “I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s roll.” She pulled open the passenger-side door and launched herself into the seat even before he could get his key into the ignition. She already had her purse. It was one of these backpack purses, so he hadn’t seen it earlier. She pulled it off her shoulders and began to rummage inside. “Shit,” she said, then put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cuss. You wouldn’t have a lighter, would you?”

      He did not.

      “I should of remembered you don’t smoke. Wait just a minute while I bum me a light.” She planted her purse on the seat and jumped back onto the apron. “Don’t worry. I won’t be but half a minute.”

      There was a little of everything at this crossroads station just outside the little crossroads town of Wolf Creek. Off to one side, on the other side of the grocery section and the Post Office window, beyond the tools and the laundry detergent and the quarts of oil and transmission fluid, four old men sat at their coffee as they did every morning in the restaurant section in the same restaurant booth by the front window and they watched everyone who came in for a stick of beef jerky or a bag of chips or a sandwich from the deli. They were good old men, with no harm in them, retired farmers and loggers and one old part-time farmer who had been his fourth-grade teacher.

      But they talked. They watched everything and they gossiped without shame. And now the story would get around that he was seen with Maggie Boylan and that story would complicate his life even more than it was already. But done is done. Maggie had him pinned there with her backpack purse on his seat, so she was on for the ride to town.

      The old men did not seem to turn—it would not be right to stare—but their eyes turned to watch Maggie leave the truck and enter the store and they watched her stalk down the grocery aisle and