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  “Are you ready, Roy?” she asked, calling him easily by his first

  name.

  “Sure.” He nodded.

  Pete stood up stiffly and brushed the dirt off his knees. “Let’s

  go, then,” he said.

  Carl was behind the bar drinking coffee when they walked in.

  Roy asked if he’d seen Artie around, almost hoping that Carl

  would say no. It was cool and dark in the bar, and Roy didn’t feel

  like hunting anyone down in the late-afternoon heat.

  “His boys were just in for pops,” Carl said. “They told me he

  was out back of his place cleaning snapping turtles. You need

  something?” Carl was looking at Pete and Alice.

  “These folks had a breakdown about ten miles back. I

  thought maybe Artie’d have a fuel pump might work for them.”

  “Well, now, he might,” Carl said. “If anyone’d have it, that’d

  be Artie.” He glanced at Pete and Alice again. “You folks are

  lucky to break down here. Other places aren’t so helpful.”

  “Well, then, how about a beer?” Pete said. “Alice? A beer?”

  She shook her head.

  “Just one, then. Whatever you got on tap.”

  Carl raised an eyebrow, and Roy knew he was wondering if

  the boy was under age. Roy didn’t know how old Pete was and

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  Alice to the East

  didn’t really care, although he did wonder briefly how long it

  was since Carl had served a customer who was a stranger.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Roy said, and left for Artie’s.

  There was one sidewalk in town, and he was halfway down it

  when Alice caught up to him.

  “Hey,” she said. “Mind if I come?”

  Roy shook his head.

  “This Artie guy have a shop or something?” she asked. “A

  garage?”

  “No. Just a yard full of engines.”

  “What if he doesn’t have it? The fuel pump.”

  “Then we’ll have to drive to La Moure.”

  “Is that far?”

  “Half-hour or so. Forty-five minutes, maybe.”

  Roy found himself picking up his pace to match Alice’s,

  although it was too hot for anything faster than a stroll.

  “That guy shouldn’t’ve given Pete a beer.”

  “Carl? Why not?”

  “Pete’s only seventeen.”

  “Well. It’s his bar.”

  “Still, he shouldn’t sell Pete beer. The last thing I need is Pete

  drinking at four o’clock.”

  They walked, and Alice looked around, although there wasn’t

  much to see. There wasn’t a shop on the street that wasn’t

  boarded up or closed, with the exception of Carl’s bar and the

  post office. They didn’t have a bank in Verona anymore. They

  didn’t even have a grocery store.

  When they reached Artie’s house and Roy saw the front door

  lying across the porch next to a random pile of hubcaps, he

  began to wish that Alice had stayed back at Carl’s with Pete. He

  didn’t want her to think that everyone in Verona kept their

  property like that. One of Artie’s boys ran out of the house and

  stopped when he saw Roy and Alice in the yard.

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  “Hi, Mr. Menning,” he said. Roy smiled, but couldn’t re-

  member the child’s name. There were three of them, all about

  the same age, all with homemade crewcuts and the hard, round

  bellies of kids who eat a lot but run around more.

  “Is your dad around? Cleaning turtles?”

  “He finished that this morning,” the boy said. “Now he’s

  fixing a chain saw.”

  Artie came from around the back, wiping his hands on his

  jeans, and, as if the front yard could only hold three at once,

  the boy vanished into the house. They were good kids, all three

  of them. Everyone said so. Terrified of their father, Roy had

  heard.

  “I was wondering if you might have a fuel pump for a Chevy,

  a three-fifty,” Roy said. “Some folks broke down out of town.”

  Artie was looking at Alice with interest. “What can I do

  for you?” he asked, as if Roy had not spoken. She seemed to

  understand the game, and asked for the fuel pump again. She

  didn’t appear to be put off by Artie’s long hair or by the tat-

  toos that, like a lady’s gloves, covered him from his hands to

  his elbows. Artie had left town as a teenager and returned for

  his father’s funeral almost a decade later with the boys, the

  hair, the tattoos. Roy didn’t like him, but he was the clos-

  est thing to a mechanic in town, now that the gas station was

  gone.

  “Only Chevy parts I have are for that thing.” Artie pointed at

  a small sedan without wheels resting on four pieces of firewood.

  The hood looked as if it hadn’t been closed for years.

  “You sure?” Roy said, but Artie ignored him, instead asking

  Alice where she was from.

  “Montana.”

  “Where in Montana?”

  “Fort Peck. Across the border.”

  “I know it,” Artie said. “By the reservation.”

  “Yes.”

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  Alice to the East

  “Shit. You’re no squaw, are you?”

  “No.”

  “I was gonna say. Better watch out for my scalp if you were,

  right?” Artie smiled, but it was an unnatural, almost painful,

  expression, as though he’d got a fishhook caught in one corner

  of his mouth, and someone was tugging at it.

  “If you don’t have the part, we’re going to La Moure,” Alice

  said, and Roy admired her for expressing the idea as if it were

  her own. As if she had the slightest idea where or what La

  Moure was.

  “Not today, you ain’t,” Artie said. “Everything’ll be closed by

  the time you get there.”

  Alice glanced at Roy, seeming to weaken with that piece of

  information. He noticed that Pete had cut her jeans unevenly,

  and the dingy gray cotton of her right pocket was showing

  about an inch below her shorts. It hung heavily, as if she were

  carrying a lot of change. Roy didn’t like the idea of Artie being

  able to tell what was in Alice’s pockets. He didn’t like the way

  Artie watched Alice.

  “We’ll go to La Moure tomorrow, then,” Roy said, and before

  Alice could answer, Artie said, “You look just like a girl I knew

  in Beaumont, Texas.”

  She looked at him, silent.

  “You don’t play the flute, do you?” he continued.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t.”

  “Because this girl from Beaumont played the flute, is why I

  ask. You could be sisters. I wondered. What’d you say your last

  name was?”

  “Zysk.”

  “Spelled?”

  “z-y-s-k.”

  “Zysk.” Artie whistled. “There’s a word that’d bring you

  about a thousand points in a Scrabble game.”

  “Except it’s not a real word,” Alice said.

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  “Real enough for me,” Artie said, and Roy decided that it was

  time to go right then. He thanked Artie, who asked, as they

  were leaving the yard,
“Y ’all up at Carl’s?”

  “We won’t be for much longer,” Roy answered.

  “I’m gonna clean up and stop by.”

  “Like I said, we’ll probably be gone by then.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Artie said, and stepped over a hubcap to

  enter his house through the screen door that guarded it so

  feebly.

  Pete cursed at the news and told Roy, “We’ll have to stay with

  you tonight.”

  “Goddamn it, you’re rude,” Alice said, and Pete walked to the

  other end of the bar to read the song list on the jukebox, which

  hadn’t been plugged in since Carl bought the microwave.

  “You’re welcome to stay with me, you know,” Roy said.

  “There’s plenty of room.”

  “We’ll stay in the truck. He’s an idiot. He’s a rude idiot.”

  Roy ordered a sandwich for Alice and a beer for himself. The

  bar was as quiet as a library.

  “What do you do?” Alice asked.

  “Me? I drive a snowplow in the winter and a combine in the

  summer.”

  “You’re not a farmer?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Carl brought Roy his beer and waved away his dollar, but

  Roy folded the bill and slid it under the napkin dispenser when

  Carl turned his back.

  “Do you like those jobs?” Alice asked.

  “Sure. I’m always finding people broke down when I’m snow-

  plowing.”

  Alice laughed. “You rescue them, too?”

  “What I do is keep a stack of magazines with me.”

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  Alice to the East

  “Why magazines?”

  “I tell them to sit in their cars and read a magazine until help

  comes. Gives them something to do. Or else they get restless

  and decide to walk, and that’s when they die.”

  “From walking.”

  “In the snow.”

  “From being bored. They die from being bored. Wow. If we’d

  started walking today, we just would’ve gotten hot.”

  “You’re always better off staying with your car,” Roy said, and

  Alice nodded.

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  “My wife died of a heart attack two years ago this winter.”

  Alice did not say that she was sorry, the way people usually

  did, so Roy did not have to say that it was okay, as he usually

  had to.

  “I’m going to be a nurse,” Alice said. “Maybe.”

  “That so?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to Florida for nursing school. Pete’s coming

  along with me to make sure I’m all right, and to work if I need

  money.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “My mom made him go.”

  “Oh.”

  “You have kids?”

  “One girl. She’s thirty-two.”

  “She live around here?”

  “She works in Minneapolis. She’s a model, for catalogues and

  newspapers.”

  “She must be pretty.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to do that, but my nose is too big.”

  “I don’t know much about it.”

  “She must make a lot of money.”

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  “Yes.”

  “She visit you a lot?”

  “Not so much,” Roy said. “Not since her mom died.”

  “I’ll tell you what would be a great job,” Alice said. “Photog-

  rapher.”

  “I don’t know much about that.”

  “Me neither.” Alice looked behind her, at Pete and the juke-

  box, at the tall wooden cash register. “That Artie guy’s a real

  piece of work,” she said.

  “I knew his father.”

  “He’s a screw-up, huh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He reminds me of my brother. My oldest brother. With

  the tattoos and everything. All of my brothers are dumb, but

  this oldest one, I tell you, he’s as good as retarded. Get this.

  When he was in the army in Germany, his girlfriend back home

  got pregnant. Here he’s been gone five months and she’s sud-

  denly pregnant. So what she does is send him a letter saying, ‘I

  miss you so much, I want to have your baby.’ She says in the

  letter, ‘If I had your baby, it would remind me of you and I

  wouldn’t be so lonely.’ What you have to realize here, Roy, is

  that my brother’s wanted to marry this girl since forever. So

  she sends him a dirty magazine and an empty mustard jar and

  tells him to — I don’t know how to say this — to do it in the

  jar and send it back to her so she can get pregnant with it.

  Understand?”

  “Yes,” Roy said.

  “So my brother, a complete idiot, does this. And then he

  believes her when she writes to him and says she’s having their

  baby. Can you believe that?”

  “This was your oldest brother?” Roy asked.

  “Yes. A fool. Everyone in the world knew about this scam,

  and people even told him that it was a scam, but he still believes

  her. I even told him that it was a scam, and he still believes her.

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  Alice to the East

  He still believes that it’s their kid. Like whatever he sent from

  Germany to Montana made that baby after however many days

  in the mail.”

  Roy didn’t know what to say, so he nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice said. “That was gross.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “But it shows how stupid my family is. My brothers, anyway.”

  “Well. That’s some story.”

  “No kidding.”

  Artie walked into the bar. He had pulled his hair into a

  ponytail and was wearing a baseball cap, green, with a configu-

  ration of initials on it. His shirt had white snaps, and as he

  passed through a ray of sun they shone like dim, symmetrical

  pearls.

  “Looks like you got some new company,” he said to Carl as

  he sat down next to Alice. “Visitors from the distant land of

  Montana.”

  “Your kids were in today,” Carl said.

  “They causing trouble?”

  “They told me you’d got yourself some snappers, is all.”

  “If my boys cause any trouble, you tell me.”

  “You better invite me over for soup,” Carl said, and Artie

  asked Alice, “You like snappers?”

  “Turtles? Never had them.”

  “Maybe I’ll invite you over. You might like it.”

  Alice turned to Roy and said, “My next-to-oldest brother is

  Judd, and he’s no genius, either. He took off, and for three years

  we never heard from him at all. Thought he was dead. Then one

  afternoon my mother gets a phone call —”

  “She telling you her life story already? ” Artie asked Roy, but Alice went on.

  “She gets a phone call and it’s from Judd. ‘Hi, Mom,’ he says,

  like he’s been gone for just the afternoon. ‘Hi, Mom. I’m in New

  Jersey at the recruitment center and the nice lady here says I can

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  have three meals a day and new clothes if I sign up for the army.

  So, Mom,’ Judd says, ‘what’s my Social Security number?’”

  “What was it?” Artie asked.

  “So
Judd enlisted,” Alice continued, ignoring him. “My mom

  says the army’s the only refuge for dumb people like my broth-

  ers. If Pete wasn’t going to Florida with me, he’d probably end

  up in the army, too.”

  “I been to Florida,” Artie said. “I worked on a fishing boat

  there. I lived in a pink house. Right on the ocean.”

  “Really,” Alice said.

  Carl brought her a sandwich and she ate half of it before she

  spoke again. “My wisdom teeth are coming in. You ever get

  those?” she asked Roy.

  “Yeah,” Artie said. “Hurts like a bitch, but there can be no

  wisdom without pain.” He laughed, one harsh burst, like an

  engine turning over in the cold, and then he asked Alice, “Why

  do you wear your hair short?”

  “I like it this way,” she said.

  “Girls should have long hair.”

  “Boys should have short hair.” She gestured at his ponytail.

  “You got salt on your tongue, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You can be a wise-ass, is what it means,” Artie said, and Pete

  was at the bar so fast that Roy realized he must have been

  standing behind them the whole time, waiting.

  “Don’t talk like that to my sister,” Pete said.

  Artie laughed again, that single, mechanical emission. “Billy

  the Kid here,” he muttered. “Tough guy.”

  “Fuck you, pal,” Pete said. “I said not to talk to my sister.”

  Roy heard Alice say, “Jesus Christ.” She slid off her bar stool

  and edged out of the way, somehow anticipating what was

  coming. Roy’s reflexes were not as swift. When Pete threw his

  punch and connected, he pushed Artie into Roy’s shoulder,

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  Alice to the East

  hard. Then Pete stood quiet and undefended while Artie got up,

  shook his head once, and squared his hat. With experienced

  precision, he swung and hit Pete in the center of his face and

  watched as he fell backward at a perfect diagonal, catching his

  head on the corner of the bar. The crack was louder than any

  noise heard in that room all afternoon, and then it was over.

  To Roy’s surprise, Alice approached him first, actually step-

  ping over her brother to touch the sore spot on his shoulder

  where Artie had fallen.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. Roy nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him.

  “Your brother should keep his mouth shut,” Artie said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk to me.” Alice’s voice was low, and

  she wasn’t even looking at Artie. “I really wish you would just