Oklahoma

Warning: Sex, drugs, language

I think he liked to fuck me because I’d fuck back. Because when he’d try to fold me over the dresser or pin me up against the wall, I’d give him everything I got just so I could get mine. I’d clawed his skin to pieces once. But that was nothin’ he didn’t ask for. There was always this built-up angst inside me, but by the time I walked out into the crisp pine air I felt lighter somehow. Like once we were finished, I transferred what I had to him. Rarely, it’d be slow. I don’t think he liked that much. His eyes would always be closed and his jaw so tense I would think his teeth might shatter. And he’d never look me in the eyes much after. But for some reason, he always let me have my way.

This wasn’t one of those times.

“Fuck, Al.” His rough fingers pressed up my spine until he could cup his palm around my shoulder. Slowly, pushing me down. He let out a thick breath, “Don’t fuckin’ move.”

And that was it. His rugged hands pushed me away, down onto his mattress and I felt the wet heat against the back of my thigh. I hardly ever waited until I caught my breath. Half of the rush was seeing how fast I could use his sheets to clean up. Making sure I messed with them real good as I shoved myself off of his twin bed. Pulling up one layer of clothes at a time. Listening for the zippers of our jeans to sync up in sound. And as I latched the clip behind my back, he’d flicker the metal roller on his cigarette lighter. The smoke clinging to my hair as I pulled over my shirt.

   He always left bagged out dimes on his dresser. Three, four. Lately five. I stopped giving him money a while ago. Not because it was a trade off or anything. Just because he stopped asking. 

Jeremiah had some of the best shit in town and even before we started fuckin’ around, for some reason he always gave me a good price. I’d sell most of it. Use some of it. But mostly, I got it for my dipshit man and his friends. Just to keep him off my back. If he was strung out, we’d end up doin’ some real stupid shit. And I don’t really want to deal with that.

“Miah,” one of his goons was in the kitchen as I opened the door from his room. It was a small trailer, single wide. Tucked in the back of one of the parks in the outskirts. It had to be a solid twenty-minute ride, about an hour walk from the other side of town. But just because it was big in land, didn’t mean there were a lot of people.

They called him Miah because his daddy was Jeri. And if he hadn’t been the rugged, no-shit-takin’, hell raisin’ sonofabitch he was, I’m sure he would’ve got made fun of one way or another. But somehow, he made it work. The name, the drugs. The small town, illiterate with a shotgun in his shotgun. Nobody fucked with him when he was a kid and nobody fucks with him now.

I lit my own cigarette. All them boys in his trailer had seen me walk-in and they seen me walk out over a handful of times. I’m sure they seen a lot more of me then I even knew or care to admit.

“Whachu say?” Miah’s voice crept up behind me like a whistle in the wind. Low and gravelly. Sometimes he would follow me out the front steps. Smoking his cigarette in one of his stolen lawn chairs with the fabric all torn up and frayed as I walked away. He wouldn’t say nothin’ to me ever. I just felt his eyes burning into me like the sun did.

The other one’s eyes looked me up and down so fast I thought they were connected to a light switch. It wasn’t nothin’ new. Nothin’ old either. Just the same as it was every where any girl ever went in this place. I didn’t bother giving him any sort of look back. I knew where the door was and I got what I wanted all the way around. I was ready for the crisp smell of being this far out into the boons on an October morning in Oklahoma.

Miah didn’t follow me to the door. It wasn’t one of those times. He was edgy and harsh and I knew things weren’t right when he got like that. Not with business and not in his head. I didn’t get a chance to look into his eyes, not that they told me much either. But they told me enough. His left one held two different colors in it. Split diagonally. That deep auburn cut right through the most beautiful shade of denim blue I ever saw. Like it was some sort of demon.

The door clicked shut behind me and I held my Marlboro away just so I could get a taste of the freshness. Away from all the bullshit in the heart of town. Far enough away from the neon lights that you didn’t hear the drunks stumbling home just after two am. So deep in the woods that the cops didn’t bother coming all the way out here either. Something about that place felt like the closest to freedom you could get born in a place like this.

 And Miah savored it. Used it for what it was worth. I couldn’t blame him. If it was me, I’d be doing the same damn thing. Only it wasn’t and there wasn’t much to do about it either. Just peddle through the days like they peddled through drugs around here. If one bang wasn’t loud enough, you’d just wait on for the next.

“Where you been at?” Des’s voice carried over mostly anything. The television going haywire because the cable line went out in the storm. Nothin’ on the screen but glitches and white noise. 

I pulled my hand out of my pocket, made sure to only drop three of the five bags on the coffee table. Him and his hounds went at it like they weren’t fed in days. Some for the taste and others for the habit; just like Des. He didn’t peddle what I brought them because if he did, he’d be dead. I’m sure of it. He couldn’t hold onto one bag of that nonetheless what he’d need to make a buck off of it. Instead, he just sprinkled a little bit into his shit to make it what it was.

Des’s nostrils flared as he brought the straw across the powder. He wasn’t much one for needles, but that’s not to say a few of them didn’t do it. I couldn’t stand the sound. I pulled open the door to the refrigerator to a shelf full of blue mountains and blue ribbons. That’s about all we ever had to drink around here. Beer or coffee and sometimes, a little bit of shine.

“How much it cost you?” Des was running his index finger under his nose, his eyes already bloodshot. A few of the other guys glanced up when their turn was over and I pulled my shirt strap back over my shoulder.

My eyebrows rose and I stiffened up my spine to let him know I wasn’t lying much, “Twenty-five.”

It was about twenty-five minutes of my time in that trailer. Twenty-five it would’ve cost me before he stopped charging me. Twenty-five if Des went somewhere else for half as good of shit and twenty-five times that I wished those moments in that trailer never ended. But they always did and that was just something else I couldn’t do much about.

“You go to Miah’s?” Des’s eyes narrowed, but in a few more minutes he’d be too high to care. 

I ran my tongue along the inside of my bottom lip, “Ain’t that where I always go?” I took a sip off the can I cracked, the bubbles scratching my throat. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when he grunted, acting like he was some sort of mad. Truth was, he didn’t give a shit how I got it. As long as it was his when I did.

Des didn’t have a trailer. His momma left, doing whatever it was she did and never came back. He didn’t have a daddy and him and his brothers were left with the house. A small ranch, one story tall with a low roof. But the front porch, that was mostly all mine. I had my own chair out there anyway. Got it off a yard sale in the middle of the night. I guess Miah and I weren’t so different in some ways. I’d smoke my cigarette out front on one side of town and he’d be in his in the sticks on the other. Then again, you wouldn’t find one front door without a chair and an ashtray next to it in this town.

“When’d Peaky get out?” I pushed open the bedroom door, it wasn’t enough of a scare to scream when I’d seen someone sleeping in our bed. Mop of brown hair and arms that could probably rip a door right off of its hinges. Peaky always was down bad, but he liked to keep it that way.

“This mornin’,” Des was finally feeling it. Slouched back on the couch and breathing nice and slow. “This mornin’ he got out.”

As much as I cared about Peaky, he wasn’t nothin’ the other boys weren’t. He wasn’t much I wasn’t either. Always just doing what we can to get by and not thinking about tomorrow, because it might never come. But one thing I didn’t understand about him was that he had a way out. Came over to the states when he was real young, his momma left him around here and the rest of it’s almost too sad to tell. But not sad enough to make him any different. But I’ll tell you, I never heard an Englishman have such a southern drawl.

I grabbed what I went in there for, my pack of cigarettes I forgot to put into my side bag and remembered I still had a lighter in my pocket. The one I’d accidentally taken from Miah’s a few times ago. Not that he said anything to me. He had a new lighter the next time I was there anyway. Always a black Bic like it was a trademark or something. 

The house was always quiet when I came back from Miah’s. His shit was potent, some of the best around. It’ll put you down and get you all wound up again when you didn’t have it. That’s why I didn’t dabble with it much. It took more than the edge off, and I knew if I did it as much as Des, I’d be just as gone as some of his boys were. They’d sell their soul for a fix. Probably already did.

I don’t think I sold mine just yet. Haven’t found a cause righteous enough. Nothin’ around here was worth dying for and yet, here we were dying every day. Some of us faster than others. Some even trying. But I had a plan. Somewhat of one anyway. There wasn’t anyway I’d be dying in the same place I was born and raised. But it still felt like this place had shackles on my feet. I only got so far before I had to turn around and come back. It might’ve been a little enough town, but the reputation of it was proceeding. 

My beer can started to collect sweat along the outside, the blue mountains fading to nothin’ but silver. The only thing I kept on in the shower were the gold necklaces that didn’t dangle too far from my throat and the three rings on my fingers. Two of them had meaning and one was just for fighting, with a rigid cut. Untumbled sapphire I was told. Second hardest mineral under a diamond, but I already knew I wasn’t getting one of those.

Day to day, not much changed. There were always people coming and going. It always smelt like weed and cigarettes. Occasionally, someone would drop by with something to keep me going through the night. I’d take a bump to fire myself up for the Saturday night. That was when all the freaks came out to play. Some my best customers. Like I said before and I’ll say it until I’m dead, I never sold myself for nothin’. Never will. Never had too. And as long as I keep getting a few extra bags of Miah’s shit a week, I’d be able to save up enough and get myself far, far away. 

That’s the idea anyway.