Free Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley by Ann Pancake

leaning into turns at an angle too deep, the bike canting to where she feared their hips would scrape ground, Nathan, who always drove fast, now driving dangerous, and Janie, whom Nathan’s driving always scared a little, but in a thrilling way, realized she was scared for real. She was terrified. The bike just holding the curves like a marble in a low-rimmed slot, now them cresting the highest hill, and Janie saw the rusty guardrails, the dark-humped crown of trees under them, and Janie saw, too, the motorcycle sailing over those guardrails, her body, his, impaled on branches. Janie ricocheted between staring aghast over Nathan’s shoulder, her eyes so wide they hurt, and squeezing her eyes shut and begging under her breath. Until finally she just balled all of herself into the very top of her chest, right under her throat, right under a scream, and held on and waited for the end. But she did not scream, not any more than she yelled, What the fuck are you doing? Slow down! Are you crazy? And why? Because her fear of appearing uncool was still more real to her than the fear of dying? Or was it fear of pissing him off that was more real? Or was it simply not wanting to call attention to herself?
    Then suddenly, they rounded a curve, and there was a coal truck. Nathan did brake. But it was too late, Nathan had to pass on the right, the graveled shoulder, Janie felt the guardrail graze her ankle, and that Nathan kept it upright Janie could only attribute later to how hard her grandmother prayed for her each night, and the shoulder narrowed, them running out of space, and at the last possible moment,they cleared the truck, Nathan jerked the tires back onto the pavement, didn’t even skid, and Nathan and Janie ripped on towards Remington.
    WEDNESDAYS AT RAMELLA’S was happy hour all night long, and Janie ordered another tequila sunrise while Uncle Bobby complained about the lazy ways of the sub-eating laundry manager. “And he just sits in there talking on the phone to his girlfriend, Janie. Just sits in there talking to his girlfriend, and I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anyone so fat. She’s as fat as those three ladies we saw climbing into that Volkswagen outside of Ponderosa all put together!” and him harr-ing, jungle roaring, she could hear all kinds of animals in it, and by the end of the second drink, Janie could shove away what had sickened her all day—that Nathan was more willing to kill himself and her than to confront Melissa’s lover, yes, but also things even oozier than that. Now those things faded, and by the third drink, Janie was enveloped in glow, for Uncle Bobby, for the bartender, even for the Halloweenishly mascara’d woman in the Styx T-shirt the bartender was hitting on.
    Then, at a distance from herself, Janie heard herself talking, the words coming easy as a creek running in her mouth, only when she was high and only with Uncle Bobby could she talk this way, and as she did, every bad feeling in her washed clear. She talked loose, with no regard for grammar, talked how almost everyone in McCloud County talked, including most of the teachers at school, and the way Janie talked when she wasn’t at home or at her grandparents’, and she heard her mother saying, “You keep talking like that, you’ll never find a job away from here,” then that, too, washed away. She was telling stories of college, all the wild parties, them wildening further in the telling, things she had actually done, and things she had heard other people had done that she wished she’d thought of, them now done by her in the telling, and Uncle Bobby howling with laughter and admirationat all the right places and then some. “Oh, I can’t believe that, Janie! I can’t believe it!” “Oh, I think that’s so funny, Janie!” “Did you tell him, Janie? Did you tell him off?”
    And then she let Uncle Bobby have his turn. He continued in