Free In An Arid Land by Paul Scott Malone

you need a little. Keep it and give it back to me tomorrow." Marcene threw the bill to the floor. Ruby picked it up. "Take it." She shook the bill. "Take it, I said." Marcene took it. "Now get dressed, and be sure to press your nice one for your daddy tomorrow."
    Marcene got up and went to the closet, took down her dress, threw it on the bed. Ruby watched the girl's naked body, legs slender, little nubs where breasts would soon form, and she briefly glimpsed her future as a woman. There is pain and blood, gal, she thought, and it's the same for all of us.
    "Look, child," she said. "It be only one more day and he'll be home. Things will be better, I promise."
    Marcene, calmer, standing still above the dress on the bed, glared straight back at her. Staring at each other, they each waited. And then, like a cat springing for a lizard, the girl moved, letting out a tiny sound, and in two strides was before Ruby, her arms around the soft waist, her face pressed against the jutting bone of Ruby's shoulder. She clung, her breaths coming in raspy whimpers, nearly cries. "Ruby," she said. "Ruby."
    The woman hugged the girl's neck and lay her cheek against the pillow of hair. She smelled the sweet-sour morning odor of the slender body and felt the pressure of ten little fingers in her back. She heard, "Ruby," cry-like and distant. She held her. They swayed gently, and Ruby thought, Yes, this is the way it is. There is pain and blood and the future and the worry and it is always the same. But she said, "Now now, child." Cooing now. "He'll be home tomorrow and things'll be better, I promise."
    In the kitchen the old woman sang, "Hurry, hurry!" Ruby hurried out. The car the big Lincoln was idling in the driveway and she could see Mr. Livermore, shadowy and distant behind the windshield, both hands on the wheel. She opened the back door.
    "No no," he said. "Up here." His hand patted the seat.
    She got in, smoothed out her dress. He looked at her, hard, close, right in the eyes. She glanced at him, just a turn of the head. His eyes were smiling, gentle, but his mouth was even and flat. Something touched her arm and she started to pull away, but then realized what it was. He touched her again, turned his hand over on the seat for her to hold, but she left it alone.
    "I guess things are going to change a little now."
    "We better be going, Mr. Livermore. I got to catch a bus."
    "It doesn't have to change."
    She looked at him. Now his mouth was smiling too, almost tenderly, lovingly. He said, "I'll keep him busy."
    "Mr. Livermore"
    "I know," he said through his moustache, gray, yellow-stained from cigarettes. They lurched backward and he leaned over the seat, peering back, gripping the wheel with one hand. The car swayed into the road and he whipped it around, started off. He was smiling again, and she knew it was to convince her. He was an old man and she knew that he thought he would have to convince her. "You can have a good life here, Ruby. Just listen to me."
    "Right now I got to get to the bus and you're already late."
    "Are you listening?"
    "I hear you." She paused. "You know he'd kill us both."
    "He'll never know." He spoke through his moustache, gripped the wheel with both hands, the car surging forward over the dust.
    "I can't do it no more, Mr. Livermore."
    "Don't call me that," he said. He touched her thigh and she jerked it away. She could feel his disappointment, the minute shifting of his shoulders, the added pressure on the seat from the deeper slump of his body. "There are ways," he said.
    "No. Not no more. I can't no more, I just can't."
    She sensed him slump again. There was a frightening finality to it as if he might strike her because he couldn't convince her, in the same way that all men do, even the gentlest of men, who strike out at what they cannot control. She held on to the armrest of her door; he made no movement except for the minute adjustments of the wheel. They were silent as the car rushed on.
    At the junction he