Free Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail by Bobbie Ann Mason

remembered the day he strolled into the backyard and blew apart a rotten stump with some kind of plastic machine pistol. “You can squeeze off a clip in no time flat,” he told her later, as if merely mentioning how many screws it took to assemble a patio bench.
    Liz pulled the handle and coins rushed out. As long as she stayed lucky, she felt unafraid and rejuvenated, confident she could handle Peyton. He was still engrossed in the blackjack game. His mother’s condition had thrown them onto a Tilt-A-Whirl ride, where they spun around separately, sometimes facing each other momentarily before spinning away again. Liz didn’t want Daisy to die, and she knew she shouldn’t have run away to Tunica. Now she imagined that when she got home, purged of her need to gamble, she could face Daisy’s helpless body—maybe even talk her out of her coma. But what she would do about Peyton was a question that trembled in the air like a tossed coin. She knew she had to be resolute. She had been tangled up in the mess of his mind too long. After another spill of quarters from the Triple Diamond, she felt cocky and clear. She would go home, visit Daisy, possibly go to her funeral, then get a restraining order against Peyton. And file for divorce. She tripped over her coin bucket and almost fell into the arms of a leering greaseball with a toothpick in his mouth.
    â€œCome to Daddy!” the guy cried, giving her a hug.
    â€œFuck off,” Liz said, jerking free.
    Toward the end of the night Liz was twenty dollars ahead, but in the last hour Peyton begged all her winnings from her for blackjack. He was on a streak, he said. When she relented, he said, “You need me. We’re in this together.” He stared at her. “I mean that in more ways than one.” She told him she wouldn’t have let him have her money if his mother wasn’t in a coma.
    The bus was jammed with jubilant winners laughing and joking, celebrating, and glum losers who stared at their laps. A merry elderly woman across the aisle from Liz and Peyton chattered about the hundred dollars she had won—enough to buy a chimnea, one of those little patio stoves, she announced. Liz’s head was about to blow up, and her mind was flying like microwaves blasting from a cell tower. She touched one of her stitches, a little pair of bristles like whiskers. She aimed peppermint breath-killer at her open mouth.
    â€œSometimes I win and sometimes I lose,” said the woman across the aisle. “I started with church bingo and worked my way up. Bingo got me hooked. But I know when to quit.”
    Peyton nodded. “Everybody’s just trying to get a little something, find a way out.”
    â€œThat’s the truth.”
    â€œYessir,” Peyton said. “I was in jail, but I never done a thing wrong, and now my poor mama lays dying in a hospital and her last image of me is her son, the jailbird.”
    The church woman said, “My husband died last year on June twenty-ninth. Cancer. It had spread to his liver. He couldn’t pass water, and he was in such pain I was glad to finally see him go. He’s home now, with Jesus.”
    â€œWhat?” said Liz, jolted into reality. She might have passed out for a second and missed something. Then she realized it was typical of Peyton to cover his losses by acting unusually sociable. She could sense a hollowness beneath his cheer; he had lost Liz’s money, and he was losing his mother. She was tired and didn’t want to think.
    â€œYou’d make a good preacher,” the church woman said to Peyton with a giggle.
    â€œAmen,” Liz said, her eye on Peyton.
    He said, “Amen, Brother Ben. Shot a goose and killed a hen.”
    The bus darkened, and the passengers quieted. Some time passed, while Liz sipped from a can of Mountain Dew she had brought on board. All the alcohol she had had earlier that day made her feel chilled, and she removed the