Free Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper

dirty.
    â€œYou ever dump a mean son of a bitch?”
    I pushed her hand away and grabbed onto the bar.
    â€œIs he coming? Is that why you’re here?”
    â€œI figured if he was coming, he’d come right away. It wasn’t until I thought it was safe that I made my move with you. You see?”
    I did. I saw that Jackie Blue’s was on a back road, and while it might be the first place you’d find on foot, it’d be real easy to miss from the road, especially if Springfield weren’t your town. And I saw that she knew that, and that she hadn’t given that fellow near enough time to give up on her before the two of us got busy. But I also saw that it’d been near fifteen hours since she came through the door, and even as fine as she was, fifteen hours is longer than a man could look for a woman with his buddies in tow.
    â€œIf he were coming, he’d’a been here by now,” I said. “So there ain’t no harm in me running to get us some breakfast. You can keep laying low here, and then the two of us can sit and figure out what the next part of your grand adventure is going to be once you leave here.”
    â€œThat’s what you want?”
    I wanted to run across the room and mash myself to her. I wanted to sell the bar and buy a bike and see how far across the planet it could get us. I wanted to shave the gray out of my hair and step back into my old boots and stomp and steal for enough money for us to last forever.
    â€œYeah,” I told her. “That’s what I want.”
    I drove over to the Pancake House and ordered up some grub. I picked up a paper and took a seat, turning straight to the editorial page to read the letters from the loonies. There was one about how abortion stops a beating heart, one about how the school board was trying to teach kids evolution, or, as the letter put it, “from goo to you via the zoo.” The last letter was about how the Ten Commandments needed to be posted up inevery school. All three quoted the Bible in the first paragraph.
    â€œJackie?”
    I looked up and there was Pinkle. Don Pinkle, that is, looking every bit the methed-out redneck that he was. He stood there dope skinny with a sad, scraggly goatee and bags under his eyes that looked like full-grown slugs. If he’d slept in forty-eight hours, it had been forty-eight hours ago. He flashed me a smile, but that isn’t the right word, because there wasn’t nothing flashing in that meth mouth of his. Teeth yellow and orange and brown like dry dog food. He came by the bar some nights with some of the boys, every once in a while getting on a construction crew to get an honest dollar, which must have felt lonely and out of place in his wallet. He never tipped on a drink, not once.
    â€œPinkle,” I said like it was the whole conversation, and tried to get back to my newspaper. But he wasn’t having it.
    â€œWent by the bar last night.”
    â€œDid you now?”
    â€œWasn’t open.”
    I dropped the paper, seeing as it was clear he wasn’t going away.
    â€œNow, Pinkle, don’t you think I know that?”
    â€œKnocked on the door and everything.”
    â€œTrust in your senses, son. We were closed.”
    â€œThought I heard voices,” he said, scratching a scratched-up face. His nostrils stood out bloodred and ragged against the trout belly of his skin. “That’s why I knocked, see. But nobody answered.”
    â€œHeard voices? You? You can’t tell me that hearing voices is some sort of strange occurrence in your life. Not with the shit you’ve got floating in that lump of gristle you probably call a head. I bet it sounds like happy hour in there most times.”
    â€œI thought maybe you were in there with someone, is all,” he said, trying to give me a saucy look.
    I stood up fast and took pleasure in how he scurried back a few steps. Sometimes folks forget just how big I am, or