West

WEST/Ashley Clifton WHEN THE BUS first carried Tina and her mother into the desert, past the oil fields of west Texas, Tina felt somehow that they had passed a point ofno return. The land itselfbecame sinister, barren even of oil wells and sage bushes higher than her knee. It was as different from Georgia as a place could be, and everything under the hot, flat sun seemed to speak to her: From now on you are different. From now on you are ours. Her mother, Madge, already Uked it here. She had gotten even fatter on the trip out, living on corn dogs and snow cones and fried eggs and bottled beer that she sneaked back onto the bus from every convenience store they stopped at. Madge was a talker, and this, along with her great size, made strangers like her, especially after they heard her laugh, a laugh so beautiful that it startled, so deep and husky and glamorous, it made you think she could sing, even though Tina knew Madge could not sing at all, not even in church. Madge had made friends with everybody on the bus: the salesman from California, the two Mexican girls from San Antonio, the retired cop from New York on his way to the "sun and fun," as he put it. Tina didn't speak to anybody. She wasn't much of a talker, just fourteen and small even for that age, an elf next to her mother. A troll. The only person she spoke to was the driver, whose seat she Uked to sit behind because it was the farthest from her mother. The driver never looked at her but would speak occasionally, pointing out the names of mountains as they passed them. "San Diablos," he would say, and point a thick finger at some dirty tan peaks. And then he would say nothing for an hour or more. Once, when they were in New Mexico where the interstate swept far south near the Mexican border, a lone figure waved the bus down. The driver pulled over and a man got on, so covered in yeUow dust he might have been buried alive. He held a red bus ticket in his hand. The driver stopped him. "Can't get on wearing those clothes." "They're all I've got." The bus driver said nothing for a moment. Tina waited for him to speak again, amazed that he could utter anything but the names of mountains. "Shake off," he said. The Missouri Review · 154 The man stepped down quickly, back onto the road, and started to slap the dust off himself. After two minutes of slapping, he climbed back up, not noticeably cleaner than before, and the driver said nothing. The man, carrying a duffel bag, sat in the seat across from Tina. He leered at her, his face yellow with dirt but with teeth white and straight and clean. Tina looked away, then got up and walked back to Madge just as the bus started off again. Madge slept through it all, snoring softly with her head bouncing against the plastic window. Tina had only recently come to notice that men watched her. The boys at her high school never paid much attention to her, but older men did, especially ugly ones. It had started just in the past year or so, even though she could discern nothing different about herself, about the way she looked or acted. It was as if someone had painted a word on her forehead that only others could read, and it made her even more afraid around people, made her stutter more, avert her eyes. Still, she dreamed sometimes that this new power might save her, that someday an older man would come to rescue her. Her fantasies consisted of several variations on this theme—in one, a police detective would come and arrest Madge for something and then sweep Tina off her feet. The man was always strong and noble, and never funny—Tina did not trust funny people. And always the first thing out of his mouth was: "You're beautiful, Tina. You're beautiful." The bus stopped at a concrete diner...