Lyle's elation at the sight of the house doubled as the first signs of morning's light brightened the predawn sky in the east. Within the hour it would be full daylight, and it appeared that the wind was beginning to calm even though the snow was still falling in weighty flakes. Lyle hoped against the odds that the house was occupied by generous people who would welcome them in to soup, hot bread and butter, a steaming mug of coffee, and a chance to call Maricruz. But Lyle recognized when the house was still a ways away that there wasn't any smoke coming from the chimney and there weren't any vehicles parked out front. He didn't say anything, though, because he didn't want to dash Amanda's hopes.
Lyle could tell that his silence only granted Amanda about a minute or so of continued anticipation. Her posture betrayed her disappointment when they came close enough to the single story wood-framed ghost, leaning toward the east without a single window or door left in its shell.
"Well, shit," Lyle said for the both of them. "I bet this old dump has been empty since the dust bowl. Folks probably moved off to California and never looked back."
"I was really hoping for some grandma and grandpa types to be here," Amanda said. "Just waiting for us with blankets and hot chocolate."
"Yeah, me too." Lyle rubbed his forehead as he often did when things didn't turn out the way he'd hoped.
"Can we rest here anyway?" Amanda asked, perhaps for the first time sounding to Lyle like the child she actually was.
"Might as well," Lyle agreed, leading the way into the house over the half collapsed porch while holding his flashlight in one hand and the .38 in the other. He saw something tiny quickly scurry away from the light. "Nothing but a little mouse," Lyle assured Amanda, who was following behind him. "He won't bother us." He didn't tell her that there was a pretty good chance that there were other critters hiding somewhere too. Lyle shined the beam of his flashlight around what must have been the house's living room. The plaster had long deteriorated from the rotting wooden slats on the wall and the crumbling floor that was covered with dirt, plaster dust, boards that had fallen from the walls or roof, and probably the droppings of several different species of animal.
"Let's clear off a spot over here," Lyle said, pointing toward the west wall in between two empty window frames. "I'm going to gather up some of these boards and see if I can get us a little fire going. You've still got that bottle of whiskey, right?"
Amanda nodded. "Told you it'd come in handy." She grabbed one of the stray boards from the floor and used it to push the rubble out of the way to clear some space for the two of them to sit down while Lyle made a small pile of splintered boards and asked Amanda to pour a few swigs worth of the whiskey on the pile. Lyle then squatted down and used his cigarette lighter and a piece of an ancient curtain he'd found to light the pile on fire. It took a little while for the flame to get going but he finally had a decent fire that warmed Lyle and Amanda's frozen skin and bones. The two of them sat on the floor, four or five feet apart, and rested against the leaning and crumbling wall with their eyes closed, soaking in the fire's warmth. Lyle had been rodeo tired, farm tired, and drunk tired, but until then he had never been stuck-in-a-blizzard tired. But just as he started to fade into sleep, Amanda's voice jarred him back into that house, next to that fire.
"My dad got stabbed to death in Leavenworth when I was just a toddler," she began. "I kind of remember meeting him once at the prison when I was maybe three or so. I think that's a real memory. In my mind he looks kind of nice, you know... I mean nice for someone who'd killed somebody."
Lyle's head still rested against the wall with his eyes closed. "You don't have to tell me your story, Amanda," he said without opening them, although the truth was that from the few things he'd picked up since he met her, he was afraid to hear her story, to know the world can be that dark. However, he forced himself to say, "But I'll listen if you want to."
It took her a moment to respond, but she finally said, "I do. At least I think I do. I've never really told it to anybody, never had anybody willing to listen."
When Lyle opened his eyes she had turned to face him, so he fought off the sleep to give her his attention as she said, "My mama died about three years ago when I was thirteen." She paused and sighed before continuing to speak very slowly as though she was having to pull the memories free from a thick mud. "She was all cold and gray and covered in sweat when I found her after school one day in the fall, all sprawled out on her bedroom floor just wearing an old nasty pair of underwear. The crack pipe was broken in her hand and there were crack rocks all over the floor. I just started screaming and screaming and I didn't know what to do, but eventually I stopped thinking about what happened to her and started thinking about what was going to happen to me with her dead. She'd been letting her boyfriend Keith crash at our place and he was always walking in on me when I was getting out of the shower and rubbing up against me and stuff. I'd told my mom about it a few times but she either didn't believe me or didn't give a shit."
Lyle whispered, "My God, Amanda."
Amanda looked away from Lyle and started to toss broken slats into the fire as she spoke. "There was no way in hell I was staying there with him but the only other option was to be thrown into foster care, and I'd be damned if I was going to do that either. I had friends at school who were in foster homes and you wouldn't believe what they told me. So I packed up a bag, took all the money from my mom's purse, kissed her on the forehead, called 911, and then I took off running with no clue where the hell I was going. I couldn't go to my friends' places because the cops would sure as hell come looking for me there, so I caught a bus to Chicago hoping to find my mom's brother Dwayne that she used to talk about. I slept on the street until I found him but when I showed up at his place he was so drunk he couldn't even understand anything I was saying. There was no way I was sticking around there with that drunk bastard but I didn't have any money left so I was stuck in Chicago. I was so scared and hungry."
"This is when you were thirteen?" Lyle asked so she'd know he was listening.
"Yeah, about three years ago. I started begging for money just off Michigan Avenue, which was getting me by but I knew winter was coming. So this guy G-Man, whose real name was George I think, acted like he was a real nice guy who was dressed all fancy, told me he could get me a job without me needing to be sixteen or having my parents' permission so I believed him and went with him. He took me to some nasty little motel and he made me drink some stuff and then he beat the shit out of me and raped me over and over again and made me do all kinds of stuff and then let some other guys do it too. He handcuffed me to the bed and only let me up every now and then to go to the bathroom but sometimes I just had to piss or shit in the bed and then he'd beat me for doing it. I don't know how long I was in that place because he kept me drugged up a lot of the time."
Lyle felt lost in the darkness of Amanda's story, knowing that she was telling the truth but still having trouble believing the level of evil she'd experienced.
"Eventually," Amanda said, "he sold me for $300 to a trucker he called Jabba who must have weighed 450 pounds."
"Sold you? Like a slave?" Lyle asked in shock.
"Not like a slave, Lyle; I was a slave. He kept me tied up in the sleeper cab of his truck and rented me out to sometimes ten guys a night at truck stops all over the country. There were some real nasty guys, old guys, mean guys, even a few cops. Then he ended up trading me for a case of beer, a couple country music tapes, and a portable toilet for his truck. He traded me to a real vicious asshole whose CB handle was Double Barrel. People called him DB most of the time. I can't even tell you what all he's done to me. I don't even think I know what all he did to me. I think I blocked a lot of it out."
Tears began to roll silently down Amanda's cheeks and her voice took on the muffled tone of a child with a cold. "There was this one time, maybe a year ago, when I ended up pregnant and he found a piece of paper I'd been writing on, coming up with names if it was a boy or a girl. I liked Malcolm if it was a boy, and Emily if it was a girl. That night he kicked me so hard in the stomach that I passed out from the pain. I bled out that night. Lost it, you know. He had me back to work two days later."
"Holy shit, Amanda," Lyle groaned, his heart feeling like it was being crushed. "I don't even know what to say to this."
She wiped her dripping nose on her sleeve and continued her story, "When we were in Pueblo last night--that's the name of that town, right?--DB was throwing a fit because the roads were closing and he wasn't going to be able to deliver his cargo to Houston on time. After it started snowing, he went in to a diner to eat but he forgot to tie me up or maybe he thought I wouldn't make a run for it in a blizzard. I watched through the truck window and when I saw him get up from the table and go to the bathroom, I jumped out of the truck and took off running until I saw the hotel and came up with the idea to wait in the bushes. I stayed there until old Albert Singleton pulled up. I know DB is going to come looking for me, and if he finds me he's either going to kill me or he's going to beat me within an inch of my life. I'll be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life, but anything's better than being DB's "cooze" anymore. That's what he called me, his "cooze." I guess now I'm going to be going to jail for stealing the car. I'm not a damn bit scared of that though. Once you've been to the pit of hell, the edges of hell don't look so scary. I thought real seriously about putting a bullet in my head when I found the gun in the car. I was about to do it when you knocked on the window and scared the hell out of me out in the middle of nowhere."
Lyle rested his head in his hands, unable to speak, having no idea what possible words in the English language might be appropriate in response to what he'd just heard. Amanda had stopped talking and all Lyle could hear was the crackling of the wood in the fire and the ancient roof creaking beneath the weight of more than a foot of snow. Lyle looked up and turned his head toward Amanda, whose gaze was lost in the flames. He started to speak, just because it felt like he should say something, but the words caught in his throat like they were afraid to venture out into the air. After clearing his throat, his voice cracked, "You'd have been missed."
"By who?" Amanda asked, skeptically.
"By me," Lyle answered. "I'd never have met you."
Amanda sniffled and her eyes welled again. Lyle was pretty sure Amanda had never heard from anyone that she'd be missed if she was gone. He thought about reaching out to hold her hand but was afraid to frighten her after all she'd been through. She must have known what he was thinking because she scooted just a little closer to put her hand on top of his.
"I'm tired of talking," Amanda said, pulling her hand back slowly. "Will you tell me about your little girl? I want to hear all about her."
Lyle rubbed the gathering sleep from his eyes and answered, "Well I wish I could, but I'm ashamed to say that I don't really know her."
"What's she look like?" Amanda asked curiously. "Savannah's her name, right?"
"Yeah. Savannah. She's beautiful... with a big bright smile." Lyle pictured her in his memory sitting where she had been the one time he met her at the diner in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. "She has long curly blond hair and the kind of chubby cheeks that grandmas are always pinching. She had the greatest laugh, like a little chipmunk."
"Why hadn't you met her before then?"
"I didn't even know about her until I got a letter from Osage County. I used to run around with this girl named Clarissa back during my rodeo days. Damn, she was something else. Well, we ended up having a big falling out over my drinking and about how she wanted me to get a job around there and settle down. I got pissed off at her because she'd always said we were just having fun together and then all of a sudden she was dropping hints about getting married. We had a big fight out in front of her house and I sped off in my truck, heading out west and getting some work outside Amarillo. I never looked back."
"Why didn't Clarissa tell you she was pregnant?"
"She didn't know yet and then when she found out she decided she'd rather go it alone than raising a kid with an asshole drunk like me. I can't say I blame her. But eventually she lost her job and she didn't have anybody to help her out so she talked to a lawyer who told her what to do to get child support. They tracked me down and sent me a letter."
"I bet that was a shock!"
"I didn't know what to do. I talked to my AA sponsor, Rick, and he got all emotional about it for some reason and told me I had to go back to Oklahoma and do what was right, that it was part of making amends and that every kid deserves a dad. I told Maricruz about it and she was a little taken aback but then she said the same thing Rick had and then volunteered to go with me but I told her I needed to do it alone."
"A cowboy thing, huh?"
Lyle smiled, "Yeah, I guess you could say that. When I got back to Pawhuska they did some tests on me and it turned out that I was the father, which wasn't a surprise to me because Clarissa was never the kind of girl to sleep around. I signed the papers saying I would send a check each month and then I met Clarissa and Savannah at the diner downtown. Savannah didn't really understand what all was going on. She was way more interested in coloring on the place mat, but I couldn't quit looking at her." Lyle got lost in the memory of his daughter's face for a moment. "It was like I started breathing right then, like I started believing in God all of a sudden when I saw her." He was surprised that he had to choke back the tears trying to escape. "Clarissa told me how sorry she was for never contacting me before. I told her I didn't blame her. I told her I was sorry for the way I'd treated her at the end of it all. She said she was happy for me being sober and having Maricruz in my life, and I promised Savannah that I'd come to see her this summer, that I'd take her to the zoo in Tulsa to see the elephants. She had a pink stuffed elephant with her at the diner."
"So you're actually going to do that, right? Go there and see her again?"
"Yeah. I'd go right now if I could. Maricruz, Benny, and I are going to spend a week out there or so in June."
"That sounds great," Amanda said, nodding her head slowly, biting her bottom lip. "Really great."
The sun had begun to pour in through the vacant window frames, so Lyle stood up slowly, stretching himself, and saw through the window that not only had the sun risen but the snow had stopped, and all was still. Originally he had thought about holing up in the old house until help arrived but as he looked back at the fire and at Amanda who had also stood and was looking out a window about five feet away, Lyle decided that too much had been said in that house for him to be able to stay there any longer. It was almost like it had become haunted by both Amanda's and his memories of pasts they wished they could erase, hers filled with what had been done to her and his with what he had done to others. Lyle turned to Amanda and said, "There's no use sitting around in this old dump. Let's get the hell out of here and cover some ground. What do you say?"
Amanda looked relieved. "How far are we from Rocky Ford?"
"I'm not quite sure," Lyle answered. "But if help's coming, it will be coming from the Rocky Ford direction. So the closer we get to town, the sooner help will find us."
Amanda's expression turned from relief to concern. "What's going to happen to me, Lyle? When they find us I mean."
"Don't you worry about that, Amanda. If anybody wants to get to you, they're going to have to go through me first," he said, surprising himself by how fatherly he'd just sounded.
She smiled and the two of them put on all their layers again and Lyle gathered up the pistol and the flashlight. Because the wind and snow had stopped, Amanda didn't wrap her head in the T-shirt again but Lyle forced her to wear his stocking cap. Lyle avoided the three-quarters full bottle of whiskey until Amanda asked, "Do you want me to leave it here?"
Lyle thought for a moment and then responded, "Nah. Grab it. I've got an idea."
The two of them walked out into the snow-buried front yard of the house and turned to look back at the sad, sagging structure. Lyle pulled the bandanna he'd worn earlier over his face from his pocket and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle Amanda was holding. "I say we burn this son-of-a-bitch down," Lyle said. "Let all that shit we talked about in there go up in flames."
Amanda looked at the bottle and then looked at the house and said, "It's not that easy, you know."
"I understand that," he said, knowing full well that a person's past is always tethered to them, like a pack horse following behind, but that the tether can be let out more and more, letting the horse walk farther and farther behind. "But it's a start, Amanda. How's your throwing arm?"
"I'll let you do it," she said, handing him the bottle.
Lyle lit the bandanna and as the flame took hold of the cloth he ran up a few steps and threw the bottle through the empty door frame, hearing the shattering glass and watching as the fire spread as the whiskey ran through the floor boards. Lyle and Amanda took several steps back and Lyle was surprised when Amanda rested her head on Lyle's arm for a moment and said softly, "Thank you, Lyle," as the two of them watched the house go up in flames as though it had been built with kindling. After a few moments spent in silence, Lyle and Amanda turned away from the house and began making tracks in the direction of Rocky Ford, the plume of dark grey smoke rising behind them into the clear and cold Colorado morning sky.
"Let's clear off a spot over here," Lyle said, pointing toward the west wall in between two empty window frames. "I'm going to gather up some of these boards and see if I can get us a little fire going. You've still got that bottle of whiskey, right?"
Amanda nodded. "Told you it'd come in handy." She grabbed one of the stray boards from the floor and used it to push the rubble out of the way to clear some space for the two of them to sit down while Lyle made a small pile of splintered boards and asked Amanda to pour a few swigs worth of the whiskey on the pile. Lyle then squatted down and used his cigarette lighter and a piece of an ancient curtain he'd found to light the pile on fire. It took a little while for the flame to get going but he finally had a decent fire that warmed Lyle and Amanda's frozen skin and bones. The two of them sat on the floor, four or five feet apart, and rested against the leaning and crumbling wall with their eyes closed, soaking in the fire's warmth. Lyle had been rodeo tired, farm tired, and drunk tired, but until then he had never been stuck-in-a-blizzard tired. But just as he started to fade into sleep, Amanda's voice jarred him back into that house, next to that fire.
"My dad got stabbed to death in Leavenworth when I was just a toddler," she began. "I kind of remember meeting him once at the prison when I was maybe three or so. I think that's a real memory. In my mind he looks kind of nice, you know... I mean nice for someone who'd killed somebody."
Lyle's head still rested against the wall with his eyes closed. "You don't have to tell me your story, Amanda," he said without opening them, although the truth was that from the few things he'd picked up since he met her, he was afraid to hear her story, to know the world can be that dark. However, he forced himself to say, "But I'll listen if you want to."
It took her a moment to respond, but she finally said, "I do. At least I think I do. I've never really told it to anybody, never had anybody willing to listen."
When Lyle opened his eyes she had turned to face him, so he fought off the sleep to give her his attention as she said, "My mama died about three years ago when I was thirteen." She paused and sighed before continuing to speak very slowly as though she was having to pull the memories free from a thick mud. "She was all cold and gray and covered in sweat when I found her after school one day in the fall, all sprawled out on her bedroom floor just wearing an old nasty pair of underwear. The crack pipe was broken in her hand and there were crack rocks all over the floor. I just started screaming and screaming and I didn't know what to do, but eventually I stopped thinking about what happened to her and started thinking about what was going to happen to me with her dead. She'd been letting her boyfriend Keith crash at our place and he was always walking in on me when I was getting out of the shower and rubbing up against me and stuff. I'd told my mom about it a few times but she either didn't believe me or didn't give a shit."
Lyle whispered, "My God, Amanda."
Amanda looked away from Lyle and started to toss broken slats into the fire as she spoke. "There was no way in hell I was staying there with him but the only other option was to be thrown into foster care, and I'd be damned if I was going to do that either. I had friends at school who were in foster homes and you wouldn't believe what they told me. So I packed up a bag, took all the money from my mom's purse, kissed her on the forehead, called 911, and then I took off running with no clue where the hell I was going. I couldn't go to my friends' places because the cops would sure as hell come looking for me there, so I caught a bus to Chicago hoping to find my mom's brother Dwayne that she used to talk about. I slept on the street until I found him but when I showed up at his place he was so drunk he couldn't even understand anything I was saying. There was no way I was sticking around there with that drunk bastard but I didn't have any money left so I was stuck in Chicago. I was so scared and hungry."
"This is when you were thirteen?" Lyle asked so she'd know he was listening.
"Yeah, about three years ago. I started begging for money just off Michigan Avenue, which was getting me by but I knew winter was coming. So this guy G-Man, whose real name was George I think, acted like he was a real nice guy who was dressed all fancy, told me he could get me a job without me needing to be sixteen or having my parents' permission so I believed him and went with him. He took me to some nasty little motel and he made me drink some stuff and then he beat the shit out of me and raped me over and over again and made me do all kinds of stuff and then let some other guys do it too. He handcuffed me to the bed and only let me up every now and then to go to the bathroom but sometimes I just had to piss or shit in the bed and then he'd beat me for doing it. I don't know how long I was in that place because he kept me drugged up a lot of the time."
Lyle felt lost in the darkness of Amanda's story, knowing that she was telling the truth but still having trouble believing the level of evil she'd experienced.
"Eventually," Amanda said, "he sold me for $300 to a trucker he called Jabba who must have weighed 450 pounds."
"Sold you? Like a slave?" Lyle asked in shock.
"Not like a slave, Lyle; I was a slave. He kept me tied up in the sleeper cab of his truck and rented me out to sometimes ten guys a night at truck stops all over the country. There were some real nasty guys, old guys, mean guys, even a few cops. Then he ended up trading me for a case of beer, a couple country music tapes, and a portable toilet for his truck. He traded me to a real vicious asshole whose CB handle was Double Barrel. People called him DB most of the time. I can't even tell you what all he's done to me. I don't even think I know what all he did to me. I think I blocked a lot of it out."
Tears began to roll silently down Amanda's cheeks and her voice took on the muffled tone of a child with a cold. "There was this one time, maybe a year ago, when I ended up pregnant and he found a piece of paper I'd been writing on, coming up with names if it was a boy or a girl. I liked Malcolm if it was a boy, and Emily if it was a girl. That night he kicked me so hard in the stomach that I passed out from the pain. I bled out that night. Lost it, you know. He had me back to work two days later."
"Holy shit, Amanda," Lyle groaned, his heart feeling like it was being crushed. "I don't even know what to say to this."
She wiped her dripping nose on her sleeve and continued her story, "When we were in Pueblo last night--that's the name of that town, right?--DB was throwing a fit because the roads were closing and he wasn't going to be able to deliver his cargo to Houston on time. After it started snowing, he went in to a diner to eat but he forgot to tie me up or maybe he thought I wouldn't make a run for it in a blizzard. I watched through the truck window and when I saw him get up from the table and go to the bathroom, I jumped out of the truck and took off running until I saw the hotel and came up with the idea to wait in the bushes. I stayed there until old Albert Singleton pulled up. I know DB is going to come looking for me, and if he finds me he's either going to kill me or he's going to beat me within an inch of my life. I'll be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life, but anything's better than being DB's "cooze" anymore. That's what he called me, his "cooze." I guess now I'm going to be going to jail for stealing the car. I'm not a damn bit scared of that though. Once you've been to the pit of hell, the edges of hell don't look so scary. I thought real seriously about putting a bullet in my head when I found the gun in the car. I was about to do it when you knocked on the window and scared the hell out of me out in the middle of nowhere."
Lyle rested his head in his hands, unable to speak, having no idea what possible words in the English language might be appropriate in response to what he'd just heard. Amanda had stopped talking and all Lyle could hear was the crackling of the wood in the fire and the ancient roof creaking beneath the weight of more than a foot of snow. Lyle looked up and turned his head toward Amanda, whose gaze was lost in the flames. He started to speak, just because it felt like he should say something, but the words caught in his throat like they were afraid to venture out into the air. After clearing his throat, his voice cracked, "You'd have been missed."
"By who?" Amanda asked, skeptically.
"By me," Lyle answered. "I'd never have met you."
Amanda sniffled and her eyes welled again. Lyle was pretty sure Amanda had never heard from anyone that she'd be missed if she was gone. He thought about reaching out to hold her hand but was afraid to frighten her after all she'd been through. She must have known what he was thinking because she scooted just a little closer to put her hand on top of his.
"I'm tired of talking," Amanda said, pulling her hand back slowly. "Will you tell me about your little girl? I want to hear all about her."
Lyle rubbed the gathering sleep from his eyes and answered, "Well I wish I could, but I'm ashamed to say that I don't really know her."
"What's she look like?" Amanda asked curiously. "Savannah's her name, right?"
"Yeah. Savannah. She's beautiful... with a big bright smile." Lyle pictured her in his memory sitting where she had been the one time he met her at the diner in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. "She has long curly blond hair and the kind of chubby cheeks that grandmas are always pinching. She had the greatest laugh, like a little chipmunk."
"Why hadn't you met her before then?"
"I didn't even know about her until I got a letter from Osage County. I used to run around with this girl named Clarissa back during my rodeo days. Damn, she was something else. Well, we ended up having a big falling out over my drinking and about how she wanted me to get a job around there and settle down. I got pissed off at her because she'd always said we were just having fun together and then all of a sudden she was dropping hints about getting married. We had a big fight out in front of her house and I sped off in my truck, heading out west and getting some work outside Amarillo. I never looked back."
"Why didn't Clarissa tell you she was pregnant?"
"She didn't know yet and then when she found out she decided she'd rather go it alone than raising a kid with an asshole drunk like me. I can't say I blame her. But eventually she lost her job and she didn't have anybody to help her out so she talked to a lawyer who told her what to do to get child support. They tracked me down and sent me a letter."
"I bet that was a shock!"
"I didn't know what to do. I talked to my AA sponsor, Rick, and he got all emotional about it for some reason and told me I had to go back to Oklahoma and do what was right, that it was part of making amends and that every kid deserves a dad. I told Maricruz about it and she was a little taken aback but then she said the same thing Rick had and then volunteered to go with me but I told her I needed to do it alone."
"A cowboy thing, huh?"
Lyle smiled, "Yeah, I guess you could say that. When I got back to Pawhuska they did some tests on me and it turned out that I was the father, which wasn't a surprise to me because Clarissa was never the kind of girl to sleep around. I signed the papers saying I would send a check each month and then I met Clarissa and Savannah at the diner downtown. Savannah didn't really understand what all was going on. She was way more interested in coloring on the place mat, but I couldn't quit looking at her." Lyle got lost in the memory of his daughter's face for a moment. "It was like I started breathing right then, like I started believing in God all of a sudden when I saw her." He was surprised that he had to choke back the tears trying to escape. "Clarissa told me how sorry she was for never contacting me before. I told her I didn't blame her. I told her I was sorry for the way I'd treated her at the end of it all. She said she was happy for me being sober and having Maricruz in my life, and I promised Savannah that I'd come to see her this summer, that I'd take her to the zoo in Tulsa to see the elephants. She had a pink stuffed elephant with her at the diner."
"So you're actually going to do that, right? Go there and see her again?"
"Yeah. I'd go right now if I could. Maricruz, Benny, and I are going to spend a week out there or so in June."
"That sounds great," Amanda said, nodding her head slowly, biting her bottom lip. "Really great."
The sun had begun to pour in through the vacant window frames, so Lyle stood up slowly, stretching himself, and saw through the window that not only had the sun risen but the snow had stopped, and all was still. Originally he had thought about holing up in the old house until help arrived but as he looked back at the fire and at Amanda who had also stood and was looking out a window about five feet away, Lyle decided that too much had been said in that house for him to be able to stay there any longer. It was almost like it had become haunted by both Amanda's and his memories of pasts they wished they could erase, hers filled with what had been done to her and his with what he had done to others. Lyle turned to Amanda and said, "There's no use sitting around in this old dump. Let's get the hell out of here and cover some ground. What do you say?"
Amanda looked relieved. "How far are we from Rocky Ford?"
"I'm not quite sure," Lyle answered. "But if help's coming, it will be coming from the Rocky Ford direction. So the closer we get to town, the sooner help will find us."
Amanda's expression turned from relief to concern. "What's going to happen to me, Lyle? When they find us I mean."
"Don't you worry about that, Amanda. If anybody wants to get to you, they're going to have to go through me first," he said, surprising himself by how fatherly he'd just sounded.
She smiled and the two of them put on all their layers again and Lyle gathered up the pistol and the flashlight. Because the wind and snow had stopped, Amanda didn't wrap her head in the T-shirt again but Lyle forced her to wear his stocking cap. Lyle avoided the three-quarters full bottle of whiskey until Amanda asked, "Do you want me to leave it here?"
Lyle thought for a moment and then responded, "Nah. Grab it. I've got an idea."
The two of them walked out into the snow-buried front yard of the house and turned to look back at the sad, sagging structure. Lyle pulled the bandanna he'd worn earlier over his face from his pocket and stuffed it into the neck of the bottle Amanda was holding. "I say we burn this son-of-a-bitch down," Lyle said. "Let all that shit we talked about in there go up in flames."
Amanda looked at the bottle and then looked at the house and said, "It's not that easy, you know."
"I understand that," he said, knowing full well that a person's past is always tethered to them, like a pack horse following behind, but that the tether can be let out more and more, letting the horse walk farther and farther behind. "But it's a start, Amanda. How's your throwing arm?"
"I'll let you do it," she said, handing him the bottle.
Lyle lit the bandanna and as the flame took hold of the cloth he ran up a few steps and threw the bottle through the empty door frame, hearing the shattering glass and watching as the fire spread as the whiskey ran through the floor boards. Lyle and Amanda took several steps back and Lyle was surprised when Amanda rested her head on Lyle's arm for a moment and said softly, "Thank you, Lyle," as the two of them watched the house go up in flames as though it had been built with kindling. After a few moments spent in silence, Lyle and Amanda turned away from the house and began making tracks in the direction of Rocky Ford, the plume of dark grey smoke rising behind them into the clear and cold Colorado morning sky.
