A moment later, he reached down and grasped her wrist.

“Here, look at what you do to me,” he said as he pressed her palm to his groin. He was hard and huge beneath the rough denim fabric.

“What do you think about that?”

She purred. She didn’t know what else to do.

“Want to see it out?”

She thought, I’d like to rip it out by the root. But she purred again instead.

“Now, don’t try nothin’ stupid,” he said, “’cause you’re in for a treat. First time Cora Lee saw it, she said, ‘So that’s why they call you Bull.’”

He chuckled deeply at this.

His other hand left her shoulder and she heard him unzip and start to fumble with his underwear.

“There,” he said. “Where’s your hand?”

She closed her eyes as he guided her hand to him. It was massive and hot.

He said, “I suppose you’re used to this size.”

Before she could reply, Liv was bathed in harsh white light. She flinched and turned away.

Cora Lee screamed, “You fuckin’ no-good cheatin’ son of a bitch! I knew I’d find you down here with that whore!”

“Now, Cora Lee,” Bull said, stepping back and quickly stuffing his penis back in his pants and zipping up. “It ain’t what you think.”

“It sure as hell is!” she howled. “I ought to go get the shotgun and kill you both right now.”

“Cora Lee . . .”

“I’ll shoot you so many times, you’ll be nothin’ but a grease spot, you cheatin’ bastard.”

“Cora Lee, she lured me down here,” Bull said, squinting his eyes against the beam of her flashlight. His voice was whiny.

“Right, and she held a gun to your head and made you show her your dick, you no-good cheatin’ scumbag. I’m comin’ back with that shotgun.”

She started to yank the ladder out, but Bull realized what was happening and reached out and grabbed a rung. Bull and Cora Lee tugged drunkenly back and forth on the ladder for a half minute, Cora Lee screaming more obscenities at him the whole time.

Finally, Bull’s strength won out and the feet of the ladder crashed to the floor of the cellar. Before he climbed up the ladder, he shot his arm toward Liv, threatening her with the hot-shot not to try and follow him. But he mistimed the threat and the hot-shot crackled when it touched her neck and the jolt threw her on her back.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. Then he went up much faster than he’d come down.

“I’m gonna kill you, you cheatin’ douche bag!” Cora Lee yelled.

When Bull got to the top, he pulled the ladder up so hard it went airborne and clanged on the ground as it landed. Liv trembled and hugged herself.

He leaned down over the opening and said, “Now see what you’ve done,” and closed both doors so hard they sounded like gunshots.

With her eyes clamped shut, Liv heard Cora Lee and Bull go at each other over a mild buzzing in her ears. Cora Lee called him names Liv had never heard strung together before, and Bull kept shouting that he’d been tricked, that he only loved one woman, that he must have drunk too much and let the wrong head do all the “thinkin’.”

After five minutes of shouting, an actual gunshot rang out.

Then silence.

Brenda’s voice: “Shut up, the two of you, and go to bed. We’ll sort this all out in the morning.” She spoke calmly but with authority.

Cora Lee said, “I found him down there with his dick in her hand. The ladder was down and they was writhing around—”

“I said, shut up,” Brenda said, barely raising her voice. “Or the next shot won’t be in the air.”

“Okay, Ma,” Bull said. Liv thought he sounded like he was ten years old and had been caught stealing from her purse.

“I ain’t sleepin’ with him in the trailer,” Cora Lee spat.

“You can sleep on our couch.”

“C’mon, Cora Lee,” Bull whined.

Cora Lee said, “It’s over, you cheater. Over!”

“I bet the two of you woke up Dallas,” Brenda said, sounding sad.

—

LIV WAITED. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the cellar doors opened and Brenda, or Cora Lee, or Bull appeared holding the shotgun. There was no place to hide.

But they never came. There was nothing but silence until the coyote came back and sniffed around the opening.

—

FEELING SLOWLY RETURNED to Liv’s body, but there was still a buzz in her ears. Two wounds, like a vampire bite, stung on her neck above her collarbone.

As her heartbeat returned to normal, she realized her hand hurt. She opened it to see that she had gripped the stem of the rose so hard the thorns had pierced her flesh. Her palm was sticky with coagulating blood.

Then, in the dark and with the stiff stem of the rose, she resumed chipping away the clay that held the rock.

Maybe she’d get it out by dawn.

18

Timber Cates sat alone at a round Formica table under a television set that was mounted high on the pale green cinder-block wall of the inmate visiting room. He had dark eyes and hollowed-out cheeks, and his prison uniform hung on his thin, tight frame. His dirty-blond hair was buzz-cut and the three-inch knife scar on his scalp showed through. When he got angry, which was often, the scar turned from white to pink.

Although his head and shoulders were still, his right leg kept a manic rhythm of its own under the table and he kneaded his fingers together on the tabletop. He exuded quiet menace. No one came near him. It was an aura and a look he’d worked on for years and still practiced in the polished-steel mirror of his cell. He could go for minutes without blinking his eyes.

A couple of small kids had wandered over ten minutes earlier, but when they saw him up close, they turned and ran back to their mother on the other side of the room. The mother shot him a disapproving look for upsetting her children and he didn’t flinch. She turned away with a visible shiver and whispered something to her inmate partner. He refused to follow her gesture because he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Timber Cates.

Timber was fine with that kind of reaction from visitors and fellow inmates. He was used to it and it now afforded him a zone of peace.

It was Sunday, family day in the contact room at the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins and he was waiting for his family to arrive. He looked nervously at the clock on the wall above the reception desk, where a guard sat monitoring the inmates and the visitors in the room. The guard was old, fat, and bored. He had a comb-over that started an inch above his left ear. The guard would call out, “You two—that’s enough,” whenever an inmate and his woman hugged too long or made a display of their longing for each other. Hand-holding was permitted. Kissing, hugging, and fondling were not. Testosterone seemed to hang thick in the air like smoke from burnt meat on a barbecue.

Sometimes, inmates made deals with each other where one would distract the guard so the other could grope a quick feel or jam his woman’s hand down his pants. They tried to do it out of view of the cameras. Even if the guard didn’t see them, someone in the video room usually did. By the time the guy in the video room sent a message to the desk guard, it was too late.

Timber Cates didn’t participate in bullshit like that. He had nothing to gain from it. The only female who ever visited him was his mother.

—

THEY CAME into the room fifteen minutes late. His father was wearing his gray C&C Sewer uniform shirt and a stained trucker hat he probably didn’t even know was back in style. As always, his father kept his head down and looked furtively around the room. He was embarrassed to be here and felt put-upon by having to surrender his watch, pocketknife, coins, and anything else that was metal in the lobby.