1. Chapter 1 #2
In addition to Buster’s there was a laundromat, a thrift store, a Dollar General, and two empty shops with For-Lease signs on the boarded over windows and doors.
A tiny sign staked into the gravel of a streetside flowerbed suggested Rosie’s Café and Cantina was located in the back behind the strip mall.
Whether it was open or not, she had no way of knowing.
Across the street was a modest grocery store and a gas station.
The next block over was the sheriff’s office, with a marked white truck and two black-and-white deputy cars parked on the gravel lot, and a town hall currently advertising sewing classes and both child and senior care activities.
Every building she could see had the architectural earmarks of having been built in the mid to late 1800s, and that included the Dollar General.
A hand-painted sign boasted of 362 residents, and at first glance she knew this was probably the sort of small that repainted it within days of someone being either born or buried, but which didn’t seem to have a problem with leaving the three bullet holes shot through the As and the O of Starvation as a decorative touch.
A stagnating desert town full of nothing but red-rock dust and skin-roasting sunshine, with more abandoned buildings and houses than occupied ones, and probably the only thing stopping Starvation from becoming a real ghost town was knowing no self-respecting ghost would stick around to haunt it.
It felt empty, despite maybe the three cars in the grocery store parking lot and another five at the strip mall.
There was no traffic, no pedestrians, and the only person she saw—her luck being what it was—was a tall man in a long-sleeved beige shirt and military dark green pants getting out of the clearly marked sheriff’s truck in front of the station.
She stared at him as he sauntered up the three porch steps. Yup, he was country all right, unhurried in his walk, and if his clothes weren’t lying, as fit as any man she’d ever seen. His shoulders were broad, his hips lean, and even from here… yeah, nice ass. For a cop.
He reached the top of the steps, passing into the shadow of the porch roof. Just as she was about to look away, however, he took hold of the door latch, then paused. The gray cowboy hat on his shaved head swiveled as he turned and looked straight back at her.
The world’s tiniest firework pinged in the pit of her tensing stomach, shimmering outward into a flower of pure nerves, cold anxiety and something else that flashed hot and low and which she wasn’t at all prepared to identify or deal with.
She quickly turned away. She’d had her fill of policemen anyway, and everyone knew small town cops were the worst. It’s where all the Barney Fifes came to pretend they were more important than they really were.
Flattening her lips, she swallowed back the vitriol she was pretty sure she didn’t have a right to feel. But three years in prison followed by three years of banishment into the dust bowl of Utah could do that to a girl.
“This is a chance for a new start,” Miss Margo, the most motherly of all the prison guards, had said as she’d escorted Tabby through the process of leaving the facility.
She’d stood with her as Tabby collected her meager things from storage and even walked her out to the waiting bus.
“Ain’t nobody got to make your choices for you, honey.
Don’t you fall into that trap again, you hear me? ”
“Yes, Miss Margo,” she’d obediently said.
And now here she was. In the middle of Starvation, her next ‘home away from home’ for another three years. She didn’t feel good about this place. It didn’t feel like a "new start”. To be honest, all she really felt was the same sense of dread and shame that had been haunting her since her arrest.
She peeked back over her shoulder. The sheriff was standing exactly as he had been, still watching her.
Definitely a Barney Fife , she thought, frowning at him.
Just what she needed next in her life. She turned all the way away, giving him her full back, and reached into her pink plastic childhood purse to pull out the appointment card she’d been given.
The address to her halfway home was on the bottom.
She wasn’t sure where the house was, but it was on Main Street and so was she.
She compared the address numbers of the strip mall to the house number on her card. Crap. It was behind her.
Sighing, she turned around.
Barney Fife was still on the front porch of his station. He’d turned to face her now too, not even bothering to hide it as he continued to study her. Waiting for her to screw up so he could put her in handcuffs and cart her off to jail again.
May as well nip this in the bud.
Holding her head high, the heat of her growing humiliation burned hotter than the sun as she deliberately crossed to his side of the street and headed straight for the police station.
“That was jaywalking,” he said mildly as she crossed his small parking lot, not stopping until she was standing at the bottom of the steps.
She didn’t dignify that with a remark. “I’m not sure where this address is. Can you help me, Sheriff…” Jackass . She managed to keep that last part locked behind her teeth and looked at the nametag he wore instead. “Barnes.”
Which was so damn close to Barney that it had to be kismet, and then it hit her. She dug her folded up release papers out of her back pocket and quickly found her parole officer’s name again. “Travis Barnes?”
The broad rim of his gray Stetson swayed as he shook his head.
“Travis is my brother,” he said, a slight tightening at the corner of his mouth catching her attention.
“But that pretty much tells me where you’re trying to go.
You’re looking for the old motel.” He gestured to the street that ran through town.
“You’re already on Main, so all you’ve got to do is follow it about four-five blocks, past the last stop sign—”
Starvation was big enough for more than one stop sign?
“—it’ll curve sharp to the left, and you’ll see it after about a mile.
It’s the last building in town. Well… except, way up in the distance, you’ll also see a gas station, but it’s completely abandoned.
It’s nothing but walls now that the roof’s blown off, and of course there’s the posts where the pumps used to be. ”
Like she needed to know any of that.
“If you see any of that, you’ll know you’ve gone too far.”
Oh. Right.
“Thanks,” she said flatly, and walked away with Sheriff Barnes’s eyes burning hotter than the sun into her back every step of the way. They weren’t friends, and she was fine with letting her attitude show that she knew it.
Welcome to Starvation.
She couldn’t wait for her three years to be over so she could leave again.