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back door.
    I held my hands up. “Whoa there. Dad . . .”
    Then the broom hit my shoulder and Miss Mae was chasing me out the back door. I made it to the
driveway and she slammed the door shut. Then she locked it.
    With the smell of seasoned meat loaf and gravy coming out the screen window, my mouth watered. I sat
on a rusted five-gallon barrel of oil at the entrance to the shed, trying not to die from the heat. Even at six-thirty, the
shed was like a convection oven. An hour passed. Two hours passed. Darkness came. Plates clinked in the sink. Then my
dad came out with two blankets and a pillow tucked under his arm.
    I smirked. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Dad. This is ridiculous.”
    He stood at the entrance to the old woodshed. The mosquitoes that came with the evening were biting
me. He didn’t say anything.
    I swatted at one of the bloodsucking things, pretending it was Miss Mae. “You’re really
going to make me sleep out here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why? Tell me one good reason why, and I will. I’ll plop myself right down here and be
a good little boy. I’ll even wear a flannel shirt and suck on hay straw and say ‘Shucky, darn it
all.’ ”
    He sighed. “See? That’s why, Ben. You are disrespectful. Even if you
are
joking
half the time.”
    “Did you get together or something and decide to make my life miserable? Like ‘Get
Ben’ or something? Jesus, Dad, I hate it here.”
    He shook his head. “This is her house, and you’ve got to respect her. We’re
guests here.”
    “I didn’t even want to come! You made me! And you want to talk about manners? She
can’t even say hello, and every time I do something wrong she hits me with something! She’s a
monster.”
    He leaned against the shed. “This place is different. Different than even I know, and I understand
you don’t like it. But the people around here are hard, Ben, and Mae is no exception. She’s worked
every day of her life, raised a family, and scrabbled together a way of living that doesn’t have much room for
leeway. She’s a proud woman, and I respect that.”
    I took a smoke out, lit it, and took a drag. “Oh, yeah, I guess you forgot about Edward being run
out of town because they don’t like queers around here.”
    “I didn’t say it was all good, Ben. But there are good things to learn here. It’s all
perspective.”
    “Bullshit. I’m done. I’ve tried.”
    He sighed. “You’re missing the point, Ben. And besides that, it’s been barely
over a week.”
    Time didn’t have a definition in this place, of that I was sure. Rough Butte was an infinite shit
recycler, and I was caught in it. “What point?”
    He cleared his throat. “The point that you can disagree about certain things people do, but to
disrespect them because of it makes you less of a person. The people here are good, but they live by different
standards.”
    “Stupid standards.”
    His eyes sharpened. “No, not stupid standards. Real standards for where they are. Mae
doesn’t treat you with respect, because you know what? She doesn’t think you deserve it. And coming
from a woman who has worked from sunup to sundown for the last seventy-three years, maybe you don’t
deserve respect.”
    I bugged my eyes out. “What? Why? I didn’t do anything to her, and besides that, what
does a redneck old woman know about me? What does she know about what I’ve gone through?”
    “More than you know, Ben.” He sighed. “You have to earn her respect. I do, too.
She sees you sleep in, eat her food, complain about being bored, and do nothing all day long, and she doesn’t
respect it or accept it. It’s just not her way, and I understand that. It’s part of the reason we came
here.”
    I looked at him. “You’re just chicken to stand up to her.”
    He shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have allowed this if I didn’t
agree.”
    “Yeah, right. And if you did disagree, you’d do what? Tell her no? Pack up and leave?
Give me a