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fence, an easy moment to abandon the biggest mistake of her life. She’d aborted the first pregnancy, brought home from Pasadena in shame. She’d dug her heels in on the second, it’s-my-body-fuck-you.
    Franny laughs. A little nervous and hiccupy from crying, but not really afraid.
    “Hey,” Jane yells. “Get away from my daughter!”
    She strides across the yard, all motherhood and righteous fury. A skinny, dark-haired guy holds up his hands, palms out, no harm, ma’am.
    “It’s okay, mom,” Franny says.
    The guy is smiling. “We’re just talking,” he says. He’s wearing a red plaid flannel shirt and T-shirt and shorts. He’s scraggly, but who isn’t.
    “Who the hell are you,” she says.
    “My name’s Nate. I’m just heading north. Was looking for a place to camp.”
    “He was just hanging with me until you got back,” Franny says.
    Nate takes them to his camp—also behind a house. He gets a little fire going, enough to heat the soup. He talks about Alabama, which is where he’s coming from, although he doesn’t have a Southern accent. He makes some excuse about being an army brat. Jane tries to size him up. He tells some story about when two guys stumbled on his camp north of Huntsville, when he was first on the road. About how it scared the shit out of him but about how he’d bluffed them about a buddy of his who was hunting for their dinner but would have heard the racket they made and could be drawing a bead on them right now from the trees, and about how something moved in the trees, some animal, rustling in the leaf litter, and they got spooked. He’s looking at her, trying to impress her, but being polite, which is good with Franny listening. Franny is taken with him, hanging on his every word, flirting a little the way she does. In a year or two, Franny was going to be guy crazy, Jane knew.
    “They didn’t know anything about the woods, just two guys up from Biloxi or something, kind of guys who, you know, manage a copy store or a fast-food joint or something, thinking that now that civilization is falling apart they can be like the hero in one of their video games.” He laughs. “I didn’t know what was in the woods, neither. I admit I was kind of scared it was someone who was going to shoot all of us, although it was probably just a sparrow or a squirrel or something. I’m saying stuff over my shoulder to my ‘buddy,’ like, ‘Don’t shoot them or nothing. Just let them go back the way they came.’ ”
    She’s sure he’s bullshitting. But she likes that he makes it funny instead of pretending he’s some sort of Rambo. He doesn’t offer any of his own food, she notices. But he does offer to go with them to get their stuff. Fair trade, she thinks.
    He’s not bad looking in a kind of skinny way. She likes them skinny. She’s tired of doing it all herself.
    The streetlights come on, at least some of them. Nate goes with them when they go back to get their sleeping bags and stuff. He’s got a board with a bunch of nails sticking out of one end. He calls it his mace.
    They are quiet, but they don’t try to hide. It’s hard to find the stuff in the dark, but luckily, Jane hadn’t really unpacked. She and Franny, who is breathing hard, get their sleeping bags and packs. It’s hard to see. The backyard is a dark tangle of shadows. She assumes it’s as hard to see them from inside the house—maybe harder.
    Nothing happens. She hears nothing from the house, sees nothing, although it seems as if they are all unreasonably loud gathering things up. They leave through the side gate, coming nervously to the front of the house, Nate carrying his mace and ready to strike, she and Franny with their arms full of sleeping bags. They go down the cracked driveway and out into the middle of the street, a few gutted cars still parked on either side. Then they are around the corner and it feels safe. They are all grinning and happy and soon putting the sleeping bags in Nate’s little