Read Where the Heart Is for Free Online

woman’s, was husky, flat.
    The girl squinched up her eyes and made a face like she’d gotten a mouthful of raw egg.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “You filled the salt shakers?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    The girl grabbed a sack of Morton Salt from a shelf behind her, then twisted the tops off a couple of chunky plastic shakers on the bar. She upended the salt and waved the sack back and forth above the shakers.
    “Jolene,” the woman called again.
    The girl grinned at Willy Jack as the salt spilled over the shakers and onto the counter. She held the sack until it was empty, the shakers buried beneath a pound of salt.
    “Jolene.” The voice was more insistent now.
    “What?”
    “Put the rest of the Coors and Millers into the case,” the woman yelled.
    “Okay.”
    The girl walked into a curtained area at one end of the bar and returned with two cases of beer, one on top of the other. She handled the cases easily, without strain. Willy Jack watched as she opened the cold case behind the bar and began loading the hot beer into it.
    Her jeans pulled up tight into her crotch each time she bent forward, but that wasn’t what excited him. It was that space in her mouth where she had lost her front teeth.
    “You a musician, too?” she asked.
    “Yeah. Got a gig in Las Vegas if I can get there by tomorrow night.”
    “Why it ain’t but eight hours. And that’s doing the speed limit.”
    “Hell, I ain’t good at speed limits, but I—”
    “Jolene?”
    The girl held her finger to her lips, a signal to Willy Jack to be quiet, but he didn’t need a signal. He could hear the impatience in the woman’s voice.
    “You talking to someone out there?”
    “No.” Jolene rolled her eyes in disgust. “I’m just singing.”
    “You can make it easy in eight hours,” the girl whispered to Willy Jack.
    “But my car’s out on the highway, out of gas. And I don’t have any cash . . . no credit cards.”
    “Why don’t you call your brother?”
    “That’s the problem. He’s in London. On tour.”
    “Then call your wife.”
    “Don’t have one.”
    “Girlfriend?”
    “Naw, that’s over. I dumped her.”
    “You could hitchhike. Unless you think you’re too good.”
    “I done my share of it. But I can’t leave my car.”
    “Well, maybe I can help you out.”
    “How’s that?”
    “I got some money.”
    “I sure would—”
    “What the hell’s going on?” The voice from the back room belonged to the heavy woman standing in the door. She was wearing a man’s undershirt, black lace underpants and pink Reeboks.
    “You open up, Jolene?”
    “No, ma’am, but he—”
    “You the one decides when we open? Huh? You setting the hours now?”
    The woman crossed to the bar, got right in the girl’s face.
    “You running the place now?”
    “This guy—”
    Then the woman turned to Willy Jack. “We’re closed.”
    “That right?” he said.
    She reached across the bar and grabbed the beer from in front of him.
    “You pay for this?”
    “I was going to, but—”
    “I gave it to him,” the girl said.
    “Oh. You open up and you give away beer. My, oh my. I don’t know how I ever run this place without you. Yes sir, the day you . . .”
    The girl scooted around the woman and across to the front door.
    “He’s just leaving.” Jolene motioned to Willy Jack. “Go on. Get out.”
    Willy Jack pushed back from the bar, then slid off the stool and headed for the door, but he didn’t rush . . . didn’t hurry.
    “You damned right he’s leaving. And so are you if you don’t shape up.”
    As he stepped through the door, the girl slammed it behind him.
    He could still hear the woman’s voice, even when he reached the road. She was yelling about salt.
    On his way into town, he passed several trailer houses set back on treeless lots, a roadside fruit stand, abandoned, and a burned barn in a field thick with sagebrush. He crossed over railroad tracks that ran beside a boarded-up filling station—the place where the girl was