Daddy had been crisscrossing Texas for days on another work trip, and they’d expected him later that evening, so when the call came, Momma had been in the middle of preparing his usual welcome home dinner—chicken-fried steak with bacon gravy and Frito casserole, his favorites. Of course, once they all sat down to eat, her mother would give them her usual lecture on how Frito casserole was technically an entrée, not a side dish, but just this once she’d yield to her husband’s expansive appetite. The same lecture, every damn time. It was a wonder her father still came home.

She listened to KLLL whenever she cooked, so she was singing along with Loretta Lynn when the DJ cut in with a newsbreak about how the Plains Rapist had got another woman up in Plainview. She’d cried out and killed the radio as if the damn thing had bit her. Ironing her hair in her room, Marjorie was so startled by her mother’s outburst she almost knocked the iron from the board. The damn newspaper article the other day certainly hadn’t helped. They’d run a drawing of a victim’s description of the stocking cap, which apparently had star designs around its eyeholes and silver thread around the mouth like fading lipstick, and now her mother’s anxiety was even worse.

When the phone rang just a few minutes later, her mother cried out again. Further proof, Marjorie had thought, that Momma was a silly woman who brought needless fear everywhere she went. Like a rapist would telephone first.

Marjorie could tell from her mother’s tone that it was her father on the other end of the line, and he was in some kind of trouble.

She followed Momma next door to Uncle Clem’s even though her mother had told her to stay put in case Daddy called again. The Plymouth was apparently all right—banged up but drivable, her mother said with an authority that made it sound like she was directly quoting her husband—but her daddy was not. The story came out of her mother in a frantic rush as she stood on Clem’s back porch and he listened through the screen door he was holding open with one hand, one arm already punched through the jacket of his janitor’s uniform. He was on his way to the overnight shift at the municipal auditorium and in no mood for this nonsense and wanted to know how his sister’s husband could have been stupid enough to get out of his car and check on an injured animal like that, even if he was the one who hit it. Her mother had fired back that pronghorn antelopes weren’t known to play dead like opossums, and it wasn’t her husband’s fault the damn thing had kicked him in the gut, and the point was she needed a ride, not a discussion of roadkill ethics.

The three of them squeezed onto the bench seat of Clem’s Studebaker pickup while Marjorie tried to draw comfort from the stars. But all the sniping going on right next to her—Clem didn’t have time to follow them back into town because it wasn’t on his way, so Beatty had better be damn sure the car’s actually drivable—was coming close to draining the magic from the big starry skies she loved so much. In the end, that wasn’t possible; she was sure of it. She’d always be just like her daddy, comforted by open spaces and strengthened by silence.

They found her father a few minutes past the service station’s lone island of light, standing beside the Plymouth, its angled headlights shooting across the empty field. When he started toward them at the sign of their approach, Marjorie saw how badly injured he was. She’d figured the term “kicked in the gut” had just been an expression, but her daddy held his stomach in both arms, as if he was afraid it might burst. The closer he got to the Studebaker, the more visible the blood under his arms became. Despite her mother’s protests, Marjorie hopped from the truck before it had come to a full stop. When she ran to him, the instinct to hug her made him flinch. Either he didn’t want to get blood on her or just didn’t want to reveal how badly he was injured.

“You need to get to the hospital, Beatty,” Clem shouted without anything that sounded like compassion.

“Go on now,” her daddy said. “Danielle will bring me home.”

“You’re banged up worse than the car. You need to—”

“Go on now, Clem.”

“It’s fine, Clem. I got ’im.” But Momma didn’t sound like she thought Clem was wrong; more like she just wanted to prevent a fight between her husband and her brother. She even sounded a little frightened of being alone in the vast dark with only an injured husband and a teenage daughter.

When her uncle Clem’s eyes landed on her, Marjorie realized she’d been glaring at him too confidently because she thought she stood in darkness. But some of the headlights’ reflected glow must have been falling on her face, and that’s why Clem’s attention caught on her look like a hooked trout. She couldn’t help it.

Why did he always talk to Daddy like he was the big screwup in the family?

Daddy drove all over the great state of Texas selling insurance while Clem pushed a mop bucket at the coliseum, cleaning up other people’s spilled beer after basketball games. While Clem got drunk and picked fights with Hispanics because he blamed them for his problems, her daddy spent evenings with his happy family, watching the brand-new television he bought them in a house he’s already paid for. Clem’s also one of the many men who’s started looking at her differently since she became a teenager, his wariness implying the changes in her body make him think thoughts he doesn’t like and he believes she’s to blame for them.

She didn’t care how badly Daddy was hurt; she was glad Clem left.

If Daddy needed a hospital, he’d tell her mother to drive him there. What he needed was rest, a good meal, and for the people in his life to stop treating him like a child just because he had compassion for some poor, dumb antelope.

As Clem’s truck pulled a U-turn, Marjorie watched with relief as the taillights vanished into the endless dark. Behind her there were whispers.

Her mother tended to drop her voice whenever she needed to tell her daddy something he might not like, probably to shield herself from Marjorie’s opinions.

When she started whispering, Marjorie moved closer, trying to eavesdrop, while pretending to watch Clem’s vanishing truck. Her mother was asking for a boatload of details, and her father sounded tired, so very tired.

Why’d her Daddy walk all the way to the service station to make the call and then back to the Plymouth again? He didn’t, of course. He got an employee from the service station to drive him back to the car as soon as he knew she was on her way.

Then how come he didn’t ask her to meet him at the service station? It was foolish of him to wait for them alone out here in the dark when he was this badly injured. He responded by saying he wasn’t that badly injured. But Marjorie could hear something in her mother’s voice, something beyond irritation and fear. Her mother just couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that her father had been so determined not to leave the Plymouth alone for any length of time.

Marjorie had to admit, if only to herself, it was a pretty good question.

Was Daddy afraid the Plymouth would get stolen out here in the middle of nowhere? Maybe plowed off the side of the road by a truck that didn’t see it in time? She could see how her father might have been able to prevent the former—he never went anywhere without his gun—but in his current state, there would have been precious little he could have done about the latter.