Chapter 4: The Rival

Nobody at the counter moved.

Then Clem came around the end of it with a dish towel and got down on one knee and wrapped her feet.

"Get her a blanket," he told the waitress. "And the soup."

I took the woman to the back booth.

She ate two bowls without looking up.

She wouldn't give her name. I didn't push.

"How'd you get down?"

"Hid under a tarp in a log truck. Walked from the exit."

"Why not the sheriff?"

She laughed. It wasn't a laugh.

"The last girl who ran made it to a deputy. He drove her back up himself. They chained her to the stove after that."

"How do you know it's Friday?"

"The man who bought me likes to brag. The broker told him a new one's coming up the mountain Friday night."

"And it's a Kesterson truck."

"It's always a Kesterson truck. Blue trailer, gold letters. I came up in one."

She showed me her wrists. There were old marks on them too.

Clem stood behind me with his arms folded. His jaw was working.

"Friday's three days," he said.

"I know what day it is."

"You can't stop a truck by yourself, Jess."

"I know that too."

Clem drove her to the women's shelter in Morgantown, the one behind the Methodist church.

I drove to Pittsburgh.

The Shardlow fuel depot sat on the Monongahela, under the bridge, a block of tanks and chain-link with a trailer office on blocks.

Two men in canvas coats watched me park the Peterbilt across three of their spaces.

"You can't leave that there," one said.

"Then you'll have to move it."

I went up the office steps.

There was a man at the desk with his boots up on it.

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