The Queen of Honduras Came to Texas to Buy Bulls, and Fell for the Shortest Cowboy in the Arena novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Blue Norther

Clyde drove out of Strother's lot without hurrying.

In the side mirror, I watched Elena standing in the yard light, getting smaller.

Then the road bent, and she was gone.

The truck smelled like hay and coffee and dog.

There was a pair of fencing pliers on the dash and a rosary hanging from the mirror.

"That was my daddy's," Clyde said, when he saw me looking at it. "Mama won't let me take it down."

For a few miles neither of us said anything.

The heater roared. The radio played low.

Then he laughed, once, quiet, and shook his head.

"What?"

"Roscoe Strother's face," he said. "When you held that microphone up over his head."

I started to laugh too.

I couldn't stop.

I laughed until I had to wipe my eyes, and he laughed with me, both of us in that dark truck on an empty road.

"I've never done anything like that," I said. "Not once in six years."

"Could've fooled me."

"Elena's going to kill me."

"She'll have to get past Mama."

The first drop hit the windshield.

It didn't run down the glass. It stuck there.

Then another, and then a hundred, ticking against the windshield.

Clyde turned the wipers on.

They dragged across the glass and left a gray smear.

"Norther," he said. "It came in quicker than they said."

The temperature on the dash said thirty-four.

Then thirty-one.

The rain was freezing as it landed. The road shone black in the headlights.

Clyde slowed to twenty.

Then fifteen.

"How far?" I asked.

"Six miles."

He drove with both hands on the wheel now, leaning forward.

The ice built up on the wipers until they thumped.

Out past the headlights there was nothing at all. No houses, no lights, no other cars.

Two miles from the ranch, the road dipped toward a low-water crossing.

Clyde touched the brake.

The back end of the truck came around slow.

"Hold on," he said, very calm.

We spun once, gently.

The world went sideways in the headlights.

Then the right wheels dropped off the edge of the road.

The truck slid nose-first into the bar ditch and stopped, tilted, with the engine still running.

For a second, the only sound was the ice ticking on the roof.

"You all right?" he said.

"I'm all right."

He reached across and put his hand on my arm, checking.

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