Maybe he’d think he spent the eleven dollars on a whore.

Nobody’d bother to use a condom with Hilda. She’d had female troubles. No more kids.

Dropping the wallet on the floor where it might have fallen by accident, Polly stuffed the cash into the pocket of her jeans.

Hilda was still instructing the dance contestants. Her purse was on the counter next to her teeth. Polly felt through Hilda’s ratty faux-leather clutch until her fingers closed on the car keys.

“I’m walking down to the little store. Want anything?”

“Shaking their heinies like niggers,” Hilda said. The rain had started. Polly ran for the car. She wasn’t old enough to have a license but she knew how to drive. It was an important skill to a mother who needed somebody to run to the liquor store when she was “too tired” to go herself. As long as Polly said the beer was for Hilda, Mr. Cranbee had no trouble letting her buy it.

When she’d taken the keys she’d only meant to drive around, air herself off without getting as wet as a drowned rat, listen to the radio-rock and roll out of Jackson if she could get a signal, gospel if she couldn’t. There was a gospel station in Natchez that always came in clear. If there was enough gas in the tank she might drive toward Jackson. There was an Arctic Circle in Crystal Springs and, with Tom’s money, she could get a burger or something for dinner.

At the junction with Highway 61 she didn’t do either; she just stopped in the middle of the road and turned the ignition off. The windshield wipers froze halfway through their arc. Rain poured down. It was as if the dusk were melting into night. Polly turned off the car’s lights. Maybe a semi would smash into her sitting there in the dark.