On the other side of the door I heard voices, and I recognized the loudest: Dunston Acey. Not good. I tried to slip quietly to my room, but before I reached the door his whiskey-rough voice came after me.

“Hailey, come out here so’s I can see you!”

I froze, trying to decide if I could pretend I hadn’t heard him, but Gram’s voice followed: “Git the boy put down quick, girl, we got company!”

I did as they said. Once I’d sung to Chub and rubbed his back, and his breathing had gone deep and even with sleep, I couldn’t put it off any longer. They’d only come into the room and turn on the lights and wake Chub up. Nothing stopped Gram and her customers when they were partying.

I walked into the kitchen and said hello with as little enthusiasm as possible.

Three pairs of eyes regarded me-Gram and Dun and another man, who was standing in the shadows in the far corner. When he stepped into the light, I saw with a sinking heart that it was Rattler Sikes.

Of all the sorry and mean and no-good men who came through our house, Rattler was the worst. He was one of the only ones who didn’t do drugs or, as far as I knew, drink alcohol, but once in a while he’d show up in the company of some of the others and stand in the corner of the room, watching and saying little.

Everyone knew the stories about him. Rattler was one of the few people in Trashtown who got talked about by the rest of Gypsum, probably because the sheriff had been trying to nail him for years. Only, he never managed to make any charges stick.

They said Rattler did things to women. Terrible things, things that left them messed up on the outside and the inside alike. It was only Trashtown women that he went after, and maybe that was part of why the sheriff’s department couldn’t bring him down. As long as trouble stayed inside the borders of Trashtown, Gypsum people didn’t care much about what went on there.