3 Nowhere to Go and All Day to Get There (4 page)

"What?"

"Bring us both so close to death without actually killing either one of us. If the kids knew what you keep puttin' me through out here..."

We were Salt Lake City bound again, Joe back at the wheel, me fighting sleep right beside him. Corrine was in a Utah jail cell somewhere and the boyfriend named Sandy she'd coldcocked to land herself there was in the hospital, trying to remember the serial number on the rifle butt he'd been clobbered with. Which shouldn't have been too difficult, I thought, considering the fact it had been attached to his own rifle.

The state troopers who had cleaned up the mess at the reststop afterward thought it was funny, how Corrine had not only brained the abusive cowboy she'd finally—and somewhat "mysteriously"—had her fill of, but taken everything he owned as well, right down to the coat off his back and the hat on his head. They even got a laugh or two out of the cold feet that had brought her scrambling back to the scene of the crime. But myself, I couldn't find much humor in the situation at all, and neither could Big Joe. Mistaking the similarly built Corrine for her beloved cowboy after she'd fled the scene of his assault had, afterall, cost my husband and I a great deal of grief. And maybe a few years off the ends of our already well-advanced lives, abject terror having that alleged effect on people.

But, hey. No harm was really done in the end. Corrine learned to stand up for herself and I learned to save my advice for women who ask for it.

And Big Joe and I have yet another great story to worry our five children with.

We look forward to collecting many more.

GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD
is the Shamus and Anthony Award-winning author of twelve crime novels. Haywood's first of six mysteries featuring African-American private investigator Aaron Gunner, FEAR OF THE DARK, won the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus award for Best First Novel of 1989, and his short fiction has been included in the Best American Mystery Stories anthologies.  Booklist has called him "a writer who has always belonged in the upper echelon of American crime fiction."