In Western Counties by Nickolas Butler

Her face had been made into a jigsaw puzzle. Aida saw how the poor girl tried to hide the scars: the cake makeup, the masking hands, the long hair and baseball cap. The edges of the puzzle pieces purple and crudely lined. Her mouth crooked, but somehow sweet. She smiled painfully at Aida. Pushed an envelope of money across the sticky surface of the café table. The envelope was not thick; it was all that the scarred woman had left.
    The restaurant was abandoned. The waitress hovered around them, refilled their mugs, nodded gamely at Bethany. Said to her, “These are on me.” Then leaned into the table, wiped the surface with her bleachy rag and said, “There’s a way out. Always is. I been there too. Don’t let him beat you like that. You’ll be dead inside a year by the look of it.”
    Some of the fortitude seemed to leak out of Bethany and she deflated slightly, set her mug down, and readjusted the bill of her cap. She looked up at the waitress and said, “God bless you.” But Aida could see that she didn’t believe in God at all, that her eyes contained only anger and fear.
    The waitress nodded and then went away, near the coffee urn, where she watched them, sometimes kibitzing with the cook, a pock-faced man with a long ponytail who peered out at the two women from behind the heating elements glowing red and orange.
    They sat for a while, saying nothing, glancing all around the café, and then Aida said, “Let’s go outside, then,” taking Bethany by the elbow and gently lifting her up. She took the money and stuffed it into her jacket. Hoped she would remember it was there. She was always losing things, so many things.
    They went to Aida’s truck, an old F-150. Aida opened the door and guided Bethany onto the bench seat. She went around behind the truck and looked at the woman’s slumped shoulders framed in the rear window.
Bethany
, she reminded herself. With her long finger, she wrote the name in the palm of her hand, making the calloused skin go white where the letters were: BETHANY . She wrote the name again in the dirt and dust that clung to the metal of her truck: BETHANY . There were chains in the bed of the truck and a tire iron. A spare tire, a bag of last year’s autumn leaves, and two cement blocks.
    Aida was not in the habit of driving the truck. That morning, en route to Red Wing, she forgot where the knob for the headlights was. She’d just retired from the state highway patrol after twenty-five years and was accustomed to driving a police cruiser. She kicked the gravel. Hail was in the forecast and she waited for it to hit, the violence of the blue-white pellets. She got inside the truck, slamming the door. Bethany shuddered.
    â€œI’m tired of it,” Bethany said. “Tired! He does this to me, but there ain’t anything for me to do. Nothing to do to make him stop! Goddamn it!” She beat her fist into the dashboard.
    Aida rolled down her window and withdrew a package of cigarettes from her jean jacket. Offered the package over to Bethany, who shook her head. Aida rarely smoked, but just now needed the fire and smoke to fill the silence she was incapable of filling herself. She took a Zippo lighter from the glove box and lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply. Still no hail, but the sky was yellowing, the clouds scudding quickly, oddly no wind to rile the ditch grass. It was late in the year for hail. Bethany’s outburst apparently over, they sat again in silence. Beyond the café and the highway running past it: a barbed wire fence, the concrete skeleton of an abandoned silo, the stone footings of a bygone barn. Then just blue and yellow sky and rapidly circulating clouds. Aida’s ears popped, the pressure changing.
    â€œAll right,” Aida said, her voice husky and sandpapery, “what do you want me to do?”
    Bethany stared back at her pitifully. She had once been attractive. The huge blue eyes, a