Ginger does not have red hair, and she is not young and cute, but she’s nice. She left a box of tapes on DamNear’s bed yesterday, with a note:

Found these when I was cleaning #3. Most of them are crap, but you might be able to find something you like.

Most of the tapes are crap, but DamNear is bored and she’s listening to all the unmarked ones. One of them turned out to be a Turtles album, and she is painting it green while she listens to the rest. Turtle. Awww. Next time, next town, she is going to get herself a pet turtle.

Mama Lola’s story, her ghost story, is not really anything new to DamNear. She heard it first from Tom, who washes dishes at Sammy’s Restaurant. He turned to her with wide eyes and wisps of steel escaping from his hairnet, and he whispered the whole thing from under his bristly mustache. At that time, DamNear had thought he was afraid of the ghosts hearing him mention their names or some idiot thing like that; she later found out he was just scared of Sammy.

The ghosts of the Molitars, it turned out, were pretty well-known in town. Nobody seemed to care much about them, except the little kids (of which there were three, all related). Mama had explained it to DamNear while they sat at the kitchen table that first day: “I don’t worry about the Molitars because they ain’t worried about me. They’re just here to torture each other, and that work keeps them plenty busy.”

“Yeah, but can you even see them?”

“Sweetie, I see them clear as if they were still alive and sitting on the couch with me. They’re not always here, but they’re here a lot of the time, and their spirits are strong –“

“So if you can see them, why can’t everybody?”

Mama laughed wheezily. “DamNear, you are a funny girl. You’ll see ‘em.”

DamNear grinned ear to ear at that, and started giggling. Mama smiled broadly and wheezed some more. And that is how DamNear got stuck in this crazy house.

Ginger, on the other hand, has always been here. She comes in the late morning and leaves in the early evening, going off to her doublewide to live what appears to be a very happy life with her short, bald husband and a rambunctious little kid. Funnily enough, her son has red hair.

“Shoulda named him Ginger,” she always laughs, with a laundry basket on her hip and a massive, fluorescent water gun dangling from her free hand. “He bites, too.”

Ginger takes care of Mama, and is trying to clean out the junk from some of the empty rooms. They have the same conversation almost daily, those two:

“You know Mama, you could make a lot of money on this place. Fix it up, rent it out, sell it –“

“I am not selling this house, missy. You know that.”

“So let out the rooms then, get some life in here.”

“Ginger Petunia! You think anyone is gonna want to stay in a haunted motel?”

“Oh come on, how about some of them biker clubs that ride through here? Sammy never has enough rooms, it would only be for a night.”

“Yes, and they’d come asking for refunds in the morning.”

“No, they’ll sleep fine. You know they all just come home drunk and pass out snoring till morning –“

“Bill used to pass out drunk, too. He’s liable to get jealous and throw fits in all their rooms to wake ‘em up.”

“Mama. Really? Don’t you want a little more money so you can take better care of yourself?”

“I’m fine, Ginger, now why don’t you put supper on and leave me be.”

But Mama is not fine, Mama is getting old and she is starting to think a lot about dying. DamNear knows this, and Ginger does too. DamNear decides it’s time for them to have a talk. She walks out to the front porch, where Ginger is having a cup of coffee and a smoke before she heads home. The porch door creaks as she swings it open, and Ginger turns her head. For the first time, DamNear thinks she looks a little tired.

“Hey D.”

“Hey Ginger.”

“Want one?” Ginger holds out the cigarette pack.

“Thanks.”

There is silence for a moment, the sound of a lighter. Outside the porch, the town’s one willow tree lets its branches caress each other, a sound sweet as violins. Cicadas cry tirelessly, the desert flute. In the distance, a train whistles.

DamNear sits in one of the deep wicker chairs. She tries to figure out, to remember what she needs to say.

“You’re leaving,” Ginger says suddenly. She doesn’t look at DamNear, but cranes her head to watch the moon through the porch screen.

DamNear thinks for a minute.

“Yes.”

“It’s okay.”

“You think? I don’t want to leave -”

“D, Mama was fine before you got here and she’ll be fine when you’re gone. Ralph used to do the repairs for her, he can do ‘em again.”

“Oh.”

“D, you and Mama have something special, she really likes you. Plus she’s always had a soft spot for people that need her. You needed her when you got here. But you don’t any more, right?”

DamNear breathes in slowly. “No, I guess not. I guess I thought she needed me.”

“Yeah, we all think that.”

DamNear’s eyes suddenly feel prickly.

Ginger turns now, finally, to look at her. “DamNear, or whatever your real name is, you’re a sweet girl. You go find yourself a real life. Mama and I will both be thinking about you.”

DamNear can’t talk any more. She gets up clumsily, stubs her cigarette butt in an empty pot, and turns to go back inside.

“And D?”

DamNear stops, one foot through the door. “Yeah?”

“Get off the speed.”




Speed is DamNear’s main problem, anyone will tell you that. It’s not that she does all that much of it, not as much as some of the people around here. She only smokes, never shoots. She hasn’t lost any weight, never had a loose tooth. Shit, she hardly even has bags under her eyes. She is never awake more than three days at a time, and she usually goes a few days sober after a binge like that. If you can call it a binge.

But Tina is a girl who’s always ready to party, the kind of girl that always comes through. DamNear first met her back in New York when she was fifteen or so. It was a party, she was smoking weed in the living room and some big burly guy had his arm around her and was trying to get down her pants. Later on it would be this same guy (Rico) who would influence DamNear to study martial arts and sharpshooting. But this was before the broken collarbone and the restraining order, and Rico was just another horny asshole.

“You sure are a sexy little girl,” he was telling her.

“Thank you,” she giggled. Truth was, she wanted to fuck him, but she was teasing a little.

His hand shifted, moving down from her shoulder. Her arm was pinned against her as he clumsily tried to reach her breast. She laughed and squirmed out of his grasp.

He dropped his hands to his knees, looked at her with a sly glint in his eye. “Girl, I know what you need. You wanna party all night with me?”

DamNear giggled again. “With you?”

“How about with me and Tina?”

DamNear thought Rico was talking about a real girl. She smiled broadly, and when he stood up and reached for her hand, she gave it. She followed him into the back room, where Tina was waiting.

…And just look at me now, she thinks as she surveys her room. Drug paraphernalia everywhere. The thing about DamNear is, once she finds something she likes, she takes it all the way. Not just a karate student, but a black belt. Not just a slut, but a porn star.

Not just a user, but a dealer.

Maybe it isn’t a good idea, maybe it’s dangerous to surround herself with something so addictive, but DamNear has always liked to be in control.

Sarah would have said it was “small-person syndrome.” Fuck Sarah. Fuck that prissy white bitch. That girl had no fucking clue what it was like to be small.

“Shit, I’m not a midget,” DamNear grumbled to herself. She picked up the Jim Beam and took a long slug from the bottle. And then she started packing.

It was the middle of the night by the time DamNear was done. At some point she’d given in and smoked some speed despite Ginger's warning. She just wanted to get the fuck out of this town, pronto. She’d think about the meth thing later. Anyway she was leaving, so all the ranch-hand junkies (and the junkie preacher from the next town over, which always made her giggle) would have to find themselves a new source, and that was a good start. Getting out of the business. Go find something more productive to do. Contribute to society, or whatever.

She didn’t really know or care where she was going, but she figured California might turn out okay. It all depended, she told herself, on the first train she caught. Things usually did.

So there she was with her backpack all packed up again, sitting by the tracks in the dark and trying not to freeze. She had left Mama a nice note, told her she would write when she got set up in the new place. Told her to let Ginger decide what to do with the turtle car, since she couldn’t drive it on the highway. Left the crossbow and some extra bolts right there on the kitchen table – mostly since it was the only clean surface in the house, but also because she wanted Mama to be sure they were still there. Not that Mama could see well enough to shoot any intruders, but it might make her feel safer.

A stupid thought, really. Mama wasn’t afraid of much.


nonowrimo day five, unedited