Chet drove faster and faster. He was pushing 100, and the rickety lime green 1990 Honda only went to 120. The spoiler had come off miles ago. She would find him soon enough. He looked at the passenger seat filled with an unruly heap of hundreds of hundred dollar bills in neat little bundles. Their order and uniformity made Chet nauseous. He knew they were mocking him, just like the rural Southwestern landscape he was speeding through. The oranges and reds and purples and all those other unaltered colors on postcards that dripped from the sky were there to only there to vaporize him. "Fuck this," Chet shouted over the open windows and the staticy classic rock radio. He picked up as many of the bundles as he could fit in one hand, and started chucking them out the window. It was gratifying, watching them get projected into dusty, dusky obscurity. "Yeah. Fuck yeah."

Diane alternated between shoving more tater tots in her mouth and shoving some in Bella’s as she sped up to catch Chet. Daddy's soul hung just a little bit above her head, whispering something indecipherable. Bella always knew when daddy was tailing Diane. She got this look in her eyes and slobbered even more than usual. Dogs were smart like that. She knew the end result: either Diane or Chet or both must go to meet him. Diane tossed the greasy tater tot bag out the window. She had a long way to go before she met up with Chet’s taillights.

Chet hit a rough patch. The road became pocked and rough, like the girl's face. He should have known she was only fifteen. That should have been his first warning. Miles and miles of redness, mountains, craters, and valleys all over the poor girl's face. The spots and textures made her look tough. If he had known she was just fifteen, he wouldn't have fucked her. Wouldn’t have fallen for her and those big goofy hazel eyes of hers. Nope. Just would have said "No more coffee for me, miss." But Chet had a real weakness for three things: cherry pie, whiskey, and ugly women. Especially redheads. When a plug-ugly redhead offered him cherry pie and whiskey in her $40 per night room at the Dew Drop Inn, Chet knew he would have to deal with the consequences later, whatever they might be. It was her damned fault anyway. Anybody that had ever seen Chet just knew that he was at least 50. Between the tattoos that started out black but had faded to green on the skin that was leathery and cracked, the thinning, graying copper hair and the fully gray beard, he had to have been somebody’s grandfather. He would be 36 in august.

Diane’s daddy was one of the best grave robbers in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. He covered his ass by running the only funeral parlor in the county. The family had the kind of privilege that only came from being loaded in a small town. Diane was the only child of Frank and Susan James, and some would say the prettiest child in the state. But then she hit puberty early and sprouted the kind of tits that even her daddy would marvel at. At fourteen, she got caught fooling around with the oldest Morgan boy. Susan cried and took to drinking bourbon all the time, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan took to sitting on their porch with shotguns, and The Morgan Boy’s wife chased him up and down Main Street with the pistol she got from her in-laws as a wedding present. Behind closed doors, he thought the whole thing was “funniern’ ‘ell,” but in order to maintain (because maintenance is everything in a small town), he drove her to the bus station on the county line, gave her three hundred dollars, and pinched her ass goodbye. It was his way of saying good luck.

Three days later Chet caught up with the Coast.

Four days later, Diane caught up with Chet.

Facing the kitchen in the greasy spoon, Chet wolfed down his gristly steak. He had hit the water, and now it was time to drive for the sky. The money was running out, which was just as well. Either he would run out of money and die from inadequate living conditions, or Diane would catch him and she would skin his ass for sure without thinking twice. Either way, he was a dead man. The waitress offered him more god-awful coffee. He took a look at her with her cotton candy colored hair and her wide ass in the unforgiving polyester dress. He politely declined.

Diane pulled into the parking lot and rear ended that fugly goddamn Honda twice.

opening/ending line:

"He looked at me like he wanted to get me pregnant."