The journey begins...

Excerpt from Girl with the Flat Tire:

Traffic was light as Anna crossed the bridge over the Mississippi River, and even less as she travelled west on Highway 84 across the flat Louisiana farmlands. Small planes dipped and rose over the vast fields spraying pesticide on thousands of acres of cotton and soybeans.

When she got to Natchitoches, it was ten o’clock, and already the air was humid and warm. She stopped at a gas station to fill up the Dart. A skinny teenager in greasy tee-shirt and jeans came out from under a car jacked up in a dark garage and slowly approached. His face lit up and his pace quickened when he got a closer look at her.

“Good morning, miss,” he said cheerily. “Fill it up?”

“Yes, please,” she said. “Is there a restroom?”

“Yes ma’am. Just around to the side, there,” he said, pointing to the station office joined to the garage. “It ain’t locked.”

As she was walking from the car to the restroom, she cast a backward glance and caught him gawking at her. She was wearing short cut-off jeans, but the long tail of her sleeveless top covered most of her bottom. Guys, she thought, don’t they ever think about anything else?

When she rounded the corner to the office building on returning to her car, the teenager was placing the fuel nozzle back on the pump. He opened the door for her and propped his elbows in the open window after it was shut.

“How much for the gas?” she asked.

“Five dollars,” he said. “I see your license plate says ‘Mississippi’. Where you headed?”

Anna removed five one dollar bills out of the wallet she had tucked under the car seat and handed the money to him through the window. “A long way from here,” she said, cranking the car.

“Here ain’t so bad,” he said. “I live in Coushatta. Here is better than Coushatta.”

“I'm sure it is," she said.

He stepped away as she pulled out toward the highway, tires popping on the gravel.

“Come back, anytime,” he called. “My name’s Billy.”

She could see him in her rearview mirror standing by the gas pumps until she drove out of sight.