Nitty Gritty

It had been a long, hot summer. I started out in Texas with my boyfriend Johnny and it hadn't really worked out in that we'd had an argument and he'd thrown me out of his car while it was still rolling. My backpack had followed right after that and he'd sped up, leaving behind only the lingering smell of balding tire on hot asphault. Johnny'd always had a temper and when I told my best girlfriend Shanna that I was going to run away with him, she laughed and shook her head. "Better take a switchblade or five just in case he flies into one of his rages," she'd told me.

She hadn't been wrong. It'd turned sour and dangerous long before he'd kicked me out of the car. We were supposed to be going to California to try to crash at his cousin Georgie's house. Georgie was a good ol' boy from back home that had graduated from high school when I was still in grade school. He'd set out to make a fortune with his 'rapping career' in California right after he'd graduated. Everyone was surprised he'd even made it to the twelfth grade and managed to graduate, let alone move to California by himself. It was more than a lot of us around there could have said. But Johnny and I both knew the truth; Georgie was just a third-rate weed and occasional crack dealer that had made some seriously bad decisions and it would only be a matter of time before he was in jail or worse.

I'd left with Johnny anyway, knowing what I was getting myself into. At the time it'd seemed better than sticking around Bluebell. As soon as we got on the road, Johnny started to get irritable. He would grab me by the wrist and shove me against the passenger side door if I turned the radio station; sometimes he would start screaming if I even asked exactly where we were. I didn't think he really knew where he was going. He just seemed to be driving as fast and far away from Bluebell as he could. He only got worse as time went on. Every time we'd go into some greasy spoon he'd accuse me of flirting with the other diners or the chefs. I hated to admit it to even myself, but I was getting scared.

The day he threw me out of the car, I'd finally voiced my fears that he didn't know where he was going exactly. For a long moment there was nothing said between us, but I could see him white knuckling the steering wheel and gritting his teeth. He finally reached out and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face close to his.

"I should fucking beat the shit out of you. You know that? I should. You're a dumb fucking cunt who doesn't know shit and I do. How hard is it to drive to California anyway? You just keep going fuckin' west until you see the ocean. You're calling me stupid. If there's one thing Johnny White ain't, it's stupid, you whore."

I winced in pain as the car started to swerve along the desert highway. We were in New Mexico by then and all that we were passing was the brush. I could see the cactuses disappearing past the window in a blur as he sped up. "Johnny, I wasn't saying you were stupid. I just... I just want to make sure. Please stop, you're hurting me."

"Good, I mean to. If you don't like it, why don't you get the fuck out?" He asked. I could see from the look on his face that he meant it.

I started to protest. I don't even remember now what I'd said to him before he was grabbing me with both hands, not watching the road anymore than he had been. I tried to put my weight as firmly on the seat as I could and brace my legs against the door, but he managed to get it open easier than I thought it would have been. The next thing I knew he was pushing me out by the hair as I tried to hang on to any surface I could.

When I finally hit the ground, I rolled a few times before coming to a stop near the ditch. My vision was blurred and the hot ground beneath did little to soothe the friction burns that I'd received, or the dirt in my cuts. My eyes finally found the car speeding away and I saw him throw the backpack out the window. It had everything I really cared about in it. I started crawling toward the backpack slowly after he was well out of view. I hadn't wanted to make too much noise or move too much, afraid that he'd back over me a few times for good measure.

I realized that my arms and chest were bleeding and that my back suddenly felt strangely... open. I knew I was hurt bad but I was in the middle of nowhere without a cell and I wasn't even sure that the arid valley had reception. My vision started to go black around the edges until the darkness seeped inward and I blacked out.

What woke me later was the sensation of moving. I felt like I'd been hit by a car and not thrown out of one, and for a second I got worried that I had been. I opened my eyes and reached into my pocket for my not-so-sharp pocketknife to learn that it was missing. Either someone had disarmed me or it had flown out of my pocket when Johnny had pushed me. The interior of the car was unfamiliar. It was even shittier than Johnny's hunk of junk. This car seemed to be headed right into death trap territory.

The seats were grey and had large hunks missing out of them, and some springs were visible. The floorboard and ceiling itself were black. There was a fine layer of dust and road grit on everything in the car. I experimentally reached out to touch the dashboard, letting my finger run through the dirt. I felt like I'd been drugged but knew that couldn't have been the case since I hurt like a motherfucker.

Finally I looked over to the driver's seat. He wasn't what I'd expected. I thought he'd be older, dirtier. He was around my age with shoulder-length blonde hair and ice blue eyes. I wasn't sure how he'd lifted me into his car; I had to weigh more than he did, but a botched lifting job could have accounted for my unnatural soreness. He had his eyes fixed on the road in determination and for a minute I didn't want to disturb him. Even though he looked harmless to me, who knew if he was going to be another Johnny or not?

I reached for a bottle of water that was sitting beside me in the seat. I didn't care even care that it was water right then. It could have just as easily been piss or Everclear and I wouldn't have minded, but my throat was sandy feeling. I took a long drink of it and my sudden motion made the driver startle. I smiled at him and then reached up to flip his passenger side mirror down.

Even though the mirror had been cracked in several places, I could see that I was good and beaten up. My freckles were hidden underneath splotches of blood on my tanned complexion and my left cheek was scraped to high Hell. I opened my mouth to check and see if I had any teeth missing and was relieved to find out that I hadn't. It was bad enough that I already looked like a lizard lot that some burly truck driver had worked over with a shard of glass and his fists, but missing a tooth or two might have suggested that I was into drugs too. When I thought about it later, I realized how strange it was to have been so concerned with vanity when I had a broken rib and road rash so severe that I couldn't lie down on my stomach for a month.

"How do you feel?" He asked, his voice a little shaky as he looked over at me briefly before turning his eyes back to the road.

"Like someone threw me out of a Goddamned car," I replied to him as I panned the mirror downward to survey my arms and legs. I winced when I saw them and pulled the mirror back into place before shaking my head. I knew it had been a bad idea to pack nothing but tank tops and shorts.

"I wondered what had happened. I don't know how long you were there before I came along. Seems like a pretty lonely stretch of road. We've only passed two people since I picked you up. You've been sleeping since I got you into the car... two hours ago."

"Two?" I asked him in disbelief. I looked to the back of the car and saw that we were in a station wagon. The back of it had been turned into a makeshift sleep area.

"I wanted to make sure you were going to breathe on your own or something I guess. I don't know. You laying around back there and being jostled even more didn't seem like a good idea. I'm Em." He reached up to scratch at the small growth of baby blonde stubble on his chin. I wondered how long it had taken him to grow that much out.

"Em?"

"It's short for Emmett."

"You might make a convincing Emily," I said to him jokingly, then winced in anticipation of being slapped around like Johnny might have done. I was relieved when he simply smirked and looked over to survey me in a way that I didn't feel was entirely born out of concern.

"Did you really get thrown out of a car?" He asked, returning his eyes back to the stretch of road in front of us. It was getting dark.

"Yeah. My boy... well, ex-boyfriend now, I guess... Johnny... he threw me out of a car because I asked him if he knew where he was going. I guess he's one of those men that thinks women have a poor sense of direction." I had to laugh, but it hurt. Even breathing hurt now, but I wasn't going to tell my rescuer that. I didn't want to cause any more trouble for the poor kid than I already had and a hospital visit was not an option.

He sat quietly for a moment, his cheeks coloring with something akin to anger. "That's fucked up. I wish I could find him..." He trailed off there. "He's probably long gone by now. Your backpack is in the back. I don't think anything came out of it. Do you need to go to the hospital? Unlike Johnny, I'm not afraid to admit that I don't know where I'm going right now. My plan is just to drive until I see city lights of some sort."

"No, no hospital. Thanks." I paused. "I'm Carly. It's nice to meet you, Em. And thank you... for everything. I'll get out whenever you want me to."

"You don't have to get out right away if you don't want to. I'm heading to Las Vegas. Where are you going?" He asked, spotting vague lights in the distance. He pushed down on the pedal faster.

"Good question." I hadn't considered yet that I didn't know what I was going to do or where I was going to go from here. Back home wasn't an option since I hadn't even left my parents a note when I'd gone and California wasn't affordable. "We were going to California. Johnny had this cousin that's supposed to be a rapper. I was going to get this job at a hotel doing the cleaning work..." I didn't want to say maid for some reason. I was starting to realize how stupid our plan was to begin with. When Georgie said they could use a 'maid' at his friend's hotel, he probably meant hooker. Hot tears suddenly stung my eyes and I reached up to swipe at them. "Anyway, I don't know. I don't have anywhere to go."

We continued down the road for a while without either of us saying anything. We reached the source of those faint lights about a half an hour later, stumbling upon a small town called Poston. There was a dive bar and grill just off of main street and Emmett pulled into the small parking lot, unbuckling his seat belt.

"Looks like they have food. Are you hungry?" He asked. I didn't want to admit that I barely had any money left. Johnny and I had blown through my savings halfway to New Mexico. After a moment, he lowered his voice. "I went through your wallet. I know you don't have any money. I'm sorry I did it, but I was just trying to see if you had any ID. It's on me."

The tears stung my eyes again and I turned my head away, staring down at the passenger door. I had never been one to cry in front of anyone and had always thought of it as a sign of weakness, but I was weak now. I was hurt, hungry, scared, broke, and clueless. Slowly I nodded, not even noticing that Emmett was out of the car and approaching my door. He popped it open for me and I unbuckled my seatbelt as I choked the tears back.

When I got out of the car I found that my chest hurt worse than I'd thought. The movement made me wince and I had to resist the urge to cry out. He gently wrapped his arm around my waist and started to lead me inside. Normally I would have jerked away but I didn't have the strength to refuse his chivalry. I was suspicious of him even though I had no reason to be. He so far hadn't been a creep but I'd heard too many stories and seen too many things myself to really be able to trust him -- not to mention the fact that I'd just dealt with Johnny.

I could hear an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song blaring from the bar and some rowdy cheering. The last thing I wanted was for a bunch of hicks to stare openmouthed at me when they saw what sort of shape I was in. I groaned inwardly at the thought but let Em lead me into the bar.

As I'd thought, there were a bunch of open mouthed hicks staring at me when I walked in. I averted my gaze to the ground. They seemed to be playing in some sort of amateur pool tourney and soon lost interest in the beat up girl for the most part, save for fleeting glances and some of the pool players' bouffantly-hairdo'd wives and girlfriends whispering amongst themselves.

We sat ourselves at a table and I slid into the booth with some relief. The cool material of the seating felt good underneath my scrapes and the ample air conditioning was a welcome change from Emmett's barely blowing AC unit in the car.

Now Em was staring at me too. He sat across from me and for the first time I could see that he was somewhat pretty for a boy. Back where I was from, he would have had to have fought hard and been a macho man to prove that he was nothing less than a bonafide queer, regardless of whether or not he was. There was something sweet about his boyish looks that he'd obviously tried to cover up with that poor growth of stubble and the long, grungy hair. His grey t-shirt was covered in blood that I'd assumed was mine. Now I knew the folks had reason enough to stare. I looked down at myself and stared at my chest and arms, wondering why there there was so much blood.

A waitress with orange-red hair and tanned leathery skin came up to the table with a small pad, looking at the both of us with a disapproving smirk.

"You two get into a fight with a can of tomato sauce?" She asked half-jokingly. The rest of her was full on catty. I wasn't having it for some reason, perhaps in part due to the fact that I needed painkillers and didn't have any in my system.

"I fell." I simply said to her, wheezing afterward. "Where's the bathroom?"

She pointed toward a dark hallway. "Can I get your order first?"

Emmett spoke up without even having to look at the menu. "I'll have a cheeseburger with everything, fries, and a beer."

"Same." I said before standing up shakily and heading to the bathroom, feeling eyes on my back. I staggered into the women's bathroom and turned on the light. My long black curls were matted with blood and stuck to my back and neck. There was more blood on my chest than I'd thought. I stopped looking at the vast amount of blood and grabbed for the paper towels. The bathroom smelled of floor cleaner and deodorizer, but all I could really smell was the blood I was caked in. I wetted the paper towels underneath the leaky faucet and dabbed at myself. It wasn't long before the dabbing turned into a frenzied sink bath. It hadn't been the first such bath I'd taken since I'd been on the road.

When I stopped I saw that there was a huge gash on my chest. It wasn't nearly as deep as it could have been given the circumstances and the road rash surrounding it made it look even worse than it really was. My dark eyes widened in the mirror as I studied it. I knew I'd have a scar. It might fade with time but it would be a while before I wore the sort of low-cut tank top I was currently wearing. I started looking around the bathroom for a first aid kit and found one underneath the sink. Settling on Bactine and a gauze pad with some white medical tape, I took care of the cut as best I could. I was no trained professional but I would have settled for not getting an infection and not having everyone gawk even more than they already had or would.

There was a rip in my denim skirt that made it even less modest than it had already been, and like my skin, both my top and the skirt itself were covered with blood. I couldn't do much for the clothing or my road rash, so I just headed back out after using the toilet.

Em was still there and suddenly I was filled with an overwhelming relief. I hadn't even known I was worried about him ditching me until I saw him still sitting there. People were staring but I didn't let it bother me so much. I knew that until we drove out of this little pit stain, we'd be a hot topic. Chances are that even after we'd long been gone, people would still be talking about those two wayward kids and how the girl was all beat up. They'd already started drawing their own conclusions as to what had happened. Why correct them?

I slid back into the other side of the booth, the pain in my ribs intensifying as I took a deep breath. "If you went through my things I guess you must know my darkest secret -- my name is really Scarlet." He flashed me a grin and I returned the first smile I'd worn in weeks. "I always thought that the name Scarlet sounded cheap even when I was little, so I told everyone to call me Carly. It helped that my little sister Violet had trouble saying it."

He laughed. "Your sister's name is Violet? Were your parents hippies?"

"Yeah, actually. And if you think that's  bad, you oughta meet my older brother Brown." If he'd seen my ID, he'd know my last name was Johnson. Not only was it an unfortunately choice and double entrende on my mother's part, our dark skin tone did little to help matters.

"No way." When I nodded to him with a serious expression he burst out laughing hard enough that several of the beefy hicks playing pool stopped to look over at us once more. "That's far out."

"Honest to God. Mama was half-Chinese, half-Mexican. Daddy was half-black. They couldn't agree on any Chinese or Spanish names, so they agreed to settle on colors. When I came out, I was so red in the face that they called me Scarlet. When my sister came out, she was purple, so they called her Violet. But when my older brother came out and they saw how brown he was, well..." I trailed off there and started to laugh myself, flinching with tears in my eyes at the pain. I reached up to grab my ribs, eliciting a worried glance from Emmett.

"I think maybe you should reconsider letting me take you to a hospital somewhere. I'm not an expert but after that kind of trauma, with your rib hurting..." He glanced at me and reached out to take my hand, wrapped around my glass of Coke and squeeze it briefly. "I'll take you if you need to go."

I almost flinched away from his hand before I took it and squeezed it back, my palm wet with condensation. "No. I'll be okay, really. I just need to rest. And... thanks again. For everything. It's not every day that I meet someone like you." A sudden fear that he was going to ask for something in return gripped me. He hadn't given me that vibe yet but if there was one thing I'd learned with Johnny, it's that looks could be deceiving. He looked like a clean cut football player but acted like a hardened criminal even at twenty-two. "What's your story, anyway?" I asked as I pulled my hand away, the waitress bringing our plates. The food looked better than I thought it would. My stomach growled loudly; I remembered that I hadn't eaten since the day before, and it had been a pink snack cake out of a rest stop vending machine.

I ate like I'd never even been fed before while Emmett talked about how he was going to visit his mom in Vegas. She'd been sick for a long time and his dad had died the year before. He didn't seem sad about it, just very matter of fact. There was something else in his eyes when he told me about it, something I couldn't place. Without touching much of his food, he talked about how he'd spent a little bit of time in jail for shoplifting. I couldn't imagine a guy as pretty as he was being in jail. He kept his voice low, all too aware that the townspeople were purposely keeping their conversation low so they could overhear.

"What about you?" He eventually asked. My food was long gone and his was more than half-cold by the time he finished telling me his story. I smiled with reluctance, hoping that the subject wouldn't come around to my own sad story.

I told him anyway. As the night grew darker outside, more people packed into the small bar. He picked at his own fries and burger, eating only about half of it all before he pushed the plate away. The waitress came to take our plates and ask us if we needed anything else. Emmett ordered both of us another beer. I didn't protest the fact that he was driving and drinking. He looked like a boy who could hold his own against the demons of alcohol, as the church-goers back home would have called them.

Jeepster by T. Rex came on the jukebox and Em's eyes lit up like a match. I grinned over at him. He watched me for minute in deliberation of something before he stood up and walked over to one of the trashy looking girls that had entered the bar sometime ago with a pack of girls that more resembled wolves to me. They had that hungry look about them and when they smiled, too much tooth showed. They'd all been eyeing Em since they came in. He was fresh meat.

I watched him with interest as he chose a skinny blonde that was only slightly shorter with her and asked her to dance. I knew why he hadn't asked me; I was in pain. But I'd also never seen a guy ask a girl to dance. They moved over near the pool tables and he began to dance better than any straight boy I'd ever seen. I was starting to wonder about him but I did it with a smile on my lips. I sipped at my fresh glass of beer and shook my head, watching as Emmett shook and gyrated with the kind of dance skills that most girls only wished they could achieve. His partner wasn't even close to him. She was dancing poorly next to him and watching him in bewilderment, her pace barely keeping up with the rhythym of the music. Her friends were snickering at her and whispering amongst themselves over the juke.

"Look at that fuckin' fag," one of the hicks said loudly, obviously meaning to catch Emmett's attention. He shook it off and kept dancing as I stood from the booth. Years of scrapping against whoever didn't like Johnny from one week to the next had made me a reliable bar fight back up.

When he didn't respond, the redneck that was heckling him threw his pool cue down and stomped over to him, his yellow workboots thudding against the bar floor. He stopped just beside Emmett. The redneck put his face down into Em's. "Look at me when I'm talkin' to you, boy. You some kinda queer? We don't like queers around these parts. Why don't you go back to San Fran Angeles or wherever the Hell it was you came from."

I watched Emmett as he stopped moving and faced the man, staring up at him. "If you don't allow fags around these parts, why haven't they kicked your dumb ass out yet?" He asked. I ran over to him in a limp and stood beside the two. Intervening was a stupid decision on my part, especially when the man grabbed Emmett by the collar of his t-shirt and lifted him off the ground.

"Fuck you, you little shit. Why don't you take your whore and get the fuck out of here? Was she late payin' so you beat on her?" He asked, chuckling lowly as he slammed Emmett against the wall.

"Yeah, I bet you'd like to fuck me, wouldn't you?" Emmett asked him with a wide grin before he lifted his foot and kicked the other man square in the balls. Just as the others grabbed their pool cues and started to run for us, Em wiggled his way from the man and took my hand. The waitress was screaming about us paying as we fled from the bar. His lithe frame pulled me most of the way and my ribs screamed like fire in my chest. We got into the station wagon as the others followed us out. Emmett's shaking hands couldn't get it started in time.

One of the man's friends pulled him out of the car and threw him to the ground. I hadn't yet made it to the passenger door when I was gripped from behind and held up in the air. I screamed out in pain, my eyes wide with fear as I watched the men started to beat on Em with their pool cues, stomping him with their boots. He was making horrible noises, as was I. The men didn't care I'd been hurt before. They laughed amongst themselves and made comments about 'patronizing my services' while I struggled. The ones who were done beating came up to squeeze my breasts. One of them approached me reeking like chewing tobacco and cheap beer, and stuffed his hand up my skirt. He cupped my sex in his hand and let out a hyuk-hyuk laugh, commenting to the one who held me as I screamed feebly: "Must be a new whore, she's barely worn at all."

Somewhere in the distance I heard a beer bottle breaking and a scream that didn't sound like Emmett's. As I was groped and prodded, I tried to make myself as far away from my body in my mind as I could. I didn't even know that there were tears running down my face anymore. The last man who was beating on Emmett had suddenly recoiled, holding his leg. I opened my eyes and saw that he was gushing blood from his thigh. Emmett stood up slowly, catching his breath as he coughed. The others dropped me and went rushing to their friend. I tugged my skirt back down and let out a choked sob, moving over to Em as the others tried to help their friend back into the bar. I noticed that the crotch of his jeans was covered too. He was hurt badly enough that Emmett was left alone for the moment, and he slid into the driver's seat once more, me sliding into the passenger seat.

The old motor started and as we drove off. Someone threw a beer bottle at his car and hit the front window, cracking it admirably. Emmett was still hacking and in the dim lighting, I couldn't see his wounds but underneath the street lights every now and again. His nose was bleeding and I knew he'd have a shiner in the morning. We drove out of the town and past it, back into the desert. We passed a road sign that said Ianthe Valley, twenty miles, but we stopped in the middle of the desert long before that.

"They'll be looking for us," he said quietly. I reached out and put my hand on his knee.

"We should just sleep here, maybe. Let's park a little further away." Em nodded and started the car again, parking us behind a small rock formation. The front end was sticking out a little bit but I didn't think it would matter much in the end. We both crawled into the back of his station wagon and with the help of a small flashlight I'd had in my backpack, I looked at his wounds. The beating he'd taken wasn't as bad as it could have been but he said his chest hurt. His ribcage was starting to bruise and I worried that like me, he'd broken a rib or two of his own.

We helped each other out of our blood-soaked clothes and then curled up in the pile of blankets he had in the back. I couldn't get comfortable and the wagon bounced gently every time I repositioned, but finally I lie on my side facing him. I reached out to tuck his hair behind his ears and lean in to kiss him. He pulled away from me and stared with wide eyes.

"No... I can't." He paused. "I'm not gay. I want to... with you. But I know what they did to you back there. It wouldn't be right."

"People have done worse, Em." I leaned in and kissed him. This time he didn't resist. When it was all said and done, both of us were too sore to do anything aside from idly fondle each other and make out a little. The level of intimacy was nice though. I never got that sort of thing from Johnny, much less anyone else I'd ever been with. His tenderness stood out against the harsh grain of my life.

I let myself cry in front of him then. He told me it would be okay as he stroked my hair and kissed my brow, but I knew better than that -- and yet I could almost believe it when he said it.