“Yes. Let’s get out of here.”
They left the diner during a lull in the pickup traffic and hotfooted it up the hill to the first street, turned right, and hurried along to Mavis Thrift, which appeared to be closed. “There’s somebody in there,” Kaiser said, peering through the door window. He knocked until a woman came to the door and shouted, “We’re closed.”
“We need help,” Letty shouted back through the glass.
The woman fussed for a minute, but finally let them in. “I need some of everything and I’ll pay cash,” Letty told her.
“Are you . . .”
“No, we’re not with them.”
The woman, like those in the diner, was on the heavy side. She had a face that might have had a permanent worried frown graven into it, overlaid by a whole new set of worries from that morning.
“They been shooting people up, whoever they are,” the woman said. “I got a gun, but I’m no damn good with it.”
“Hiding out is the way to go,” Kaiser said. “I don’t think they’ve shot anyone yet.”
The woman nodded, then asked, “What can I do for you, young lady?”
“I need some clothes and a mirror,” Letty said.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Kaiser said, “Hell, I wouldn’t recognize you if you walked right past me. I’ve never seen pants that exact color.”
“They look nice,” Mavis said to Letty. “Don’t show off your figure so good as the skinny jeans, though. I think your dad would agree with that.”
The woman smiled at Kaiser, who said, “I guess.”
“That’s okay,” Letty said. She batted her eyes at Kaiser, then checked herself in a cracked, full-length mirror. She was wearing a flowered peasant top over what were once burgundy jeans that appeared to have had a tie-dye accident, with a pair of well-worn Keds high-tops that had once been red, but were now a rusty color.
Kaiser handed her a pair of white-framed sunglasses. She winced, put them on, and asked, “You got a cowboy bandanna I can tie over my hair?”
“Sure do,” Mavis said. “Any color you want, long as it’s black.”
Mavis gave her a brown paper sack for her regular clothes.
* * *
Outside Mavis’s door, Letty asked, “What do you think, Dad?”
“With that hankie on your head and those glasses, you look like you’re from the Ukraine. In 1944. On your way to Mass after killing a Kraut.”
“Thank you.” She touched the hard lump in her jeans pocket. The pants were looser than her skinny jeans, and the 938 was right there, easy to get at.
“Let’s get back to the motel and talk this out,” Kaiser said. “Haven’t heard any more gunfire.”
They walked back to the highway, and at the corner saw a parked pickup partially blocking the highway, with two men in the truck bed, both with rifles. The men looked at them but didn’t do or say anything. They turned downhill, stopped at Jeff’s. The waitress in the pink dress recognized Kaiser, frowned at Letty as though she should recognize her but didn’t. Kaiser asked, “Anything more happen?”
“Another one of them came in here, showing his gun off,” the waitress said. “There’s gonna be a town meeting at noon outside the border station. Everybody’s supposed to come. No guns.”
As they backed out the door, the waitress added, in a hushed voice, “They arrested the mayor and the city council. They said there’s gonna be a trial.”