“Were you scared?”
“I was too scared to answer my grandma, and she got mad at me later because she thought that bull had gotten me. But I was real quite and I watched him go to the horse trough to get his drink. Then I walked on the top of the fence over those squealing pigs to get out of there. That bull just stood and watched me. It was like walking a tightrope at the circus. My grandma was good and mad, but she didn’t spank me.”
“Well, if I was trapped by a bull, I’d use my radar gun to blast him, POW! POW! POW! He would be gone.”
The Lincolns arrived at midnight and Bonnie drove her car down the highway. Tomorrow would be more of the same, only the days change. She must endure and go on. Maybe Leroy would come back to work, maybe he wouldn’t. Bonnie could still see him going down the gray hallway singing that stupid song.
She drove on. It was dark and raining, but it was somehow a different world. On the highway, the road signs spun by her. One after the other. Illuminated in the night: East Loop South, 655 Freeway Left Lane, Downtown Transit Lane. Up ahead, she saw her exit, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn. She drove, not knowing why. Bonnie was tired and she needed to go home. She couldn’t stop but went onward into the night until the highway turned into farm to market roads.
Total darkness gave way to a foggy dawn. Down familiar roads she went. Then, there it was, just as she had always known. Bonnie pulled into the driveway past the big live oaks. There was the house, hadn’t changed one little bit. Bonnie got out of the car. She was home. There was the porch, the trumpet vines. The door opened and Bonnie Jean smiled slowly as she descended the steps in her flour sack dress and braids.