one

“Hey, J.C.!” a voice calls as I’m about to cross the street. I’m ready to ignore it until the woman adds, “Jillian Carter!”

It’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time and all the skin at the nape of my neck tightens in unhappy anticipation and nervousness. I thought I’d managed to put that name behind me now, along with the memories of foster homes and living on the street.

I turn slowly to see a young woman around my age, leaning against the seat of a motorcycle that looks way too big for her.

She has a cute black pageboy haircut and tattoos everywhere her skin is showing except for on her face and the back of her hands.

A cigarette dangles from glossy red lips, James Dean style. She’s wearing tight faded jeans tucked into clunky black motorcycle boots and a jean vest.

“Donna?” I say.

She takes a last drag from her cigarette and flicks the butt to the sidewalk.

“In the flesh, J.C,” she says, then she steps over and gives me a hug.

We’re both small women, but her boots give her more height and she’s certainly better endowed than I’ll ever be unless I get implants. She’s never needed them.

“It’s been a long time,” I say when we step apart.

“Tell me about it.”

Donna Birch and I met in Tyson County’s Home for Wayward Girls, way back when. And later, the last time I ran away from a foster home, we shared a squat in the Tombs until I took up with this guy named Rob and started crashing with him. But Donna and I still hung out together, and we might have kept it up for years, except she got busted for assaulting some guy in a bar and pulled a year-and-a-day in county, while my life spiraled down into a black hole of heroin and prostitution. We just never connected again.

“You look good,” she says.

“I feel good. I’ve been clean for a couple of years now.”

“That’ll do it. What else have you been up to?”

“I’m going to art school.”

“No shit? I always knew you had it in you. I still have a couple of those little drawings of yours that I rescued from the corner of some squat or other.”

“Oh, god.”

“No, they’re cool. Really.” She smiles. “I’ve cleaned up my act, too. I’m a vegetarian now. My only vice is nicotine, and the odd beer.”

“How odd is the beer you drink?”

“Ha ha. No, seriously. I’m done with the drugs and the binge drinking. Been clean for almost a year now myself. You’re looking at a whole new Donna Birch.”

“I’ll say. When did you get into the tattoos?”

She grins. “They tell the story of my life, girl.”

She turns and lifts her hair to show me a small one in black ink at the nape of her neck. It’s of some little creature that looks like a pair of eyes staring out of a bundle of twigs.

“Remember that?” she asks.

I nod my head because I do. I used to draw that little guy all the time.

“Every one of my tats is a chapter of my life,” she says.

She shows off her right bicep where a woman with her page boy hair and a tight red mini-dress is wrapped in barbed-wire that goes on to trail down and around her elbow. Then she turns so that I can see her other bicep where the same woman is playing a standup bass, standing on it like a rockabilly queen.

“I’m in a band,” she says.

“Where, let me guess. You play stand-up bass.”

“Ask me how much I love it.”

I smile. “How much do you love it?”

“I could marry it.”

“And do you play out at all?” I ask.

That’s an expression I got from my friend Geordie who works part-time at the Post Office with me. This is our second year at it—we met while we were both in training for the upcoming Christmas rush, and don’t you know it, it’s that time of year again already.

It may only be two major holidays away, but before you know it, Halloween and Thanksgiving will be done and we’ll be swamped with parcels and cards. The difference this year is that we don’t get paid while we’re being trained—we just go right to work because we already know the job.

“All the time,” Donna says. “We mostly do gigs at stock car races and hot rod shows because that’s where the work is for the kind of rockabilly stuff we do. But we play clubs, too, like the one we’re at this weekend, right here in town. You ever go to a place called Your Second Home?”

I nod.

“Well, we’re playing at Cool Hand’s Juke—just down the street from it.”

“What’s the name of your band?” I ask.

“Big Earl and His Girls. Earl’s our frontman—a seriously hot guitar slinger and a decent singer. His wife Lucy plays drums, and I’m…well...”

She turns again so that I can see the bicep with the bass-player tattoo.

“You should come see us,” she says. “I’ll put you on the guest list.”

“I’d like that. Can I bring a friend?”

“Anybody you like.” But then she cocks her head and adds, “You’re not still with that asswipe Rob, are you?”

“No, but sadly, since then there’ve been other losers almost as charming.”

“Isn’t that the sorry truth. These days I just tell the guys hitting on me that I’m a big ol’ dyke and don’t swing their way.”

“Big?” I say. “It’s only those boots that are making you taller than me.”

“I could still whup your ass.”

“You wish.”

“It’s good to see you full of sass again. That last time…”

The last time I saw her I was stumbling down one of those seedy streets that run off Palm, jonesing for a fix.

“It’s good to see you, too,” I tell her. “Really good. There’s not many people from those old days I could say that about. In fact, you’re the only one I could say that about.”

“Same deal for me, J.C. Same deal for me.”

Okay, this is a bit awkward, I realize, but I have to tell her if she’s putting my name on the guest list.

“One, um, thing,” I say. “I don’t really go by Jillian Carter anymore.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“It’s Jilly Coppercorn now.”

She smiles. “That’s cool—it still comes out as J.C.”

“I guess it does.”

“Later,” she says. “And you better show tomorrow night, or I’ll come looking for you.”

“I’ll be there.”

It’s not till she turns toward her bike that I realize the crest on the back of her jean vest are actually gang colours. It’s not the Devil’s Dragon emblem, which is our local bike gang. This one’s got a skull with a patch over one eye socket and flames all around it. Under it are the words “The Pirates.”

“This club,” I ask. “Is it a biker bar?”

She looks at me over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’ll be cool. Didn’t I always take care of you?”

“Until you went to jail.”

“Yeah, but I’m a good girl now.”

I have to laugh. “Donna, you look like anything but a good girl.”

“All depends on your definition, J.C.”