“Your name isn’t really Bunny is it?” he asked.

About that time, Ken landed on the seat beside me and passed me a tall cup full of lemonade and ice. I took a quick sip, mostly to avoid saying anything to him right away. The taste was unmistakable; he had spiked the lemonade with something very like raw alcohol, probably moonshine. Ye cats! It must have been almost half liquor!

I glared at him and put the cup down. He looked directly at me and widened his eyes. I felt a flush of heat that could have been the alcohol or the spices in the BBQ but probably wasn’t.

Otis suddenly jumped to his feet across the table from us, knocking his metal folding chair to the floor. Dolly glanced at me with an expression I had never seen on her face. She looked scared. Beside me, Ken stood more slowly, using his right hand to push down on my shoulder.

Otis said something I couldn’t hear, butI clearly heard Ken say in a cheerful voice, “Hey, no. It’s a party, fellas. Relax.” He stepped out away from the table. Three big men in rough work clothes confronted Otis with condescending amusement on their faces.

“What’s going on?” I mouthed at Dolly. She made faces back but I didn’t get any useful information from it and then she disappeared under the table and I felt a pair of hands dragging me out of my seat!

The men’s voices were getting louder but I could only make out Ken saying something about an apology in a reasonable sounding voice before Dolly pulled me under the table.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” she said.

I whimpered. I mean, my barbecue heaven was still on top of the table. But I nodded reluctantly. We hiked our skirts up to mid-thigh and started crawling out of the tent, keeping under tables where we could and trying to avoid getting kicked, accidentally or on purpose.

The noise level above seemed to be rising and started to have an angry tone. I risked a glance back but couldn’t see anything from under the tables. I turned back to follow Dolly again but she had disappeared and in her place stood a large yellow and brown dog glaring at me.

“Grr!” he said.

“Nice doggie,” I said. Maybe he thought I was after one of the greasy bones discarded in the sawdust and dirt under the tables. I was trying to poke such a morsel his direction when the mutt started sliding across the floor backward with a surprised look on his face. He tried to turn around to bite whoever had him by the hind legs but he didn’t really have the room.

I quickly scrambled out from under the tables and got to my feet. Dolly stood up also, leaving the dog half-under a chair. She grabbed my arm instead and we both tried to make progress at getting out of the tent. We didn’t look back because it sounded like a real fight had broken out and we weren’t the only ones escaping.

“Truck!” screamed Dolly.

“Truck!” I agreed.

We were filthy. Dirt on hands and knees and the hem of our skirts, sawdust and grease in our hair. Dolly even had a dollop of barbecue beans behind one ear. We ran for the grassy field where Ken had left the oversize pickup we had arrived in. The gleaming green-over-white newness of his ride stood out among the smaller, duller vehicles and we had no trouble finding it.

The driver’s side door wasn’t locked and I boosted tiny Dolly up into the cab then hauled myself in behind her. “See if there’s a key hidden somewhere?” I said.

“It would probably be outside, under the body or bumpers,” she said but she opened the glove box anyway. A black plastic object fell out, looking a bit like a skullcap for an octopus.

Dolly held it up for a moment, glaring at it.

“What the heck is that?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she admitted. “But somehow I think this is why the Mustang wouldn’t start.”

“I–you–he? You mean Ken may have sabotaged our car?” I sputtered.

“Lock the doors,” she ordered and we took a moment to click all four locks.

“We’ll be safe in here,” I said watching out the side window at what seemed to be turning into a full scale riot around the tent. The two deputies and their beefy buddy were wading into the melee swinging black nightsticks and yanking people out of their way by the collar or other handy appendage.

“Safe?” said Dolly, producing a screwdriver and a tiny wrench from the glove box. “We’re leaving!”

“Uh,” I said. “You think you can hotwire this thing?”

She wriggled in under the dash and her voice came out of the instrument panel. “I can,” she said with confidence and set to work. A moment later the engine roared to life, Dolly emerged triumphant then underwent a spasm of head shaking and cursing when the baked beans she’d been wearing fell into her ear canal.

I put the big monster truck into gear and eased out of the line of parked vehicles, honking once to let people know that we were moving. Dolly reached back into the glove compartment to flip on the emergency flashers. Ken’s truck had all the options available.

Once I reached a lane, I turned toward the tent.

Dolly yelped. “The road is the other direction!”

“We’ve got to get the boys,” I said.

“Oh-kay!” she said grinning. “You’ve decided that he’s going to suck your dick.”

I winced. “Shut up,” I said but then we both laughed.

Moving oh-so-slowly through the crowd, I drove right into the tent toward where we had left out two — dates? Kidnappers? They had probably tricked us into coming along by disabling our car but that wasn’t important just at that moment. Getting them out of there before they needed a trip to the hospital or jail mattered more.

Chair and tables got crushed under the bumpers and wheels of the big crew cab truck, along with a quantity of marvelous food. Several people pounded on the side of our pseudo-tank but we ignored them and their shouting.

I saw the boys in the middle of a clot of men pushing and shoving and swinging at each other with the nightstick-wielding deputies only yards away. “Get ready to unlock the back door on your side when I pull alongside,” I told Dolly. She got up in her seat and leaned over to reach the switch.

I bumped someone in the ass, moving as slowly as I could manage but sending him flying into the mashed potato table anyway. The servers and ticket takers had all disappeared. I got the feeling suddenly that this wasn’t the first riot at the barbecue.

I honked the horn, one short and one long blast, and everybody jumped as if electrocuted. Otis reached the door of the truck first and Dolly unlocked it. He piled in with Ken right behind him, having to kick someone off of him before he could close the door.

“Woo-eee!” yelled Otis.

“You girls are the cavalry!” said Ken, laughing. “Let’s get out of here!”

I guided the bouncing truck through the barbecue tent onto a dirt road between the other buildings and eventually out to the highway, not turning back toward Sterling because all of the other traffic was already heading that way.

“Where are we going?” asked Otis.

“Somewhere that ain’t here,” I said and everyone laughed in relief.

Ken reached over the seat and touched me on the arm. “Your name isn’t really Bunny is it?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s Martha.” I had no idea I had decided that until just then.

“That’s why she has everyone call her Bunny,” said Dolly, smirking.

“My brave little Bunny,” said Ken with a chuckle.

I rolled my eyes. “Where are we going? Seriously. I don’t know anything about where we are,” I said.

Otis spoke up. “Go down about two miles, turn right, we can cross the river and go up to Linn. There’s a motel you girls can get a bath in while Ken and I go get your car fixed and bring it back to you.”

“A bath?” I thought about it for fifteen seconds; we were filthy. I checked silently with Dolly in a glance and said, “Sounds like a plan.”