"Bitch."

Danielle heard the profanity before she felt the blow to the back of her head, which knocked her sideways off her chair. Hot wax spilled with her, pouring across her arm and coating everything from table to floor like lava flowing from a volcano. With a brutal stroke of his arm, Randy swept the table clear of all her candles and supplies. The crash was deafening and heightened her pain. Randy didn’t wait for her to recover. He grabbed her by one arm, picking her up like a pile of dirty rags. She landed with a thud against the doorframe. Pain shot up her side. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She glared at Randy.

"Next time I tell you to go get beer for my friends, you jump, understand?" Randy roared. He smashed the back of his hand across her face.

"Clean up this fucking mess and you before I get back or there will be hell to pay," he said, staggering out of the room. "You and your damn candles, that’s all you think about. I’m sick of it."

The kitchen door slammed hard enough to rattle the windows. Tears streamed down her face as she lay in a heap where she had fallen. Her body throbbed with pain. The hot wax on her arm had cooled to a warm paste but the burning sensation intensified. She pulled herself into a sitting position and took stock of all the parts where she hurt. Nothing felt broken, not this time anyway. She crawled over to where the wax for her latest batch of candles puddled on the bright red and gray tiles of the craft room floor. Still in a dazed half-conscious state of mind, she began peeling and scooping wax back into the kettle and turned off the hot plate. Tears clouded her vision. "Where have all the flowers gone . . . " she began singing in a quiet bird-like voice.

Running out to get beer for him and his cronies disgusted her. She hoped ignoring him would work, hoped that everyone would leave and he would pass out. This latest party was running into the third day. How long can he last? Usually after he woke up from an extended drunk, Randy would be apologetic and doting, loving her as though he meant it. She had fallen in love with that Randy. No such luck this time, this time he seemed to gain energy from the violence against her. There was a silence when all Randy’s friends left; the hollow silence, now that Randy had left too, seemed ominous. "I should have known better," she sobbed, tears spattering in the soft wax coating the floor. Outside, the Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Train moaned with the familiar cry like the howl of a gray wolf that searched for its mate. It echoed Danielle’s pain. "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away..." The words and music crashed through her mind flooding her thoughts with memories.

The loving relationship she once enjoyed had now turned dark and sinister. He used to be fun. Now, she no longer knew the man she was living with. He was increasingly more violent. Anything would trip his hair trigger temper and set him off. How long will it be before he kills me? The thought made her shudder.

Danielle knew Randy could be back in an hour if he went to the Billy Goat Saloon where all the bikers hung out or he could take off on his Harley and be gone for days. She never knew for sure when he left like this.

They had only been together a year the first time he left and she had missed him with a passion. Worried sick about him for four days, she’d tortured herself with guilt and what ifs, waiting for him to return. When he finally did come home, he had found her waiting for him eager to forget the fight that had caused him to slap her around. Later he apologized and said he would never do it again. She had believed him. After all, he had not really beaten her, at least not that time; he had just slapped her and shoved her down. As she thought about the accelerating violence, the time he broke her arm seemed long ago. That had scared her. He did take her to the emergency room the next day when he was sober. "Tell them you fell down the stairs," he said.

The emergency room personnel were not inclined to believe that story and she had to do some tall talking to convince them it was nothing more than a clumsy accident. Maybe that time it was her fault, if she hadn’t made him mad, maybe that wouldn’t have happened. She shouldn’t have nagged him about getting a job. That time when she asked, he told her he had gone for a ride to sort things out. "What did that mean?" He told her to keep her nose out of his business. She never asked again. Now, as her body ached with pain, remembering his apologies after each new outburst of violence, she wondered if his promise to never do it again meant the beating or the running away. The answer was all too clear recently.

The day she met him he came into the Office Bar & Grill wearing faded blue jeans and a faded blue chambray work shirt. His deep brown hair and mahogany brown eyes swept her off her feet. He was her first encounter with a cowboy, Stetson hat, boots and all. She got shivers just thinking about the tall, lean cowboy with the slow drawl and easy manner. His smile caused butterflies in her stomach or perhaps lower. And it still did.

After her shower, Danielle laid across the bed to rest her aching body. She started to dream almost immediately.

She was in a dark tall house that seemed sandwiched between the other houses in a dusty coal town. Her father didn’t have a job and the family was barely surviving. Sometime early in the morning, she awoke to the sound of her parents fighting again. She heard her mother scream and rushed into their bedroom. Sunlight snuck red through the cheap gauze curtains. Traffic grumbled outside on the street. Danielle heard the short agitated blasts of the coal train whistle as it rumbled along the tracks a block away. The windows rattled with its passing. She hated the train that disturbed their foundation four times a day. Its angry wail and dirty puffs of coal dust turned the snow gritty black within hours of falling pristine white. The train seemed to punctuate the black trouble of their lives here.

Father was in bed; anger and hate darkened his already black eyes. Her mother was on the floor holding the back of her head, tears streamed down her face. Her hair was disheveled, her face ashen. Clothes tossed on a chair beside the bed looked like a deflated scarecrow. The bed covers, dragged to the floor, surrounded mother’s thin frame.

"Get out, get out of this room. You don’t belong in here." Her father snarled at her.

"It’s okay honey. Go on. I’m okay," mother said

"She’d be fine if she got her lazy ass out of bed and got some breakfast. She’s nothing but a lazy bitch," her father said throwing a pillow at her mother.

"Leave her out of this," her mother retorted and then cowered as he raised a boot to throw.

She shivered with fear for her mother.

Danielle woke up sweating and hating herself for being weak like her mother. The dream was from years ago. It seemed like forever since she had last seen her parents. Things hadn’t always been like that. After they moved again things got better. When her father wasn’t drinking things were pretty normal. She could still see her father’s brown/black eyes, how they grew intensely black when he was angry. It was such a contrast to her blue-eyed, blonde mother. They made a great couple. His drinking finally killed him at the age of fifty-five. Her mother had died a few months later. Danielle guessed her mother couldn’t live without her father. Their relationship had been stormy but they always loved as passionately as they fought. She missed her mother. She needed her advice. She needed her companionship. There was no one to tell her secrets to anymore. Certainly, no one she could tell about Randy and his tirades.