Brazzy Malone's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Brazzy Malone had been in Dustvale six weeks when she saw her own face nailed to a fence post. She stopped her truck in the middle of the dirt road and got out. The board was scrap wood, and someone had tacked flyers to it in a hurry. The handwriting was bad, but the message was clear enough. Three notes named her. One asked if she was the girl from the magazines. Another warned people to leave her alone. A third just wrote her first name twice, like a dare. She had thrown a dart at a map to land in this town. She had picked Dustvale because her cousin swore small towns forgot faces. Six weeks. That was all the quiet she got. She drove the long way home and spotted the tent on the ridge above her rental. It was canvas, the color of dry grass, staked down hard against the wind. The flap hung open just enough to show a tripod inside and a long lens pointed at her kitchen window. Brazzy killed the engine and walked up the slope. Her boots slid on loose rock. She did not call out. She had held stares down before, in studios full of men who never learned her last name, and she could hold one down here. The photographer was crouched behind the tripod eating a granola bar. He was maybe forty, sunburned, jumpy. When he saw her he grabbed for a duffel bag and knocked it over. A VHS tape spilled out. The label read Brazzy circa 2017 in black marker. He had been studying her old work before he ever came looking. He started talking fast. He said he had a buyer in the city. He said the photo of her buying groceries in a small town was worth more than any bikini shot. He said if she just gave him one clean picture he would leave. Brazzy picked up the tape and turned it over in her hand. She asked him how much the buyer was paying. He named a number. She named a bigger one. She told him she would pay him that much to burn the film, drive out tonight, and tell his editor the lead was cold. She counted out half in cash from the envelope she kept in her glove box for the mortgage. The other half, she said, would come when she saw the paper run something else next week. He took the money. He broke down the tent while she watched. She kept the tape. Driving back down the ridge, she passed the fence with the flyers still nailed to it. She stopped, pulled each one loose, and put them in the truck bed. The photographer was leaving. The board on the fence was not his doing. Someone in Dustvale had written her name three times already, and she still did not know who.