the story, but the cops say right now, Dawn is the only one they know who has turned things around. First they had to bust her, of course, and then she worked as a confidential informant for a while, arranging the busts of several Mexican men who worked nights running drugs in pickup trucks from one town to the next. “Sweet girl. Grew up here in town. But she started running with, shall we say, a bad element,” Larry, the narc, tells me on the way to Dawn’s house for the interview. We drive down a rutted road through a neighborhood of shack-like houses set wide apart, each on its own rolling lawn of red dirt. “She had a Mexican boyfriend for a while. Started using meth. We just watched her for a couple months. We knew what she was up to.” Larry stops talking for a swig from his can of Mountain Dew and shrugs as he navigates the SUV: “Then one night we got a call that a whole bunch of them were over at the Sunset Motel, dealing and using. We just went over there and picked them all up. It was easy. It was real good police work.” We get to her house and stand talking in her little living room. We keep our voices low so her seven-year-old son won’t hear us in the bedroom, and every few minutes the clothes thumping and clanging in her drier drown us out. Dawn has a broad face and pretty blue eyes. Her face and clothes are clean, but some of her teeth are pretty messed up. No makeup; long, blonde hair tied up in a scrunchie. It’s December and cold in the house. She puts both hands inside a blue fleece pullover and we all sit on the couch. Larry points around the little house, telling Dawn it looks
Issue 1: Fall 2013
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