She nods half to herself and we are silent but still she does not go to her husband. Time passes. The door opens and lets in a cool curtain of air. The diners hug themselves and huddle against one another. There is the smell of biscuits I love so, like what Mom learned to fix my dad—the way Grandma Sullivan made them—and in this hot room the windows steam, and people talk across the tables. Finally the waitress comes and sets my bill on the counter, minus the sundae, and I wait awhile in the warm room with the smell and talk and clatter of dishes scraped clean but I get the feeling people are waiting on me to leave. So I pay at the register and stand in the warm doorway for a moment before entering the cool night and driving out of town. My fingers stick to the cold plastic steering wheel. It hurts to peel them off.

Behind me the town’s light sucks down into the darkness and then there is only the black desert around me when the car begins making jerking noises and, finally, twenty minutes later, breaks down.

III

When I wake up my back hurts from my seat’s awkward position and I sit up straight. To my surprise I am not surrounded by desert. Outside, long grass stands uncut at the roadside, in yellow clumps that form a nest for the newly risen sun, and barbed wire strung between old wooden posts separates a field from the road. The fields are hilly, some low sort of vegetation, with the early light glistening in ponds and irrigation streams like clear thread among quilted patches. A jackrabbit runs across the narrow road, darting into a patch of bush. Three deer leap over the barbed wire onto the road and jump to the opposite field and hurry up the green hills, becoming silhouettes against the blue sky. It happens so fast, when they are gone, I doubt I have even seen them.

I get out and stretch. The air is cold in my throat—mountain air—and my breath fogs, billows, and vanishes before my face. The Oldsmobile starts on the first try, which surprises me. Remembering what that woman said about being near Oregon, I decide to backtrack to Navarro. As I take the road the gas seems to sputter, so I try to coast most of the way in neutral. By the time I come into town the car is barely moving and I just make it into one of the only two service stations I have seen in town. They face each other and one looks more open than the other. An aluminum garage door with its slotted glass windows has been rolled up halfway and some guy sits inside behind a desk, and he has long beige hair.