“Drink up, Juice,” Earl said, his liquid tongue enunciating without the benefit of teeth. “We don’t want to keep Juliana waitin’.” He turned to me to explain, his gums clapping together, blowing the words out through his lips and spraying beer foam as he talked. “Juliana’s Juice’s sister. We’re goin’ to her house for supper. Her husband caught a mess of trout today. And the way Juliana fries up them fish . . . Ummm.” He ran his tongue around the end of his forefinger, gently sucked the tip, then sipped his beer, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “You hungry, Angelina?”

I was starving. The thought of freshly fried trout was almost too much for me to bear. I nodded.

“Want to go with us? Their house ain’t more than, what, Juice, a mile away? Juliana don’t like drinkin’, like you, so we come here first to get a little buzz on, know what I mean?”

I looked at Juice and he just smiled his blank­-faced smile and opened another beer.

“Why don’t you come on as our guest? We’ll go have a nice dinner and then we’ll bring you right on back here. Safe and sound and full of fish.”

Millions of thoughts flashed through my mind, and all of them were positive. I hadn’t been hurt in over a year on the road; never even been threatened. I’d taken every ride offered, and this was just another one, with a meal at the end. Could be this was one of the countless fortunate circumstances that had befall­en me all along my journey, providing me with hot showers or clean sheets once in a while. This was fresh trout.

“Whaddaya say?”

“That would be nice,” I said.

Earl Foster turned to Juice and winked. “Them girls is always hungry, Juice.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a key ring, which he laid on the picnic table. “Kin you drive, Angelina?” He drew his words out in a mocking way—kin you driiiiive, Angeleeena?

I nodded. I had no driver’s license, but I knew how to drive. I had taken over the task from many who needed to sleep but didn’t want to stop. I would feel much better being at the controls. He stood up, belching. “C’mon, Juice. I kin hardly wait to taste me some tender white feelay.”

I pulled down my hammock and folded my blanket, putting them into my pack. A little dark spot of wrongness poked at me from behind my ear, but my stomach was prodding me onward, and so was my sense of pride. I wanted life to be perfect and nourish­ing, and I needed to believe that this would turn out well. I had decided to settle down and I needed this to be an experience fit to crown my journey.