I had to adjust the car seat forward in order to reach the pedals. Earl Foster sat in the front and had to help me scoot the seat back and forth until we got it up close enough. He made a lot of grunts and moans as we rocked it, while Juice, in the backseat with my pack, giggled drunkenly. Earl sat with his arm across the back of the seat and his knees pointed in my direction.

The motor caught straightaway and I pulled on the lights. Darkness was settling in. We backed out and turned around and slowly approached the high­way, where Earl indicated that our destination lay to the left. Then he looked over his shoulder at Juice and opened another beer.

We drove a short deserted distance, a mile, possibly two. Then Earl pointed at a flag, a ribbon, no, a rag tied to a tree limb, and with hard, bony fingers he gripped my arm and came toward me, huffing foul breath in my face as he leaned across, pointing to a gravel road barely visible in the undergrowth. I slowed and turned in.

We bounced off the seats as I tried vainly to miss the potholes, and in fifty yards or so the road—or driveway, I assumed—smoothed out. I still drove slowly, barely more than idling down the gravel, feeling more than hearing the strip of weeds between the tire marks as they scrubbed the underbelly of the Pontiac.

The driveway curved to the right, and then to the left, and then it was a straightaway as far as the headlights could see. I began almost to dream that I was awake. The scratching from the coarse weeds became so loud it filled the car, the brush on either side of us reached higher than the roof, and the headlights illuminated a narrow tunnel through which we drove. I felt that the three of us were locked in some immortal collusion—reality had escaped us—we were out of control, sliding down the birth canal of destiny.

And then the trees disappeared and we were in the open and the lake was silvery in front of us and another picnic table was beside us. I saw no house and no sister, smelled no fish, and fear took my mind and squished it between its gnarled fingers.

“Stop here.”

I obeyed.

“Turn out the lights.”

I punched the button in. Security evaporated.

“Give me the keys.”

I pulled the keys from the ignition and put them in the hand that had found my thigh.

“Well, now,” Earl said into the stillness. “Ain’t this cozy?”

Juice giggled in the backseat.