“Seems to me,” Foster said, wondering what Mebane had told her, wondering what he himself might choose to tell her, and not sure of either one, “you already know about me what you need to know.”

“You can do that, baby,” she said, “if that’s what you want. But it’s not why I’m sitting here.”

“You’re the one driving the car.”

“But it’s your car, isn’t it?” She looked over at him. He did not know what that look was intended to convey. She said, “Give over that fruit jar.” She took it and drank and shuddered and handed it back and lifted up the beer from the incubator of her thighs and drank some of that and offered it and when he declined she made no argument but settled it back down. They were driving with the windows open and the night warm and comfortable flowing over them, the land all but lost in the headlights and the speed, just here and there openings, sometimes the white shabby dribble of cotton and othertimes the dense rank of woods and here and there would be a farmhouse or shed or shack and he could not always tell which was habitation and which was not. Once there was a vast looming shape twisting in the air above the road before them and she braked the car hard and they sat silent while a froth-mouthed, redeye mule turned to face the headlights, blowing from its nostrils before it smelled them or smelled the car or just came to some decision from mule-sense and bolted from the road. And she drove on then, hard, going up through the gears and when they were back up to speed she said, “All Uncle Lex told me about you was the parts important to him. You can figure out what those were. And I’m not saying that’s not of interest to me, it is. But it’s not why we’re out riding around. Now is it?”

He was quiet then. He drank a little from the fruit jar. He wished he hadn’t squandered that last cigarette. Then had one of those rare wondrous moments of illumination where the past was not passed but breathing, working alongside him. And he leaned over her and with his right arm bracing himself against the dash to not touch her said, “Excuse me,” and leaned over her lap with the scent of her like a dozen campfires each burning a different fuel rising into him. He used his free hand to fumble down in the side pocket of the driver door and came up with a box of cigarettes. Because too many times to forget he’d seen his father set some partial almost-gone pack down into there when he wanted a fresh unopened one to take with him out of the car. And this was perfect knowledge to Foster. He dug in the glovebox and found a box of matches and struck up the smoke and worked with the fruit jar a little more. The girl Daphne just driving, the speed the same. Although he’d felt the hover of her breasts and the catch of her breath when he leaned over her. In that moment he understood that her talk was not all talk—she was fragile as he was and something in her searching was honest.