“I asked you, you two want a ride?—you going to town?”

Marya’s mother ignored him and kept walking, and he drove on alongside them for a while, watching out the window, saying things Marya knew she wasn’t supposed to hear, saying them over and over again in a mocking, low voice, certain words, certain combinations of words, Marya knew she wasn’t supposed to hear but sometimes repeated to herself when no one was around. Only when he asked Marya’s mother if she had Indian blood, was she part Mohawk maybe, did she turn to him and say, “I’m Joe Knauer’s wife and he’ll kill you, he lays hands on you, you bastard fucker, you better get out of here.”

THE DRIVE TO Shaheen Falls took about twenty minutes; once they turned off the highway Jerry Kurelik drove fifty, fifty-five, sixty miles an hour, as fast as his father’s old truck could go. In the rear the tall milk cans rattled and vibrated against one another, a noise that lulled Marya into sleep, then startled her awake again. It was confusing—the raw glaring sky, all massive clouds that looked like outcroppings of rock, had something to do with the fragment of a dream, or with the sore insides of her eyelids: but when she blinked hard and stared, it drew away again and was nothing that could touch her.

Even in the cab of the truck, where they were jammed together—the baby on Marya’s lap, Davy on her mother’s, Kurelik big and fleshy behind the wheel—Marya could see her breath steam. She hated the smells: exhaust and gasoline and Kurelik’s manure-splattered overalls and the sweetish mixture of milk and urine that shook loose from the baby’s blanket; and the strong rank smell of Marya’s mother’s hair, which hadn’t been washed for a while. Marya told herself she wouldn’t have to breathe until it was safe, but she always gave in and sucked at the air like a fish.