At midday she came on a camper out in a meadow. No one was about but the door was unlocked. Ruth stole bread, Spam, cheese and tomatoes, a bottle of mayonnaise, and a carton of milk.

These provisions did not keep her going long, but then it was not long before she found something else.

The travelers had come off the highway and parked for the night by a wide stream. In the little wood, the birds were fluttering and shaking off their final songs. One edge of the sky was still gold, but dusk was rising.

There were two ancient post office vans, painted black, and a battered Volkswagen. Thirteen adults, and four children between the ages of four and ten, had come out. A couple of the women were cooking on Primus stoves. They wore, male and female alike, the uniform of the summer road, bristle-cropped hair, cotton vests, army trousers, Doc Martens. They had lit a fire, and one man played the guitar beside it.

Through the shadows into the firelight, Ruth moved, out of the dusk. With her puffed sleeves and long ebony tresses, she was like a modern picture-book version of Snow White. Except for the bruise.

The travelers accepted her coolly. But they let her sit by the fire without argument. And when she said she was hungry, they gave her a portion of the Primus cooked food, nectarine-colored baked beans, and from the black wok a dollop of crisped oily peppers, tomatoes, lentils, peas, onion and rice. Some wine was opened and of this too they gave Ruth a mugful.

They spoke in university accents, had tattoos on their arms, shoulders, and breasts, done with ink and a pin.

After an hour or so, someone asked Ruth what had happened to her face. Truth had overturned fantasy by then. She told them her father had struck her. This they absorbed, wordless, as if, with her couth voice and tale of generation violence, she had passed some test.

A spot or two of blood on her antique dress they ignored, although, in the days to come, Susie would sell Ruth's dress in a town. By then they had dressed her like themselves. They advised her to cut her hair, it would get dirty. But Ruth managed to wash her hair and her body at the sink in the back of the Volkswagen, which the rest of them used occasionally. They gave her strict privacy for that, as they did each other.