Helena heard a little squeal from Maria but didn’t turn to look at her, keeping her eyes instead pinned on the guy’s eyes and he, in turn, glaring at her. “What d’you want around here, bitch? Come to make some trouble?” he shouted at Helena through the glass.

Helena turned and glanced for a moment at Maria, as if Maria could possibly give her some clue as to what his problem was. Maybe it was all a question of mistaken identity, Helena thought. Two women with spiked hair and camping gear strapped to the top of their car were probably not from around there, but they were not being mistaken for someone’s ex-girlfriend come back to avenge him, were they? And yet the guy was standing face-to-face with her with a gun in his belt and acting like it was she who was a threat to him.

“Me?” Helena shouted. “Me?” was all that Helena could get herself to shout back. The man with the gun didn’t say nothing else, not even to Helena’s third “Me?” but instead with an exaggerated stride that was supposed to let her know how disgusted he was by her he went off toward the store. Helena didn’t roll down her window and the attendant made no move to get the gas cap key from her neither. Instead, he pretended to suddenly remember a tire he was patching up when they had driven up and went back to it.

“Let’s just get some gas and go on to find my grandmother’s ranch,” Maria said. “I’m sure this guy is just high on something. He’ll probably leave us alone now.”

Helena stared at Maria and yet another thread in their once perfectly seamed union ripped without a sound, but before she could say anything, a woman stepped out of the store with a big loud barking dog and shouted at the attendant: “We’re out of gas! Tell ’em we ain’t got no gas left!” Maria and Helena exchanged glances and then looked over at the attendant, who had been instructed to relay a message to them as if they had not heard it loud and clear themselves.

“Sorry! No gas, ma’am!” he shouted with an apologetic grin, without leaving his tire. Helena immediately put the VW in reverse, turned it around, and sped off. Once on the road, she responded to Maria’s suggestion that they continue on to Truchas. “What do you mean—‘let’s just go on’?” she yelled. “Didn’t you see the gun that guy had?” Maria, who was not good at handling Helena’s temper, kept silent.