All Wichita was covered in a film of dust and sand. Cars were stripped of their paint, and streetlamps were broken. The Hudson had piles of grit on the hood and on the roof. Once, the vehicle had been a plain black; now it was bare metal in many places.

They left the windswept city and drove through the dry landscape. They passed mounds of red and tan dust piled on the sides of the dust-covered highway like miniature mountains. At least, they thought this was the highway. There was no way to be sure since they could see nothing but dust before them, behind them, and around them.

Blake pulled into a motor inn just outside the sandy city of Eureka. The wind was still blowing dust along the streets, making swirls and tiny cyclones. It was hard to see where the sidewalks stopped and the curbs began.

The motor inn was a low building with a flat roof, boarded windows, and a dirt-covered parking lot filled with dilapidated cars that were almost all paint-stripped and dented. Blake went inside and returned to the Hudson with a key ring.

“We’re living high cotton tonight, Coot,” Blake said.

The room was nice. It had a bathtub with a shower and a frilly curtain around a claw-foot tub. There were two single beds, and a big wooden radio sat on the dresser.

“Look at the size of that radio,” said Coot.

Blake whistled.

Coot turned on the radio, and the sound of horns and banjos filled the little room. “They got jazz here,” Coot said, turning up the radio.

“Sounds like it.”

“Do they have jazz in Alabama?”

“Have it? Why, we invented it.”

Blake lit a cigar and tapped the ember against an ashtray. He tipped his boot upside down and a stream of sand fell out of it. Coot listened to the music with great curiosity and happiness. For it was curious and happy music. A vocalist sang cheery melodies, wiggling her voice in a way that revival singers did not.

“How much longer until Alabama?” said Coot.

“Never you mind. You just listen to the Dixie music, we’ll be there soon enough.” Blake sat straight in his bed and knocked the heels of his boots together. “Mobile makes this place look like a burn pile.”

“It does?”

“Oh yeah, Alabama’s like Eden, only without all the snakes.”

Coot flipped past the stations on the radio until he landed on one that played the sound of a baseball game. The cheering crowd did something to him, made him feel excited inside. A feeling he did not have often. But his excitement began to sour in him when he remembered the men in the police car chasing them.

“What if they catch us, Blake?”