Walter backed violently toward the shed, then shot out onto the road. In the light from the dashboard, his face was pinched and rancorous and, Annie perceived, frightened. How long was it since he had seen those two? What stale cues had set Walter to baiting his uncle, and what accounted for that sudden rage of George’s as he flung his heft about in the weeds like a thrashing animal? Driving now at a speed which shook the little car from side to side, Walter bent over the wheel. Emptiness? The father brooding over bathtub rings, the two old sheep ranchers crawling out of their filthy bed morning after morning…was that Walter’s family? Three old men, two dirty, one clean.

The rain had stopped. A light wind cleared the sky and the moon, looking a bit like Uncle Herbie, fled along the spines of the range of hills at the foot of which they were now traveling. Annie fell into a half-sleep, her head bumping against the window, her legs stiffly drawn up against the seat.

When she woke, it was into utter silence. The rain had begun again. She could hear it tapping on leaves. They were parked on a dirt road in front of a large lodgelike building. Walter was smoking, leaning back, his head against the seat.

“We can stay here tonight. I know a short cut to the valley up this road.”

They walked into a gloomy room where two old men stood over a pinball machine next to a long bar. Here stood another old man dressed in a plaid wool shirt. Behind him, on a shelf, were two bottles of whiskey, one half empty.

“How much?” demanded one of the men near the pinball game. “How much you gonna bet?”

“I wouldn’t bet with you, you old sheep humper,” replied the other.

The bartender said, “Hush! Here’s a lady!”

Annie went to the lavatory at the end of the room. Inside, scrawled on the wall above the toilet, a message read: “We aim to please, you aim too, please.”

Their bed consisted of planks covered with a piece of strawfilled ticking. From somewhere close by, she heard a voice, fuzzy, quarrelsome, “You gonna bet or I’m gonna tear you up!” There was a mumbled reply. She slept, awoke to hear the drone of that exchange, unvarying, like a ritual, and the dry crackle of the straw as Walter stirred restlessly.

A few miles along the rutted road they followed the next morning, the back wheels of the car sank into the mud. The smell of leaf mold was drugging, cool. Walter piled branches beneath the wheels and just as the car gained traction, the sun broke through and the light grew yellow and bouyant all at once. With a violent jerk, the car emerged from the wet dripping woods onto a paved road.

“Here it is,” he said, and shut off the motor.