Because her fear began to intensify, because she wanted to get to the other side of that fear to prove it was unwarranted, she insisted, finally, that they both go into a bar that advertised meat-loaf sandwiches and cold beer. A few gray shacks like inflated chicken coops lay in the rough field behind the bar. In one, something like a doorway gave onto a dark interior. A shining black inner tube rested against the gray slats, and near it a yellow chicken stood in an attitude of expectancy. There was no other sign of life.

“Listen, you’ve seen the way these people stare at us? That man at the last gas station, he looked at you like you were trash.”

After three days and two nights of steady driving, despair caught up with her as though it had been traveling on the road behind them all the while, waiting for this moment a hundred miles or so out of Houston. She couldn’t believe she was going anywhere, or had come from anyplace. It was vital they go into this place together. She was suddenly enraged, deaf to White’s pleas of caution. He followed, reluctantly, a few steps behind her into the cool musty long room where a few old men perched along a narrow bar. The bartender himself was bent over arthritically, his turtle head thrusting forward out of his shoulders.

“Take your hat off, boy!”

Annie whirled and saw Mason White, his overseas cap still on his head, backing toward the door.

“He’s a soldier!” she cried. “He’s been in the war!”

“We got different ideas about that,” squeaked the bartender. The old men stared blankly at her. “If you want something, you can have it. But he gotta take his hat off. And we’re outa the meat loaf. I got some ham, that’s all.”

Mason White shook his head slightly. They went back to the car, hearing behind them the sibilance of ancient broken laughter.

She wept a few tears, noting that the chicken was now scratching futilely at the hard yellow earth near the car. “Look at that damned fool!” she said. Mason White’s hands were on the wheel. “All right,” she said, wiping her face with her hand. “We’ll go.”

It was early evening when they arrived in Houston. Throughout the colored section to the city, there seemed to be an extraordinary number of policemen.

“Somebody must have said something too loud,” said White. It was his first joke.

The Whites lived in a large ramshackle house, a small wilderness of tall grass around the porch steps. As he cut the motor, three women appeared in the doorway. Mason White bounded up the steps. The women clung to him, one of the younger ones looking over his shoulder at Annie with unconcealed amazement.

“Good-by, Sergeant,” she called from the window.

“No, no. You come in and eat with us,” Mason White cried. Then, turning to his family, “She drove me all the way.”