Lila was glad to be seeing the country again, the fields looking so green in the evening light. Knee-high by the Fourth of July. So it must be June. Every farmhouse in its cloud of trees. There is a way trees stir before a rain, as if they already felt the heaviness. It all just went on and on, the United States of America. It was so easy to forget that most of the world was cornfields.
The woman said, “My mama’s sick, and there’s nobody to help her out. I’ve got to get there fast.” It was the first time she had driven any distance to speak of. “I got a letter from her. She never mentions a problem, she never wants to worry me. She doesn’t have a telephone, so I thought I’d better bring a car in case I need to find a doctor. It might not even run after I get there. If I get there. I only bought it yesterday. Dang thief that sold it to me, I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.” It began to rain. She was afraid to stop the car for fear it wouldn’t start again, and they drove all night, except once when they needed gas. Then the man at the station had to push the car out onto the road. There was enough of a slope that the engine caught and they went on again, with no light at all but the headlights, and they didn’t show much but rain. The woman said, “I think I’d be scared if I were you, putting your life in my hands,” and Lila said, “I don’t much care what happens.” Then she could feel in the dark that for a minute the woman was wondering about her, about to ask her a question, then thinking better of it. Lila thought, Maybe she suspects I’m the kind of woman who might keep a knife in her garter. Might sleep in her clothes. The woman said, “Do you hear that?” There was a soft thumping sound. “Is that coming from the motor?”
“Don’t sound like nothing.”
“You know about cars?”
“A little.” She knew they had four wheels and a running board, and that she wasn’t used to riding in one. But there was no point worrying when they couldn’t even stop to see if there was a problem, and wouldn’t know what to look for if they did stop. In the dead of night, without so much as a paper match to see by. And the rain would have put that out.
“I don’t have a spare tire. There was one in the trunk, but I sold it for gas money.”
“There’s nothing the matter with your tires.” Lila thought the woman could use a little comforting. It was kind of her to pick her up, even if she had her own reasons. It could take days of hitching rides to come as far as they had come in one day. If the car broke down she’d be hitching again, and that was just what she expected to be doing in the first place.
The woman said, “You’re so quiet, sometimes I think you’re sleeping. Or praying.”
“Nope. I’m just sitting here wide awake.”
“Good. It wouldn’t matter, really, if you’re tired. But I do feel better—”
“Sure.” Then Lila said, just to say something, “You seen that movie Double Indemnity? Driving along in the dark like this reminds me of it.”
“I can’t go to the movies. It’s against my religion.”
“Oh.” One more thing she didn’t know about.
“I shouldn’t have called that man a thief. I shouldn’t have said dang.”
“Something wrong with saying dang?”
“Well, it’s practically swearing. Anybody knows what you really mean by it.”
Lila said, “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as practically swearing.”
“In my church there is. Nazarene. We’re pretty strict.”
This is exactly why Lila kept to herself. She thought, It’s a good thing I didn’t get a chance to take that child. I’d have nothing to tell it about getting along. Don’t lie more than you have to, don’t take what ain’t yours.
The woman said, “No drinking, no smoking, no dancing, no makeup, no jewelry. They’re not too pleased with women driving cars. No stealing or killing, either, but that’s not what they talk about most of the time. I don’t mind it. I grew up in it.”
“You give ’em your money?”
The woman laughed. “A dime on the dollar. That’s usually about what it amounts to. Tithing. One-tenth of nothing. But we have a nice potluck every now and then. We try to look out for each other. It’s
