The backs of Harriet’s legs were stuck to the car seat. Irritably, she shifted around and tried to get comfortable. They’d been in the car three hours, and the sun was high and hot. Every so often Edie considered trading in the Oldsmobile—for something with air conditioning, or a radio that worked—but she always changed her mind at the last minute, mainly for the secret pleasure of watching Roy Dial wring his hands and dance around in anguish. It drove Mr. Dial crazy that a well-placed old Baptist lady like Edie rode around town in a car twenty years old; sometimes, when the new cars came out, he spun by Edie’s house late in the afternoon and dropped off an unrequested “tester”—usually a top-of-the-line Cadillac. “Just drive it for a few days,” he’d say, palms in the air. “See what you think.” Edie strung him along cruelly, pretending to fall in love with the proffered vehicle, then—just as Mr. Dial was drawing up the papers—return it, suddenly opposed to the color, or the power windows, or complaining of some microscopic flaw, some rattle in the dashboard or sticky lock button.
“It still says Hospitality State on the Mississippi license plate but in my opinion true hospitality died out here in the first half of the present century.
“Edie, that man back there’s honking at you.”
“Let him,” said Edie, who had settled in at her own comfortable speed.
“I think he wants to pass.”
“It won’t hurt him to slow down a little bit. Where does he think he’s taking those logs in such a great big hurry?”
The landscape—sandy clay hills, endless pines—was so raw and strange-looking that it made Harriet’s stomach hurt. Everything she saw reminded her that she was far from home. Even the people in neighboring cars looked different: sun-reddened, with broad, flat faces and farm clothes, not like the people from her own town.
They passed a dismal little cluster of businesses: Freelon Spraying Co., Tune’s AAA Transmission, New Dixie Stone and Gravel. A rickety old black man in coveralls and orange hunting cap was hobbling along the shoulder of the road carrying a brown grocery bag. What would Ida think when she came to work and found her gone? She would be arriving just about now; Harriet’s breath quickened a little at the thought.
Sagging telephone wires; patches of collards and corn; ramshackle houses with dooryards of packed dirt. Harriet pressed her forehead to the warm glass. Maybe Ida would realize how badly Harriet’s feelings were hurt; maybe she’d realize that she couldn’t threaten to pack up and quit every single time she got mad about something or other.… A middle-aged black man in glasses was tossing feed from a Crisco can to some red chickens; solemnly, he raised a hand at the car and Harriet waved back, so energetically that she felt a little embarrassed.
She was worried about Hely, too. Though he’d seemed pretty certain that his name wasn’t on the wagon, still she didn’t like the thought that it was sitting up there, waiting for someone to find it. To think what would happen if they traced it back to Hely made her feel ill.
On they drove. Shacks gave way to more woods, with occasional flat fields that smelled of pesticide. In a grim little clearing, a fat white woman wearing a maroon shirt and shorts, one foot encased in a surgical boot, was slinging wet clothes on a line off to the side of her trailer home; she glanced at the car, but didn’t wave.
Suddenly Harriet was jolted from her thoughts by a squeal of brakes, and a turn that slung her into the door and upset the box of doughnuts. Edie had turned—across traffic—into the bumpy little country road that led to the camp.
“Sorry, dear,” said Edie breezily, leaning over to right her purse. “I don’t know why they make these signs so little that you can’t even read them until you get right up on them.…”
In silence, they jostled down the gravel road. A silver tube of lipstick rolled across the seat. Harriet caught it before it fell—
