“Jesus Christ,” my mother says. “It figures.”

“Well, aren’t you going to stop?” The man in the CREW shirt is yelling something I can’t hear. The overall gist of it is: Move, lady. My mother pulls off the boat with the fender hanging half on and half off. She drives to a spot out of the way, on the right, where the Taurus is waiting.

She gets out of the car and walks in front to see the damage. “We can drive. We just won’t look very pretty.” She tries to bend the fender back into place with her bare hands. “I suppose you can’t ask for much when you’ve paid five hundred dollars.”

The driver gets out of the Taurus, which hasn’t been damaged. “Oh, dear,” he says. “I’ll certainly pay for this. I can give you cash, right now, if you like. Or we can exchange licenses.” He wrings his hands in front of himself, so upset that it is almost funny.

“Well,” my mother says, “it would probably cost at least four hundred dollars to fix. Don’t you think so, honey?” she calls to me.

“At least. And the car being brand new, and all.”

“Brand new?” the man gasps. He doesn’t notice all the rust spots, apparently. “I am so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. I didn’t mean to put it into reverse. Stupid, stupid me.” He bends down over our twisted fender and smooths his fingers over it. “I don’t have the money on me, but if you follow me I can get it. And I don’t mind giving the cash up front, not at all. Less points on the old insurance, after all.”

“We really don’t have a lot of time,” my mother says.

“Oh, it’s just up the road. I’m Ernest Elkezer, the curator for the Barnum Museum on Main Street here. It’s after hours, but I’ll let you look around while I open the safe. It’s the least I can do.”

My mother gets into the driver’s seat and starts the ignition. “Can you believe this? The car was free, and now we’re getting a bonus four hundred dollars.” She turns her face toward the sun. “Rebecca, baby, the gods are smiling on us today!”

The P. T. Barnum Museum is next door to a modern city building.It is strange, walking up to this huge door which is locked and being let inside. I feel like I am doing something I shouldn’t. “You know Bridgeport was the birthplace of General Tom Thumb,” Mr. Elkezer says. “Full-grown he was only twenty-eight inches tall.”

He switches on the lights-one, two, three-and the dark hall comes to life. “Make yourselves at home. Plenty of interesting circus memorabilia here. You won’t want to miss the third floor.”

The third floor is almost entirely covered with a miniature display of a big top. Three red rings sit in the sawdust center. Suspended over one is a net for the trapeze artists. There are heavy drums tucked into the corners for the elephants to stand on. A thick, knotted tightrope is stretched overhead. “If it was a little bit larger, I’d try it out,” my mother says, one foot already in the display. When I close my eyes, I can see the audience. Red flashlights on lanyards, circling over the heads of kids.

I leave my mother and walk around the perimeter of the mock circus. There is a display about Jumbo the elephant, whose skeleton (it says) is on display in the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Now that would be something interesting. I lean closer to see the photograph taken of the huge skeleton, which has a man standing beside it as a reference measure. The man is Ernest Elkezer himself. Just as I am reading the caption, Elkezer approaches with a wrinkled manila envelope.

“Jumbo was my favorite,” he says. “Came over a century ago, on a ship called the Assyrian Monarch . Barnum paraded him up and down Broadway, with a big brass band and all the fanfare you could imagine.”

My mother walks over, and Elkezer hands her the envelope absentmindedly. “Back then, most people had never seen an elephant. So it wasn’t really that he was so tremendous, but that he was here . And then three years later he was hit by a speeding freight train. Other elephants that were crossing the tracks got knocked out but survived. Jumbo, though, well, Jumbo didn’t make it.”

“He was hit by a train?” I say, stunned. “

You lived through a plane crash,” my mother points out.

“Barnum carved up the beast and gave pieces to different museums. He sold the heart, even. To Cornell University, for forty dollars. Can you imagine?”

“We’d better be going,” my mother says.

“Oh, all the money is there,” Elkezer says. “You can count it if you like.”

“I’m sure that isn’t necessary. Thank you.”

“No, thank you .” We leave him standing on the third floor, lightly touching the photo of Jumbo.

As we close the heavy door of the museum behind us, my mother rips open the envelope. “We’re rich again, Rebecca,” she sings. “Rich!”

We get into our car and pull out of the parking lot. The fender scrapes like a rake against the pavement. We pass little boys playing handball and a fat woman with skin the color of molasses. We pass a deal going down on a street corner: a man in a leather cap unfolding a small wrinkled square of paper. In spite of this I can still picture the heavy dance of a motorcade, the oompah of a tuba, the slow-foot sashay of those elephants down Main Street.

We celebrate Rebecca’s birthday at the geographical center of North America. Right outside of Towner, North Dakota, I give her a Hostess cupcake with a candle stuck in it, and I sing Happy Birthday. Rebecca blushes. “Thanks, Mom. You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, I’ve got a present too,” I say, and I pull an envelope out of my back pocket. We both recognize the envelope-the scruffy manila one that held the money under the MG’s seat. Inside, on motel stationery, I’ve written an IOU.

Rebecca reads it out loud. “IOU anything you want (within reasonable limits) on a shopping spree.” She laughs, and looks around. We’ve pulled over at a road sign that announces this geographical center, and with the exception of a superhighway beside us, there is nothing as far as the eye can see. “I guess I’ll have to wait till we hit civilization again to go shopping,” she says.

“No! That’s the point. Today’s driving is going to be wholly devoted to finding a suitable place to buy clothes. God knows we need them.” The old shirt of Oliver’s I’ve been wearing is covered with engine grease and food stains. My underwear can stand by itself. And Rebecca doesn’t look much better; the poor kid didn’t even take a decent bra along. “So how does it feel to be fifteen?” I say.

“Not much different than it felt to be fourteen.” She hops into her side of the car: she has this down to a science by now. Me, I still have to crawl over the door, and I usually jam my foot on the handle.

“Okay,” Rebecca says, settling herself with her feet swung over the passenger door. “Where to?”

Towner, I suppose. It’s the place that Joley had directed us towards, although I have discovered that even a filling station and maybe three wooden houses can be classified as a “place” in North Dakota.

Rebecca guides me down a dirt road. We drive for a mile without seeing any signs of life, much less commerce. Finally a dilapidated barn that leans decidedly to the right looms into view. On it is a hex sign, two lovebirds in all the primary colors. “Eloise’s?” Rebecca says.

“This can’t be a store. This doesn’t even qualify as a home.” But there are several cars parked outside, cars so old and faded I have the sense I have arrived in a 1950s movie set. Tentatively, I pull over and climb out of the car.

The barn doors are propped open by long poles burning citronella candles. Inside are rows of barrels with flip-up tops. They are labeled: FLOUR, SUGAR, BROWN SUGAR, SALT, RICE. There is a strong sheet of smell that hits you when you cross the threshold, like molasses being burned. In a pen to one side of the barn is a tremendous sow collapsed on its side, most likely from its own weight, and ten spotted pigs jockeying for a better position at her teats. Next to the pigpen is a long, planed board propped on makeshift trestles, and on the board is a cash register-the silver kind where the buttons pop into the window: 50¢, $1, No charge .