She interrupted, "You're both going?" It made no sense to her. "Tell me what this is about," she said.

"The main thing I want you to do," Vic said, "is tell Bill Black that Ragle and I are working here at the store. Don't tell him anything else; don't tell him we've left and don't tell him when or how we've left. Do you understand that? Whatever time the Blacks show up at the house and ask where Ragle is, say you just talked to him down at the store. Even if it's two in the morning. Say I've asked him to help me do an inventory for a surprise auditing."

"Can I ask you one thing?" she said, hoping to get at least a trifle of information; it was obvious that he had no intention of telling her much more. "Was Ragle with Junie Black the other night when the taxi driver carried him in the door?"

"God no," Vic said.

"Are you getting him off somewhere so that Bill Black can't find him and murder him?"

Vic eyed her. "You're on the wrong track, honey." He kissed her again, squeezed her, and pushed open the car door. "Say good-bye to Sammy for us." Turning toward the truck he yelled, "What?" Then leaning back in the Volkswagen he said, "Ragle says to tell Lowery at the newspaper that he found a contest that pays better." Grinning at her, he loped over to the truck and around to the far side; she heard him climb up into the cab beside her brother, and then his face appeared next to Ragle's.

"So long," Ragle shouted down at her. Both he and Vic waved. Roaring and spluttering, sending up black exhaust from its stack, the truck started from the lot, onto the street. Cars slowed for it; the truck performed a laborious, awkward right turn, and then it had disappeared beyond the store. For a long time she heard the heavy vibrations of it as it gained speed and departed.

They're out of their minds, she thought wretchedly. In a reflexively purposeful fashion she put the ignition key back into the lock of the Volkswagen and switched on the motor. Behind her, its wheezing obscured the last noises of the truck.

Vic's trying to save Ragle, she said to herself. Trying to get him away where he's safe. I know Junie consulted an attorney. Do they intend to marry? Maybe Bill won't divorce her.

What a dreadful event, to have Junie Black as a sister-in-law.

Meditating about that, she drove slowly home.

As the truck moved through the early-evening traffic, Vic said to his brother-in-law, "You don't think these big rigs vanish a mile outside of town?"

Ragle said, "Food has to be brought in from outside. The same thing we'd do if we wanted to keep a zoo going." Very much the same, he thought. "It seems to me that those men unloading cartons of pickles and shrimp and paper towels are the connection between us and the real world. It makes sense, anyhow. What else can we go on?"

"I hope he can breathe back there," Vic said, meaning the driver. They had waited until the others had gone, leaving this one. While Ted, the driver, was inside stacking cartons on the hand truck, he and Ragle had closed and bolted the thick metal doors. It had taken perhaps one minute, then, to get up into the cab and begin warming the diesel motor. While they were doing that, Margo had arrived in the Volkswagen.

"As long as it's not a refrigerator truck," Ragle said. Or so Vic had said while they waited for the other trucks to leave.

"You don't think it would have been better to leave him in the store? Nobody looks in some of the back storerooms."

Ragle said, "I just have the intuition that he'd get right out. Don't ask me why."

Vic did not ask him why. He kept his eyes on the road. They had left the downtown business section. Traffic had thinned. Stores gave way to a residential section, small modern houses, one-story, with tall TV masts and washing hanging on lines, high redwood fences, cars parked in driveways.

"I wonder where they'll stop us," Ragle said.

"Maybe they won't."

"They will," he said. "But maybe we'll be across by that time."

After a while Vic said, "Just consider. If this doesn't work out, you and I will face a charge of felony kidnaping and I'll no longer be in the produce business and you probably will be asked to resign from the Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? contest."

The houses became fewer. The truck passed gas stations, tawdry cafés, ice cream stands and motels. The dreary parade of motels... as if, Ragle thought, we had already gone a thousand miles and were just now entering a strange town. Nothing is so alien, so bleak and unfriendly, as the strip of gas stations -- cut-rate gas stations -- and motels on the rim of your own city. You fail to recognize it. And at the same time, you have to clasp it to your bosom. Not just for one night, but as long as you intend to live where you live.

But we don't intend to live here any more. We're leaving. For good.

Did I get this far before? he wondered. They had got to open fields, now. A last intersection, a minor road serving industries that had been zoned out of the city proper. The railroad tracks

He noticed an infinitely long freight train at rest. The suspended drums of chemicals on towers over factories.

"Nothing like it," Vic said. "Especially at sunset."

The traffic, now, had become other trucks, with few sedans.

"There's your barbecue place," Vic said.

On the right, Ragle saw the sign, Frank's Bar-B-Q and Drinks. Modern-looking enough. Clean, certainly. New cars in the lot. The truck rumbled on past it. The place fell behind.

"Well, you got farther this time," Vic said.

Ahead of them, the highway led into a range of hills. Up high, Ragle thought. Maybe somehow I got up there, up to the top. Tried to _walk_ across those peaks. Could I have been that tanked up?

No wonder I didn't make it.

On and on they drove. The countryside became monotonous. Fields, rolling hills, everything featureless, with advertising signs stuck at intervals. And then, without warning, the hills flattened and they found themselves rolling down a long, straight grade.

"This is what makes me sweat," Ragle said. "Driving a big rig down a really long grade." He had already shifted into a gear low enough to hold back the mass of the truck. At least they carried no load; the mass was small enough for him, with his limited experience, to control. During the time that they had warmed the motor, he had learned the gear-box pattern. "Anyhow," he said to Vic, "we've got a horn loud as hell." He blew a couple of blasts on it, experimentally; it made both of them jump.

At the end of the grade a yellow and black official sign attracted their attention. They could make out a cluster of sheds or temporary buildings. It had a grim look.

"Here it is," Vic said. "This is what you meant."

At the sheds, several trucks had lined up. And now, as they got closer, they saw uniformed men. Across the highway the sign flapped in the evening wind.

STATE LINE AGRICULTURAL INSPECTION STATION

TRUCKS USE SCALE IN RIGHT LANE ONLY

"That means us," Vic said. "The scale. They're going to weigh us. If they're inspecting, they'll open up the back." He glanced at Ragle. "Should we stop here and try to do something with Ted?"

Too late now, Ragle realized. The state inspectors could see the truck and them inside it; anything they did would be visible. At the first shed two black police cars had been parked so that they could get onto the highway at an instant's notice. We couldn't outrun them, either, he realized. Nothing to do but continue on to the scale.

An inspector, wearing sharply pressed dark blue trousers, a light blue shirt, badge and cap, sauntered toward them as they slowed to a stop. Without even glancing at them he waved them on.