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driving through.  You’d think you were in friggin’ Castro Cuba or some damn communist country!  Trucks get impounded and confiscated right and left.  And now they’ve got these new cops, called Milicias . They’re the ‘brown berets,’ and they have special checkpoints all over the place. Anyway, I won’t go into Nuevo Mexico , no ma’am, not if I don’t have to.
    I’ll take 287 straight up into Colorado instead, even though it’s longer. This is my truck we’re sitting in, and I aim to keep it.”
    Ranya sighed again in resignation.  “Sign we just passed says it’s two hundred miles to Amarillo.  Three hours, right?  Any problems at the Texas state line? Weigh stations, checkpoints, things like that?”  She still held the Glock across her lap, now only casually pointed at him.
    “There’s an inspection station a few miles in.  It’s not open, or it shouldn’t be.  And Texas doesn’t care about the federal gun laws, if that’s what you mean by checkpoints.  Nothing like back East.  I can find out about it out on the CB.” He reached for the radio microphone, mounted in the ceiling.
    She waved the pistol at him, bringing his hand quickly back to the wheel. “No radio.  We’ll take our chances.”  Traffic was sparse out here in western Oklahoma.  An unusual percentage of the vehicles that she did see seemed to be loaded down with luggage, furniture, and jerry cans, somehow reminiscent of a distant generation of Okies fleeing the dustbowl days of the 1930s.  “The Grapes of Wrath.”  She remembered the Steinbeck classic from high school English class.  It had seemed like ancient history at the time.
    After long minutes of silence between them, he glanced over at Ranya and said, “Look, if you’re really set on going to Albuquerque, I know where you want to go first.  It’s a place in Texas, north of Amarillo. If I wanted to find the best way into New Mexico, with no hassles, it’s where I’d go.  I mean, I’ve been in trouble with the law, I know how it…”
    “Save it.  You don’t know anything about me.”
    “Oh, I think I do know!  Look, can you please put the gun away? Point it somewhere else?  I don’t need a heart attack, okay? If I wreck this thing, it won’t do either of us any good.  And grab a couple of sodas out of the bag down there.  Please?  If my mouth was any drier, it’d catch on fire.”  He turned and looked at her.  “Listen lady, I’m trying to help you, okay?  I’ll drop you off at a place where you’ll be clear, and then you can find your own way into New Mexico.  It’s a campground a little west of
    287. Honest, it’s your best bet.  Deal?”
    Ranya kept her hand on the Glock, but she pointed it forward, away from the driver, her finger well clear of the trigger.  “Deal.” Then she reached into the plastic shopping bag on the floor with her left hand, and twisted out a pair of cold Mountain Dews from a six-pack.
    ***
    It was after dark when he let Ranya out. He stopped the eighteen-wheeler on the shoulder of the highway before an overpass.  She climbed down, thanking him before she slammed the truck’s door shut, and watched as his red taillights diminished and disappeared. If he was going to call the police, there was nothing stopping him now.
    She hiked an hour west from 287 on the dirt shoulder of the asphalt county road. She stepped away from the road and crouched behind scrub at the first hint of headlights, until the occasional vehicles were past. Finally, she left the road and walked up a dry wash, and found a place to sleep rough. The driver had given her a green wool Army blanket from his truck’s sleeping compartment.  Before finding a flat grassy spot, she zipped on her pant legs and pulled on a black hooded sweatshirt from her pack.
    Each time she put on another article of stolen clothing, she thought about Starr Linssen, wrapped in her seashell pattern shower curtain, concealed beneath her bed.  She