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threat,” Bobby Lee said.
    “Bobby, it is a threat,” Karla assured him. “If you’re too selfish to help me in my hour of need I’m going to wait until you’re drunk or looking off and then I’m going to kick you as hard as I can right in your one good ball.”
    “Oops, let’s go right now,” Bobby Lee said, and without any more discussion, they went.

5
    T HEY HAD JUST ROUNDED the first curve going out of Thalia when they saw a man walking toward them, backlit by the orange winter sunset.
    “That’s Duane, I know his walk,” Karla said.
    “You’re right,” Bobby Lee admitted. “I didn’t really believe it until now. Duane’s about the last person you’d expect to see walking along the road.”
    Karla had always been a confident woman, secure in her convictions and sure of her powers, but for some reason the mere sight of her husband walking down a country road right at sunset threw everything she had ever felt and believed into question. It stripped her of all confidence, and made her feel alone and confused.
    “I think you ought to be the one to ask him if he’ll get in the car, Bobby Lee,” she said.
    “Me, uh-uh, no way,” Bobby Lee said. “I done lost a toe today—I don’t need to lose a job too.”
    “Why would he fire you just for asking a question?” she asked.
    Bobby Lee was silent for a while. He too was nervous about whatever was about to happen.
    “A man that would get out of a perfectly good pickup and just go walking off is not in his right mind,” Bobby Lee said. “He might fire me over nothing.”
    Duane had already spotted his wife’s BMW in the road ahead. Its appearance did not surprise him; what surprised him was that Karla had waited until almost sundown to show up. Karla usually jumped on a problem immediately; she had rarely been known to hesitate. The fact that she had waited nearly half a day to come looking for him probably meant one of two things: either she hadn’t actually missed him until a few minutes ago, or she had missed him but hadn’t been able to get away sooner because of one or more calamitous events. With all the grandkids living at the big house, calamitous events were not rare; two or three a day was about the norm. Duane’s guess was that his wife had had such a hectic day that she was just now getting around to him. Several cowboys and a couple of hunters had offered him rides on his walk back from the cabin, all of which he had amiably declined. He knew that the cowboys and the hunters would have spread the word that Duane Moore, president of the school board and vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, had lost his mind and was walking around on foot. That was the sort of news that spread quick.
    The BMW had stopped in the road, a few hundred yards ahead, which just meant that Karla didn’t know what to make of the sight of him walking. If a grandkid had swallowed a fishhook or something equally awkward to extract she would have known exactly what to do, but this new development was more complicated, and there was no precedent for it—not unless you counted a few tennis lessons he had invested in long ago, during the heady days of the boom—it was a time when many members of the West Texas oil community briefly convinced themselves they had risen into the leisure class, when in fact they hadn’t.
    Duane walked on toward the waiting car. Though he had only been walking a few hours, he had already developed a good deal of confidence in his pace. Given a few days in which to time himself from location to location, he felt sure he would arrive wherever he was supposed to be pretty much exactly when he was supposed to be there—at least he could if he didn’t overreach and make an appointment in Olney or somewhere. Olney was eighteen miles down the road; it might be a month or so before he was ready for the eighteen-milers.
    By the time Duane came even with the car, Karla was in such a state of nerves that she could not sustain the icy