"South Dakota's straight ahead, Babe, and we sure ain't on no schedule that I know of." Harry shifted his position on the rough cushion, wiped his forehead with a yellowed handkerchief, and rested his arm over the seat behind his wife's head.

"Dammit Harry, just drive and quit your picking on it. That's the second damned time you said it in the last hour. Second hell, you ain't let up on it since we turned east outta Spokane." Justine was rubbing out a stiff neck, having just awakened from a fitful nap.

"Anyways," Harry said. "You're gonna like Chicago. Be a good place to settle down in if we get the hankering."

"And I never did once see a big city I'd give a rat-turd for, and you know it. I just hope to hell we can save enough money so you can keep your promise and get us back to California."

"It ain't '34 no more, Babe. It's near on to 1940 and things are starting to boom. Chicago's going to be big time when we get into the war. We oughta stay for awhile, anyways." Harry dropped his hand to Justine's neck to help with her massage.

"Drop it, Harry. You ain't going to change my mind on this either. We ain't living in no dump in Chicago. We're doing just fine the way things are."

The seven years that they'd been married, traveling the west in Harry's old Model-A truck, had made Justine deaf to the constant clatter of keys dangling from their hooks and the clack of the ratchets and files that had worked out of their slots in the tool box. Life on the road making keys and sharpening knives had been good to them during these hard, thirties depression years.

"Still, Babe, this is as close as we'll ever come to South Dakota." Harry grabbed the wheel with both hands as the truck swerved sharply after hitting a rock that had surfaced between the tire-worn tracks in the unpaved road.

"Christ, Harry, you trying to kill us both," Justine said as she grabbed the dash to keep from hitting the windshield. "We ain't stopping at Whitewood, and we ain't stopping anywheres lessen you keep your goddamn eyes on the road. And I ain't stupid, Harry. I only had to look around here to know how close South Dakota is," Justine said. "Ain't no difference between this Montana prairie and the ranch. How long's it been, seventeen, eighteen, years? This time of year's always the worst. All this damned dust and heat," she said. "Always hated threshing time."

Before Justine settled back into her seat, she dug a mirror from the bottom of a tooled leather purse, then stretched the best she could in the cramped seat. She held the mirror to her face and frowned. The crimped waves in her auburn hair were still neat from the night before, but her red lipstick had faded, and the mascara had run with the perspiration and left black blotches under her eyes.

"We could just swing by and maybe lay eyes on the kid just once," Harry said.

Justine clenched her teeth as she pulled a mascara and lipstick from a red beaded bag. "I sometimes wonder why in hell you ever married the likes of me." She was studying her face in a the mirror. "I sure ain't as pretty as some as made eyes at you."

"Aw, don't go saying things like that, Babe. You're just about the handsomest dang woman as I ever laid eyes on." Harry patted her on the knee. "What do you say? If we keep right on heading east, we can be at the ranch before dark."

Justine held the mirror at arms length and tilted her head to the left, then to the right. "Wonder what they'd think of me in Whitewood, the way I look. Probably ain't a woman in the whole damned town that don't cook three squares a day and who's ever seen a mascara brush or put on a fringy leather jacket."

She shoved the mirror and beaded bag back into the floppy, suede purse, set it on the floor at her feet, and settled deeper into the hard seat. "Where we coming to? What town I mean?"

"All I'm sure of is we're somewheres in Montana headed east." Harry took his arm from behind Justine's head, shook the blood back into it and reached for his tobacco on the dash. "Can't tell exactly since the map blew out the window. We'll get somewheres, I guess, long's we keep heading east. Hold the wheel, Babe, while I roll us a couple of cigarettes, unless you wanna do it?" Harry held the pouch and papers toward her.

Justine reached out for the tobacco. "I'd damn sure rather do this than try and hold this old truck on this washboard." She tore two papers out of the packet, folded them both around her fingers, filled them with tobacco and pulled the pouch string closed with her lips. She licked across one paper and rolled it closed then held the other to let Harry lick his, rolled it and placed both between his lips.

Harry scratched a wooden match across the dash, lit both cigarettes, handed one to his wife, and took a deep drag of the other. "Wouldn't have to smoke roll-your-owns in a city like Chicago. We could afford to keep ourselves in Lucky Strikes."

Justine turned to stare at the passing scenery and took a deep drag of her cigarette.

Harry went on. "Wouldn't scare up any goblins though to stop by the ranch for a couple of days, or a day, maybe.

She pulled the cigarette from her lip and slapped her hands over her ears. "There you go again, just like a god-damned broken Victrola record."

"Sorry, Babe, things pop out of my mouth before I can put a stop to them." Harry stuck his left hand out of the open window to flick the inch of ash from his cigarette. "I'm a selfish oaf. Can't say's I blame you, not wanting to go to the ranch, particular since you gotta see your mama along with it. I sure know why you'd never wanna lay eyes on her and that place again. All that's gonna do is get you hurt all over, and you've had enough pain to last a lifetime."

Justine had turned to the window once again and said nothing.

"Ok, Babe. We'll just keep driving on to Chicago. We could probably make some bucks there. Maybe stay on for a just a little while."

"God, Harry, once you get on a track, you just damn-well stay right on it like an old plow-horse. Anyways, you was sure as hell right about me never wanting to see Mama again, after the way she turned her back to me." Justine clamped her teeth tight together and turned again to stare out of the dusty window. "I wish to hell that sister of mine didn't tell us about the boy joining the army. Should of waited to make my yearly call to her from Chicago, or Omaha, after we'd left Dakota behind. I'd a lived till then to find out about Papa. That's all I wanted to know. Didn't ask about the damned kid, and now it's got you all het up to see him."

The road stretched in an unbroken line across the Montana prairie before them, and their rattling, rusty Model A truck seemed to be the only moving thing on earth except for an occasional ball of tumbleweed wandering over the burnt grasses. Behind them, the purple mountains were sinking below the horizon. They were both too aware that in front of them, three hundred miles away, was the ranch.

"Stop the car, Harry. I gotta pee."

As Harry eased the old Ford to a squeaking stop, Justine pushed the door open and pulled off her pale yellow snake-skin boots. When they'd traveled through Dallas a couple of years before, she'd traded a Mexican bootmaker a couple of knives and some scissors for them. "Wouldn't want to ruin 'em by peeing on 'em," she'd say, then limp barefoot across the sharp gravel to the privacy of a tire. She'd never neglected to remind him, "Now don't you go peeking, Harry Fox."

As she smoothed the soft, worn, suede skirt back down over her hips, she shouted from behind the truck, "Getting hungry, Harry?"

"I guess," he answered. "Belly's a little shaky. Ain't put nothing in it since last night." They had stopped to eat at a tavern just outside of Bozeman about midnight.

With her skirt hiked above her knees, Justine climbed into the rear of the truck and gathered the jerky and hardtack they kept for eating on the road.

"God, Harry, why the hell can't you learn to put things away right," Justine shouted again. "Ain't I been harassing you for enough years that everything's gotta be in its place before the truck moves an inch? Shit, just look at this mess. Stone's even broke. How the hell you gonna sharpen with no stone."

Though she knew well that they'd left that tavern in a hurry, it wouldn't have been right if she hadn't hollered a little. She could almost see him smile. "Couldn't of picked on one of them bar bums no one cares about, could you? No, had to pick the mayor's son-in-law. Don't know, Harry. I just oughta let 'em toss you in the jug and go on myself. I can make keys as well as you."

They both knew she wouldn't do that. It was only a few weeks after they'd met again in that bar in 'Frisco that Harry had told her, "It sure gets lonely on the road. I should of married you back in Dakota, but maybe it's not too late. What you say to joining up with me now, Babe."

Justine had not answered right away. She had become numbed to the promises of men.

"You must be tired of the streets," Harry went on. "Ten years is gotta seem a cold lifetime out there."

He'd said that better than she had ever thought it, and they'd married within three weeks.

Justine handed the food up to Harry, pulled her boots on, and climbed back into the truck beside him. She patted his thigh and said, "It's all right, Harry. What the hell, a man's gotta cut loose sometimes. Come on, eat something, and let's get this rattle-trap moving again. Gotta long haul before we get this god-forsaken state behind us."

Harry ripped off a chunk of the stringy beef with his teeth. "Don't you wanna drive yet?" he pleaded. "They ain't nothing between here and the border, far as I know. Should be easy driving, and I'm tuckered out."

Justine didn't like to drive. It made her arms ache and the steady chug of the engine put her to sleep, but she figured maybe it was a good thing. It'd give her time to think. Harry made it hard for her to hear her own thoughts. He kept on a subject like that old black crow with a broken wing that her papa had taught to talk.

"All right Harry, I'll drive. Go ahead and get in back. Your head must feel like something the cat spit out after last night." Justine smoothed the fringes on her skirt as she stepped out of the truck, crossed around to the driver's side, and pulled a rosary from her jacket pocket. "Get going, we don't have all day," she hollered.

She waited until she felt Harry moving around in the back of the truck, then slammed the door closed and hung the rosary over the rear-view mirror. Only then did she jam the lever into gear and step on the gas.

It was a tiny rosary, the kind that a church would give to a young girl on the day of her First Holy Communion. The crucifix was charcoal color, the shade of silver that's been held in a tight hand for many years, and the beads, once the pale pink of mother-of-pearl, were scratched and worn to a dirty near-white. But Justine didn't see any of that. She saw the beautiful pink beads with the shiny cross as it had lain in Mama's drawer when she was twelve, and she had taken it and hidden it under the mattress she'd shared with her younger sister, Lizzy. "It's that rosary praying keeps Mama so right and good," Justine had figured, and she had wanted to be like her mother.

Justine always wondered if Mama had ever missed the pink rosary. Her mother had kept a favored rosewood one in the pocket of her apron. Justine would watch her as she stood praying her beads in the orchard. "Mama must be a saint," she'd say.

But Mama could be hard too. There was the time that the nun had slapped Justine

because the boy who sat behind her in third grade kissed her. When one of her sisters had called Justine a "trollop," Papa had come to Justine's defense, but Mama had sent her to bed without supper. Mama had always sided with the nuns. Until she met Harry, Justine had figured that Papa was the only decent man in the world.

Of course, there was Jesus, but Justine didn't like to think of Jesus too often. She didn't like to worry about what He thought of her. She prayed to His Mother, the Virgin Mary. Justine figured that Mary, being a woman, would understand. She felt close to the Holy Mother. They'd both gotten pregnant before they had husbands, and they'd both had sons. "Course, I wasn't a real virgin," Justine had admitted. She'd been having dreams about Her. The Holy Mother, Her palms held toward her, was as beautiful in blue and white robes as the statues in St. Aloysius. Justine was so happy to see Her until She asked for the key to Jesus's tomb. Justine searched and searched among all her keys but couldn't find it anywhere and awakened frustrated and upset. In her dream, the Virgin Mary had looked like Mama.

When Justine had gotten pregnant at sixteen and given birth to a boy, her mother quickly and quietly sent her into the care of the Sisters of Charity in Aberdeen. Her father hadn't interfered with that decision, and they took the boy to raise as their own. "You can come home after you've repented for your sin, Justine," her mother had said, "not before."

The Sisters in the home for wayward girls had treated Justine and all the inmates in the manner that the Church prescribed for sinners. With the cold blackness of the punishment cellar, they created a hell for them that was only degrees worse than the endless scrubbing of grease-stained floors and hunger. Justine had stayed for six months. For three days after she'd run away, Justine had walked the road at night and slept during the day, hiding any place she could find. She'd lived on water from the creek beside the road, and bread which she had hidden in her bloomers, but that had lasted only twenty-four hours, and on the fourth night, she was feeble from hunger. Her feet were blistered from the bad fitting charity shoes furnished by the nuns, and she was no longer able to walk.

By the time that old cowboy found her curled up beside the road, she figured that she was going to die right there. He had taken her to his house, fed her and put her to bed, and she had slept for fifteen-hours straight. She was alive, but the payment that he extracted from her was harsh.

When she recalled it later, he had been no different than the other old men that paid for her, but at seventeen, she had known only one other man, Harry, the father of her baby, and him only once. When she was strong again, she walked away from the old man and washed dishes in a diner until she had enough money to buy a train ticket to Omaha. There she met the best friend she had ever had, a prostitute who taught her how to survive in the street.

"They'll try'n get you messed up with drink and weed or worse. Just leave the stuff alone if'n you wanna grow old," she'd advised. And later, "Here's some rubber's to start you off with, and if'n they don't work, we'll find someone to fix you up."

"I'm damned," Justine had told her. "If I'd known this stuff from the get-go, I'd a never landed in the street."

Since she had always been a handsome woman, Justine had no trouble luring customers. There were even times in that ten years of working the streets that she'd found downright fun, especially after she moved to San Francisco where it wasn't so cold, and the clientele were classier. They had been allowed to work the bars more because Californians were more tolerant than Nebraskans. It was in her favorite bar down on Market Street that she had met Harry for the second time. Even after ten years, she'd recognized him immediately. His face had been firebranded in her memory.

"As I live and breathe, Harry Fox. Fancy meeting you way out here on the Coast. It's a long ways from Whitewood." Justine's heart had pounded. She hadn't felt like this since she picked up her first trick in Omaha.

He had studied her through squinted eyes and asked, "Where do I know you from?"

"C'mon, Harry, you remember me. You was a thresher on my Papa's ranch in South Dakota. You know, the great big spread down on the alkali. The one with the artesian well."

"A ranch on the alkali?" He lifted his hat and scratched his head. "You mean the one with all them pretty girls. Don't tell me you was one of them?

"I was one of the farmer's daughters, Harry. We were like the old joke, you and me. But the by-God joke was on me." Justine knew how to say things to set a man at his ease.

"C'mon, Babe, sit down," he'd said and patted the stool beside him. "Tell me about this joke. But first, what's your name. I sure can't remember, but you're beginning to look kinda familiar."

Harry had been as she'd remembered. His looks weren't much to brag about, but she was falling again for the way his eyes wrinkled when he talked and his mouth turned up as if in a permanent grin. And there had been an air of adventure about him.

"Name's Justine, and the joke is that we have a son, Harry. Ten years ago, behind a shock of wheat on that ranch, we made ourselves a baby. Yep, Harry, that's the God's truth, and may He strike me dead if it ain't. You and me's mama and papa to a boy."

Harry had just stared at her, the grin no longer visible on his open mouth.

"Ain't you gonna say something?" Justine goaded him. "Just gonna sit there with your damn mouth open all night?"

"If this is so, where's he now? You drop him off at a orphanage or something? You expecting me to do something about it, or what?

Justine had grinned and socked him on his shoulder with her fist. "Naw, Harry. I ain't expecting you to do nothing. I never expected to lay eyes on you again. The kid's on the ranch. Thinks he's my brother, last I heard. Called one of my sisters about him once and found out he don't need me messing him up. Figure he don't need the likes of you either. Ain't no one I'd rather have had raise him up than my papa. I've just left him alone. Guess he don't mean nothing to me anyways. He only caused me misery."

******

Justine hurt all over from the shaking and pounding of the Model A on the washboard road as she thought how good it would be to see Papa again. And there were her sisters, Hattie Hazel, Clara, Lizzy. Hattie had been her only contact. But she'd have to confront Mama.

Her eyes burned from the dry prairie wind, and two hours of this torture was all she could take. She took the rosary off the mirror and put it deep into her jacket pocket, stretched her arm out of the window to ease the ache then slapped her hand on the outside of the door. She stopped to listen for signs of movement from the back. "C'mon, Harry, wake up," she grumbled. "I'm tuckered out now." She slapped the door again, harder this time, and this time her signal was answered by a pounding behind her seat. This was their usual method of communication while on the road.

She eased the truck to a stop and got out to open the back door for Harry then stretched to relieve the kinks in her body. "Damn gravel roads would jar the insides out of a butter churn," she said.

Harry jumped down, kicked the worn tires then came up behind Justine and grabbed her around the waist. "You're one good-looker, Justine. I gotta be a lucky son-of-a-gun. Slept good too."

"Keep your hands to yourself, Harry. This sure as hell ain't no time to go getting chummy. We don't want to be traveling much after dark, without a map and all. How far did you say to Chicago from here?"

"We ain't nowhere near to Chicago yet, Babe. Gotta stop somewheres way before we get there. Any place okay with you?"

"I guess I been thinking on it, Harry. Been thinking about how the kid looks, all grown up and all." Justine leaned against the truck and kicked at the gravel with her boot. "That's all we do know about him -- that he's all grown up and that he's planning on hitching up with the army. You s'pose he takes after you?"

"He'd better look like me," Harry teased. "You know the only reason I married you was on account of him."

"Joke if you want, Harry Fox, but this ain't no damn joking matter to me. I got just as much of an itch to see our boy as you, but I got not one damn bit of control over the fact that he's living in the same house as my mama." Justine kicked a large chunk of gravel into the ditch then examined her boot to make sure she hadn't damaged the toe.

"If we did stop, you think we oughta spill any beans to the kid?" Harry asked. "About us I mean, tell him who we are, and all?"

"Hell no. He don't need us coming in and shaking the pants off him with that kind of news on top of him heading for war. He's got a better mama and papa than we'd of ever been, anyway. Besides, I don't have no memory of him. They never let me lay eyes on him after I birthed him. Mama said there was no use to me getting attached to him."

"So you'd be his big sister. You'd be able to just leave it at that? I don't know, Babe. Your string'd be pulled tight as it'd go. What would happen if it broke?"

"How about you, Harry," Justine said. "Would you like him not knowing you're his papa. Especially if he's a big, tall, Clark Gable type. You wouldn't get all puffed up like a rooster?"

"You know better'n that, Babe. You're all I need to keep my cockscomb wagging. It's you that'd have to watch it."

"Maybe with Mama and Papa getting on they'd be easier. Me being the oldest, they might have softened up on the others. Maybe now would be a good time do it, once and for all." Justine looked up into Harry's face. "You think it'd be ok? Do you, Harry? You think she'd be ok?"

Harry stared at her from under his frown for a moment then said, "Sure, Babe. It'll be just fine. Let's get this carnival on the road. What do you say?"

"I don't know, Harry. If she knew what I done for a living before you, she'd turn her back on me and go out to her garden and pray, just like she done the day she sent me away. I couldn't take that hurt again. It ain't worth it. Nope, just ain't worth it. So get your butt in the truck and head straight for Chicago. We'll just pull off when we get tired."

"Jeez, Justine, you ain't had nothing on your mind but that old woman long as I've known you. It'd be good if you and her got the past dead and buried. Just go and ask her forgiveness and maybe then. . ."

"Forgiveness," Justine screamed. "When in hell did you ever hear me say forgiveness? I ain't got one damn reason to beg no one for forgiveness. You should be the one begging for that, Harry Fox. Mama just done what she thought was best for me, but you just didn't think."

The gravel made loud crackling noises under her boots as she stomped the four feet from the front of the truck and back. "I fell for you Harry, so I ain't never said nothin' to you before now, but you stop to think on it." She stopped in front of him and poked a painted forefinger at his chest. "You're the one who put that kid in my oven then up and left me to do the suffering. If you'd done the right thing by me, we'd a had a legitimate family, me, you, and our son. But what'd you do?" She poked again. "You ran. Ran right outta South Dakota so's Papa couldn't find you. Never mentioned that either, did I Harry? Papa looked all over for you to do the right thing, but I was the one who paid the whole price." Justine was crying now, and beating Harry's arm with her fists. "I was the one who was beat by the goddammed Sisters of Charity until I was black and blue. I was the one who got raped by that dirty old farmer until I was no longer a girl. I was the one who went on the street just to stay alive. It was me suffered, Harry. You didn't do one lick of the suffering, and you talk of me asking forgiveness."

Harry stood balanced against the side of the truck, looking like a barn dog that had just been kicked by a cow. "You been sitting on these words seven years, all the time acting like things was just dandy?"

Justine took the beads from her pocket and sat down on the side of the road in the shade of the truck. She didn't look at Harry, didn't cry, or say a word. She just slumped and stared at the rosary in her hand. Harry leaned against the truck and rubbed the arm that Justine had been battering. With his head fallen forward on his chest, he looked like a man praying as he watched his shadow crawl from under the back wheel of the truck and creep across his wife's back until it lay next to hers in the gravel.

"Harry."

Justine's unexpected call made him jump.

"Get your ass on over here and help me off this road. The gravel's putting holes big as cow tracks in my butt."

Harry hurried over to her and reached his hands out to help her up then tried to take her in his arms.

She pushed him away, and said, "Now don't you go getting mushy on me, Harry Fox. Let's just get back in that damn truck and be on our way. Mama and Papa's getting older by the hour. They just might not be there forever."

"Justine, please babe, just let me say. . . ."

"Hush up now, Harry. I done said my piece, and I can't say that I'm a damn bit sorry. Something I shoulda said years ago. Just didn't know it needed saying so bad."

Even though it was still daylight when they reached Whitewood, Justine had some trouble finding the road that led to the ranch, and they drove several miles in the wrong direction before she realized her mistake. "It's funny how the memory plays tricks after eighteen years," she said.

It was nearly sundown before they pulled up into the long roadway that led to the house that Justine had grown up in. "Stop the truck, Harry, right here."

Harry eased to the side of the road and brought the truck to a full stop. In the red prairie sunset, the two-story, white framed house on the horizon appeared to be on fire.

"What'll I do if she don't look at me, Harry. What if she just turns her back to me again. And Papa. Maybe he don't want me coming back to remind her of my sinning. Don't want to defend me and my ways no more. Then what, Harry. What do I do then?"

"Road goes both ways, Babe. We'll turn around and leave. You ain't alone like you was then. You got me." Harry took his wife's hand in his. "Okay, Babe? Let's get out of here." Harry put his hand on the floor shift and shoved it in reverse.

"Oh, shut up, Harry. Seems you'd be helping not hindering me. Something in me's just pushing and pushing to get on with this, no matter what."

"Could be the kid ain't even around here no more." It's been two weeks since your sister . . . . ."

"God, Harry, there you go with your hindering again."

"Sorry, Babe."

For several moments, they stared at the burning image of the house in silence, then Justine straightened her shoulders, picked her purse off the floor and pulled out the red bag and mirror.

"Well, soon's I get this face back on, we'll get this over with, Harry. Dammit, I done harder things than this in my life, and lived to tell of it. She's a woman, just like me, right Harry? She ain't got no different a soul than me." Justine smeared her lips red and re-drew the onyx line around her eyes. "Jesus listens to my prayers just like He listens to hers, and He ain't put her to the tests that He handed me. That must mean something." She shoved the bag and mirror to the bottom of her purse and left it on her lap. "And you're right, you been the best damned thing that's ever come my way. Forget what I said before, out there on the road. That don't matter no more, now that it's said."

After Harry turned off the engine at the front of the house, Justine got out of the truck, slung the purse over her shoulder, straightened her skirt, and pressed the waves in her hair closer to her head. Then she reached deep into her jacket pocket and squeezed the pink rosary tight in her fist.

"C'mon, Harry. If you hear me start cussing, gimme a good poke, okay? Gets to be a real bad habit. Gimme your arm and let's just go up and knock like we was regular visitors."