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bit at his lips and his ears, sharp little nips; her fingers between his legs cupped his balls dangerously tight.
    With his hands on her shoulders, he shoved her back, flung her against the dashboard so hard it stunned her, and he had time to unlock the door, leap, and flee. But he didn’t get far before he heard the unmistakable sputter of tires in mud, an engine revving, going nowhere. Slowing to a trot, he listened: rock it, he thought, first to reverse, first to reverse.
    He heard her grind through the gears, imagined her slamming the stick, stamping the clutch, thought that by now tears streamed down her hot cheeks. Finally he heard the engine idle down, a pitiful, defeated sound in the near darkness.
    Slowly he turned, knowing what he had to do, hearing his father’s voice:
A gentleman always helps a lady in distress.
She’s no lady.
Who are you to judge?
    He found small dead branches and laid them under the tires in two-foot rows. One steady push, his feet braced against a tree, one more, almost, third time’s charm, and the front tires caught the sticks, spun, spat up mud all the way to his mouth, and heaved the truck backward onto solid ground. He wiped his hands on his jeans and clumped toward the road.
    “Hey,” said Iona. “Don’t you want a ride?” He kept marching. “Hey, Willy, get in. I won’t bite.” She pulled up right beside him. “It’ll take you more than an hour to get home. Your mama will skin you. Now get in. I won’t lay a hand on you.” He didn’t dare look at her. His face felt swollen, about to explode. “What I did before, I didn’t mean anything by it. I never would have tried anything if I thought you wouldn’t like it. Willy?” He glanced up at her; she seemed no bigger than a child, hanging on to that huge steering wheel. “Willy, I got a gun. Right here behind the seat, I got my daddy’s gun.”
Don’t you be gettin’ any ideas of makin’ like a jackrabbit, boy.
Willy didn’t know if Iona meant it as a warning or a threat, but he knew there was nothing real behind her words, no reason not to get in the truck, no reason except his pride, and that seemed like a small thing when he weighed it against the five-mile trek along the winding road, his mother’s pinched face, and the spot of grease from her nose on the windowpane.
    White Falls sat in a hollow, a fearful cluster of lights drawn up in a circle for the night, a town closed in on itself. Iona said, “I almost died once. My brother Leon and I started back from town in a storm that turned to a blizzard. Everything was white, like there was nothing in the world besides us and the inside of this truck. Leon drove straight into a six-foot drift; it looked just the same as the sky and the road. We had to get out and walk, or sit there and freeze like the damn cows. We stumbled, breaking the wind with our hands; then we crawled because the gusts were less wild near the ground. I saw the shadows of houses wavering in the snow, right in front of us, but they were never there. A sheet of ice built up around my cheek and chin, and I kept stopping to shatter it with my fist, but it took too long; Leon said, leave it, it will stop the wind. I thought they’d find me that way, the girl in glass, and they’d keep me frozen in a special truck, take me from town to town along with the nineteen-inch man and the two-headed calf. But Leon, Leon never thought for a minute we were going to die on that road. When I dropped to my belly and said I was warm now, he swatted my butt. Not this way, he said, not this way, God. And then I wondered if he’d whispered it or if I heard what he was thinking. Leon talking to God, I thought; that was more of a miracle than surviving, and I scrambled back to my knees and lunged forward.
    “Just like a dog, Leon knew his way. I forgave him for everything. I swore in my heart I’d never hold a harsh thought against him, not for anything in the past or anything he might do later on, because right