“Isn’t that a shameful story, Earl, what happened to that poor little monkey?”

“I see a town! I see a town!” Cheryl started yelling from the back seat, and right up Little Duke started yapping and the whole car fell into a racket. And sure enough she had seen something I hadn’t, which was Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the bottom of a long hill, a little glowing jewel in the desert with 1-80 running on the north side and the black desert spread out behind.

“That’s it, honey,” I said. “That’s where we’re going. You saw it first.”

“We’re hungry,” Cheryl said. “Little Duke wants some fish, and I want spaghetti.” She put her arms around my neck and hugged me.

“Then you’ll just get it,” I said. “You can have anything you want. And so can Edna and so can Little Duke.” I looked over at Edna, smiling, but she was staring at me with eyes that were fierce with anger. “What’s wrong?” I said.

“Don’t you care anything about that awful thing that happened to me?” Her mouth was drawn tight, and her eyes kept cutting back at Cheryl and Little Duke, as if they had been tormenting her.

“Of course I do,” I said. “I thought that was an awful thing.” I didn’t want her to be unhappy. We were almost there, and pretty soon we could sit down and have a real meal without thinking somebody might be hurting us.

“You want to know what I did with that monkey?” Edna said.

“Sure I do,” I said.

“I put her in a green garbage bag, put it in the trunk of my car, drove to the dump, and threw her in the trash.” She was staring at me darkly, as if the story meant something to her that was real important but that only she could see and that the rest of the world was a fool for.

“Well, that’s horrible,” I said. “But I don’t see what else you could do. You didn’t mean to kill it. You’d have done it differently if you had. And then you had to get rid of it, and I don’t know what else you could have done. Throwing it away might seem unsympathetic to somebody, probably, but not to me. Sometimes that’s all you can do, and you can’t worry about what somebody else thinks.” I tried to smile at her, but the red light was staying on if I pushed the accelerator at all, and I was trying to gauge if we could coast to Rock Springs before the car gave out completely. I looked at Edna again. “What else can I say?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said, and stared back at the dark highway. “I should’ve known that’s what you’d think. You’ve got a character that leaves something out, Earl. I’ve known that a long time.”

“And yet here you are,” I said. “And you’re not doing so bad. Things could be a lot worse. At least we’re all together here.”

“Things could always be worse,” Edna said. “You could go to the electric chair tomorrow.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And somewhere somebody probably will. Only it won’t be you.”

“I’m hungry,” said Cheryl. “When’re we gonna eat? Let’s find a motel. I’m tired of this. Little Duke’s tired of it too.”

Where the car stopped rolling was some distance from the town, though you could see the clear oudine of the interstate in the dark with Rock Springs lighting up the sky behind.