The baby is in bed and they are sitting in their chairs, listening to Bob Wills on the radio. Corrine is trying to read a book, but she is always listening for the baby. That’s something I used to do, she thinks, read books. I used to memorize poems and bring myself to tears when I recited them. I used to walk out the door and go for a long drive anytime I wanted. I used to bring home my own paycheck.

Potter is working a crossword. He sets down the pencil and watches his wife for a few minutes. Hey, he says softly, can I ask you something, Corie?

Hmm. Maybe.

What do you need?

What do I need?

Yeah. What do you need, Corrine, to be happy with me and Alice?

She doesn’t hesitate. I need to go back to work, Potter.

Honey, you work, taking care of Alice and me.

Yes, I do. I’d prefer to teach English to a classroom full of hormonal rednecks.

I’m afraid teaching will be too much for you.

The second the words are out of his mouth, Potter wishes he could have them back. And sure enough, Corrine comes out with her guns a’blazing. Potter, are you shitting me? Are you shitting me right about now? I’ll tell you what I need, Potter. I need for people to stop talking to me like I’ve become a bona fide idiot since I had a baby. I need for the good ladies of Odessa to stop advising me that what I really ought to do is get cracking on another baby. Ha! She slams her book closed and holds it over her head, and it occurs to Potter that she is going to lean over and hit him with it.

I need to go back to teaching, Corrine says, because I happen to like holding a room full of teenagers hostage while I read Miss Willa Cather’s My Antonia out loud to them. Let somebody else come over here and make goo-goo eyes at Alice for eight hours every day—every day, Potter, and why don’t you think about that for a minute, if you never once left work, what that might be like?

You were a great teacher, he says, but who is going to watch Alice?

I am a great teacher.

They sit and listen to the clock tick. A neighbor’s dog barks. In the kitchen, their new icebox switches on, a steady hum that reaches every corner of the house. He will wish until the day he dies that he hadn’t said it, but Potter has the best of intentions when he sets his crossword on the end table and walks over to sit on the carpet next to his wife’s chair, when he wonders aloud, How soon is too soon to start thinking about another baby?

*

Alice is her first thought in the morning, her last before she falls asleep for a few hours at night, and all the hours in between. She is a flash of lightning and its aftermath, a fire bearing down on a copse of juniper and mesquite. She is love, and Corrine is completely unprepared for it. Here is a person who is, and must always be, what the whole world was made for, and without whom that same world becomes unimaginable. If something happens to Alice, if she gets sick, if there is an accident, if a rattlesnake crawls into the backyard while Alice is out there on her blanket—it is enough to drive a woman straight into the arms of the nearest church or, in Corrine’s case, the bookmobile that somebody parked last week on the empty lot less than a block from their new house.

*

It is also Jon’s job to drive over to the shipping operator’s house in the middle of the night and knock on the front door and stand on the porch until the man’s wife comes to the door. She didn’t want to wake up the kids, he tells Corrine, so he sat with her on the couch while they waited for her sister to arrive. He kept his hands folded in his lap and his fingernails hidden. Back at the plant, he had showered and put on the clean shirt he keeps in his locker. But blood is pernicious and when he sat down on the man’s couch, he could see it under his fingernails and in the wrinkles of his knuckles. The man’s wife asked some questions and he told some lies—it was over quickly, he didn’t suffer, he never knew what happened. Jon watched the man’s wife cross her hands one over the other and push them hard against her mouth. Here’s one true thing he could tell her: He wasn’t alone when it happened, and he wasn’t alone when he died. Jon was there, pressing his hands against the man’s face, telling him that everything was going to be okay.

*

Alice is already walking when they decide to take the truck out on the highway, open up the engine, and see what it can do. Potter calls his father-in-law and asks if he will take the baby for the night. He has heard good things about the mountains up near Salt Flat, he tells Corrine. There is some camping up that way, but they ought to go now before spring comes and it’s too hot.

Potter airs his old army tent out in the backyard and checks the seams while Alice wobbles in and out of the heavy canvas flap, singing her only complete sentence. What about me? What about me?

Corrine fills the camp icebox with beer, cold fried chicken, and potato salad and then loads three jugs of water into the back of the truck. Potter packs a fifth of bourbon, a flashlight, two emergency flares, and his service revolver in the truck’s glove box. Corrine adds her pocket pistol. Potter tucks a couple of rubbers into his wallet. Corrine shoves her diaphragm, some spermicidal cream, and a wad of tissues into her purse.

While Potter feeds Alice, Corrine stands at the foot of their bed and considers a little black chiffon negligee she used to wear before the baby. It might fit, but it seems ridiculous to bring such a garment on a camping trip. After dressing in a cardigan and a swingy red A-line skirt that falls just below her knees—Potter loves this skirt—she digs around in the closet for her black heels, which she can at least wear for the drive. She sets her boots next to her overnight bag. At the last moment Corrine removes her panties, choosing instead to wear beneath her skirt only a pair of black stockings and garter belt. In nearly thirty years of living, Corrine has not once left the house without her underwear. It is delicious. She puts on her new eyeglasses, takes them off, and squints at the mirror on the dresser. She puts them back on and steps into the living room. Ta-da! She throws one arm in the air.

Potter’s eyes widen. He laughs a little and holds his arms out to her. Whoa! Baby, you look just like a librarian.

Corrine’s arm falls to her side. Thank you very much.

No, Corrie! Honey, I meant—

But Alice begins to wail, toddling toward her mother and holding her arms up like a tiny robber caught in the sheriff’s headlights. As his wife shoves past him, Potter touches the sleeve of her sweater lightly. Soft, he says, but she doesn’t hear him. Instead she goes to work soothing the baby while he stands in the doorway, one hand still reaching for his wife.

They kiss the baby and pat her and speak to her as if they are leaving on a freighter bound for Cameroon, then hand her off to her granddaddy with a page of instructions. Prestige glances at the list, folds it in half, and slides it into his shirt pocket. All-righty, then, he says. Have a great time. Don’t hurry back.

They take the new highway north toward Notrees, driving past the man camps that have sprung up in the coliseum parking lot while people wait for more houses to be built. At the family camps, which are spread out on dirt lots behind the coliseum, skinny, dust-smeared kids play and fight and sprawl in the dust. Corrine watches them and chews on her thumbnail. Most of them probably aren’t even enrolled in school. That’s a scandal, she says. Shameful.

How come? Potter is fiddling with his new headlights, turning them on, turning them off, then back on. People have to make a living.

It’s shameful that we’ve got people living in tents in the middle of dirt lots, Potter. Those companies ought to be doing better by them.

I think they’re probably doing the best they can, under the circumstances. There are a lot of people coming here, real fast.

Oh, bullshit. Those oil companies don’t care about these people, and you’re kidding yourself if you think different. Besides—she digs around in her purse for a lipstick and compact—doesn’t it bother you what they’re doing to the land out here?

Potter punches the gas pedal. It would bother me a lot more if I couldn’t put food on the table for you and Alice, if I couldn’t put a little something away in case our daughter wants to go to college, like her mama did.

Corrine swipes a rich red lipstick across her bottom lip then checks her teeth in the mirror. She thinks about the panties she is not wearing. The leather seat is delightful against the backs of her knees. Be careful, she says. We do not want to get into an accident.