I was again in motion and at a speed which belied the truck's similarity to Senor X's Ford turtle. Maybe I would beat old Herry to Siberia after all. Whatever satisfaction that might offer.

Something pulled my leg.

I drew back, drawing back my foot for a kick. But it was only Johnson reaching around the wire chicken fencing, which half covered the truck cab's glassless rear window. The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I though he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

``Wanna beer?''

``Hell, yes,'' I roared back between dusty lips. Did I want a beer? Did an anteater want ants?

``Bueno, amigo. Gracias,'' I hollered, my first long swallow filling me with confidence and immediately doubling the size of my Spanish vocabulary.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing; I wouldn't have known the difference.

Johnson was trying to grab the wheel, though the swerve of the truck was throwing him away from it. White teeth suddenly vanishing, the driver slammed the side of his bottle against Johnson's ear.

We were off the road, gleaming barbed wire pulling taut. I ducked just as the first strand broke somewhere down the line and came whipping over the sideboards. We were in a field, in a tight, screeching turn. Prairie dogs were popping up and popping down. When I fell on my back, I saw a vulture hovering.