"I gave you half."
"And I gave it back."
"You put it in my pocket when I wasn't looking," she said. "At the gas station. I saw you."
Walt had no answer to that, so he reached over and turned on the radio. Out of Omaha a man was reading grain prices, and the prices were so low they sounded like a joke, and Walt turned the dial until he found music. It was some boy singing about wanting his MTV. He turned it back to the grain prices.
* * *
Somewhere past Columbus, Josie fell asleep against the door with the tape recorder in her arms. Walt drove. The sky lowered. Snow was in it; he could smell it through the vents, that cold metallic smell like a skillet before you put the grease in. A semi passed him, and then another, the drivers looking down from their cabs at the old station wagon doing fifty-two in the right lane with its back end low.
At Grand Island he stopped for gas at a Sinclair with the green dinosaur on the sign. He put in six dollars, which brought the needle back past the half, and he checked the radiator, which was low, and filled it from the jug he kept in the back. He went inside to pay and stood a moment by the rack of Hostess pies and Slim Jims, his stomach doing the thing it had been doing since yesterday afternoon, a slow fist closing and opening. The cherry pies were thirty-five cents. He picked one up and looked at it and put it down.
When he came back out, Josie was awake and standing on the seat with her face against the glass, watching him the way you watch a dog cross a road.
"Did you get anything?"
"Paid for gas."
"Did you get anything to eat?"
"Not hungry, Jo."
She sat down. She took the napkin out of her pocket and unwrapped the triangle of grilled cheese, which was cold and stiff now, the cheese gone the texture of a candle, and she held it out to him across the bench seat.
"I'm full," she said.
"You ate one half a sandwich since five this morning."
"I'm full from the half."