TRAVIS: Can I tell you ?
JANE: Sure. Anything you like.
TRAVIS: It's kind of long.
JANE: I got plenty of time.
TRAVIS: I knew these people...
JANE: What people?
TRAVIS: These two people. They were in love with . The girl was... very young, about seventeen or eighteen, I guess. And the guy was... quite a bit older. He was kind of raggedy and wild. And she was very beautiful, you know?
JANE: Yeah.
TRAVIS: And together, they turned everything into a kind of , and she liked that. Just an ordinary trip down to the grocery store was . They were always at stupid things. He liked to make her laugh. And they didn't much for anything else because all they wanted to do was to be with each other. They were always .
JANE: Sounds like they were very happy.

TRAVIS: Yes, they were. They were real happy. And he... he loved her more than he ever possible. He being away from her during the day when he went to work... so he'd quit. Just to be home with her. Then he'd get when the money , and then he'd quit again. But pretty soon, she started to .
JANE: About what?
TRAVIS: Money, I guess. Not having . Not knowing when the next check was coming in.
JANE: Yeah, I know that feeling.
TRAVIS: So he started to get kind of... torn inside.
JANE: How do you mean?
TRAVIS: Well, he knew to support her, but he couldn't stand being away from her, either.

JANE: I see.
TRAVIS: And the more he was away from her, he got. Except now, he got really crazy. He started all kinds of things.
JANE: Like what?
TRAVIS: He started thinking that she on the sly. He'd come home from work and the day with somebody else. Then he'd yell at her and start smashing in the trailer.
JANE: Trailer?
TRAVIS: Yes, they lived in a trailer home.
JANE: Excuse me, sir, but were you in to visit me the other day? I don't mean to pry.
TRAVIS: No.
JANE: Oh, I thought I your voice for a minute.

TRAVIS: No, it wasn't me.
JANE: Uhm. Please go on.
TRAVIS: Anyway, he real bad. And he'd stay out late to test her.
JANE: What do you mean, "test her"?
TRAVIS: To see if she'd get .
JANE: Huh! Uhuh.
TRAVIS: , but she didn't. She was just about him, but that got him even madder.
JANE: Why?
TRAVIS: Because he thought that, if she'd never get jealous of him, she didn't really care about him. Jealousy was a of her love for him. And then, one night... one night, she told him that she was . She was about three or four months pregnant, and he didn't even know. And then, , everything changed. He and got a steady job. He was convinced that she loved him now because she was carrying his child. And he was going to dedicate himself to making a home for her. But then a funny thing started to .
JANE: What?

TRAVIS: He didn't even notice it at first. She started to change. From the day the baby was born, she began to get with everything around her. She at everything. Even the baby seemed to be an injustice to her. He kept trying to make everything all right for her. Buy her things. Take her out to dinner once a week. But nothing seemed to her. For two years he struggled to pull them back together like they were , but finally he knew that it was never going to work out. So he hit the bottle again. But this time it got... mean. This time, when he came home late at night, drunk, she wasn't worried about him, or jealous, she was just enraged. She holding her captive by making her have a baby. She told him that she dreamed about .

That was all she about: escape. She herself at night running naked down a highway, running across fields, running down riverbeds, always running. And always, just when she was about to get away, he'd be there. He would stop her somehow. He would just appear and stop her. And when she him these dreams, he believed them. He she had to be stopped or she'd leave him forever. So he tied a cow bell to her ankle so he could hear her at night if she to get out of bed. But she how to muffle the bell by stuffing a sock into it, and inching her way out of the bed and into the night. He her one night when the sock out and he her trying to run to the highway. He her and dragged her back to the trailer, and her to the stove with his belt.

He just left her there and went back to bed and lay there listening to her . And he listened to his son scream, and he was surprised at himself because . All he wanted to do was sleep. And for the first time, he he far away. Lost in a deep, vast country where nobody knew him. Somewhere without language or streets. He dreamed about this place without knowing its name. And when he , he was on fire. There were blue flames burning the sheets of his bed. He ran through the flames toward the only two people he loved.... but they were gone. His arms were burning, and he himself outside and rolled on the wet ground. Then he ran. He never looked back at the fire. He just ran. He ran until the sun came up and he couldn't run any further. And when the sun went down, he ran again. For five days he ran like this until every sign of man .