Knowing that they were waiting impatiently didn't add anything to the grace and sureness of my movements. I yanked alternately at the choke and the throttle, between bouts with the gear shift lever and the gas. In my confusion, I forgot which of the various gadgets was which, and it was by a process of wild experimentation that I finally got the car to back up. I turned the steering wheel all the way to one side, and found myself careening backward in a violent arc. I stepped on the brake abruptly, assaulted the choke once more while I tried to remember just how to start the car, and finally I got it going forward again. Just as I got the back of the car turned squarely on the truck, and heaved a sob of relief, I realized that the car had ceased to respond to my pushing on the gas. Finally one of the men in the truck, the one who was sitting beside the driver, clambered out of the truck and came over to me. "What's a matter, sister?" he demanded. "My house won't go," I explained. "I mean, my truck won't go." "You mean your car won't go?" "Yes, yes," I said feverishly. "That's it. My car won't go. I must be out of gas." "Lemme in." I was too far gone to question the propriety or the safety of letting a strange, unshaven man get into the car with me. I moved meekly aside, and he sat behind the wheel and tried to start the car. "You flooded it," he stated. I tried to look as though I knew what he was talking about. "You just learnin' to drive sister?" he wanted to know. I nodded unhappily. He must have pitied me in my obvious misery. He smiled, patted one of my cold hands, and climbed out of the car. "Don't you worry none," he advised. "We'll give you a push." He climbed back into the truck, and pretty soon I felt the car being shoved firmly forward. The entire mass of gadgets, pedals and levers before me were by this time as incomprehensible to me as a Hebrew essay on the fourth dimension. I knew that the men in the truck expected me to get the car going under its own power soon, but I didn't even try. When we approached our private road behind the cabins I signaled (that much, at least, I knew how to do) that I was about to make a right turn. I turned onto our road; the momentum and the slight downgrade combined to let the car slide ahead along the road, onto the driveway that led around to the cabins, and to the front of our own cabin. I emerged from the haze long enough to identify and apply the brake. Then I lay back in the seat like a dead woman until Grant and David, who were still outside, came running up. "How come you pullled a house almost all the way home?" David demanded, moving his loose lower teeth back and forth with grimy, gum-stuck fingers. "Was I dreaming," Grant asked, "or--" I waved my hand at them by way of answer, staggered out of the car and into our cabin, where I flung myself upon the bed. CHAPTER SIX