Missouri

Missouri is a roadside crisis point in Jenny and Pauline’s flight, where mechanical failure and a violent rainstorm leave them stranded and exposed. The state’s roads also become a landscape of uncertainty: after a confrontation with state troopers, the fugitives retrace and circle their route, imagining that discovery may be closing in even as, for a time, nothing happens.

A Breakdown in the Storm

On a desolate stretch of Missouri road, Jenny and Pauline pull onto the shoulder to consult their atlas, worried that they may be lost. The car then refuses to restart. Rain falls so hard that it shoots through the window when Pauline cracks it to let cigarette smoke escape, soaking them and putting out her cigarette. They switch on the hazard lights, but for half an hour no one passes. When a huge truck finally rumbles by, its spray hits the car with such force that the water standing on the road seems to threaten the vehicle’s ability to shelter them.

The two women focus on the car as their protection: in the storm, its watertight integrity seems to be all that matters. Through the rain, the truck’s red taillights appear to hang in place rather than recede. A lone figure emerges from the deluge and walks toward them, one arm raised against the rain. The approach heightens the scene’s uncertainty; the excerpt does not identify the figure or establish what happens next.

Sirens and the Fear of Capture

The car remains immobile. Inside, the women sit in the steam and cigarette smoke, conserving their energy in the constricted space; Jenny delays trying the ignition again, then turns the key and presses the gas, but the engine still does not start. A police car rushes past with its siren sounding. Soon another follows, and the women see a procession of lights streaming out of the gloom. The rain is so loud that they can scarcely hear one another.

As the police cars pass, Jenny and Pauline seize hold of each other. Jenny imagines escape through flooded fields and fears that shots might bring them down. The cars gather farther along the road near the truck, which now seems like abandoned wreckage beside the larger emergency. Pauline urgently promises that, if the officers do not kill them, she will not tell them anything about Jenny. The exchange makes their mutual dependence plain: danger is not only the storm or the stalled car, but the possibility that the police will separate them and turn Pauline into a source of information.

A Reversing Route

After making a spectacle of themselves before the full force of the Missouri state troopers, Jenny and Pauline set out again on new roads, initially heading east because they had been traveling west. The narrative follows their route through anxious speculation: they imagine that the troopers will gradually recognize them, issue an all-points bulletin, or connect Pauline to a report from Dolly. These are fears and conjectures, not confirmed developments; the account stresses that nothing happens while the women anticipate the pursuit.

Their navigation becomes a large, gradual circle. They drive east, realize they have gone too far, turn north, and eventually begin traveling west again. Missouri thus anchors a stretch of the escape in which movement offers no assurance of safety: direction changes, but the women remain preoccupied with the possibility that recognition and capture may follow them.☴