Riding the Earthboy 40

The daughter sat in the backseat with me, a case of peaches separating us. She was a frail girl with skin as white as the man’s ears. Her own ears were hidden beneath a flow of black frizzled hair contained by a blue-and-white beaded headband. She lolled back in the corner, sometimes looking at me, sometimes gazing blankly out the window at the unchanging country. At first, her grunts seemed to be in agreement with whatever her parents were
talking about, but then she grunted twice during a lull in the conversation.
She seemed to be in some kind of discomfort. Her eyes were dull, like those of a sick calf.