The next morning she gets on the bus along with her father, John Henry and Berenice and they travel to Winter Hill. Frankie is disappointed that Winter Hill is further south from her own home town and that the towns they pass along the way are successively smaller and uglier. At the wedding, nothing goes as Frankie had planned. She never gets a chance to talk to either her brother or Janice about her plans to go with them on the honeymoon. When the couple get ready to leave, Frankie comes out with her bag. When they tell her she cannot go, she gets into the car and hangs onto the steering wheel. She is pried away from it and left crying in the dust as the car pulls away and leaves her alone. She cries all the way home on the bus, hating everyone who witnessed her humiliation.

That night, she decides to leave home alone and she writes her father a note, picks up her suitcase, takes her fatherÂ’s pistol and some money out of his wallet and leaves the house. Once outside, she doesnÂ’t know where to go. She doesnÂ’t have enough money to buy a bus ticket and she doesnÂ’t know how to hop a freight car. She sits on her suitcase in an alley and holds the gun to her head for a few minutes. Then she puts the gun away and goes back to the Blue Moon, thinking that if the red-haired soldier isnÂ’t dead, she will marry him and leave town with him. SheÂ’s not there for long when the sheriff comes in and says they have been looking for her. SheÂ’s not sure why sheÂ’s being captured at first and is disappointed when she finds out she is only being captured for having run away.

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