The clock shows 2:45 am.Sharp noises accentuate the enforced silence in the room and the mounting paranoia and fear in Mildred""s mind: a pencil sharpener, footsteps, whistling, the cracking sound of a sharply-opened newspaper." Converted and with the realization that one cannot be anxious about the life one has chosen, she returns to the saloon.A second car arrives, and the newcomers lean into the wind, holding onto their caps.One of the men, identifying himself as a cartographer ("I""m a mapmaker") and not a professional interpreter, David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) is able to "translate French into English and English into French.] The restless couple""s robberies of banks, viewed somewhat sympathetically by the rural dispossessed, occurred at a time when he institutions were ""robbing"" and ruining indebted, Dust Bowl farmers." The camera picked up a cloud of dust rising behind their tiny car as they sped along a flat dirt road lined by a stark series of telephone and electric poles.