The Night We Buried Road Dog

II.

We didn’t know, as we headed home, that Jesse’s graveyard business was about to take off. That wouldn’t change him, though. He’d almost always had a hundred dollars in his jeans anyway, and was usually a happy man. What changed him was Road Dog and Miss Molly.

The trouble started a while after we crossed the Montana line. Jesse ran ahead in the Lincoln, and I tagged behind in my DeSoto. We drove Highway 2 into a western sunset. It was one of those magic summers where rain sweeps in from British Columbia just regular enough to keep things growing. Rabbits get fat and foolish, and foxes put on weight. Rattlesnakes come out of ditches to cross the sun-hot road. It’s not sporting to run over their middles. You have to take them in the head. Redwings perch on fence posts, and magpies flash black and white from the berm, where they scavenge road kills.

We saw a hell of a wreck just after Wolf Point. A guy in an old Kaiser came over the back of a rise and ran under a tanker truck that burned. Smoke rose black as a plume of crows, and we saw it five miles away. By the time we got there, the truck driver stood in the middle of the road, all white and shaking. The guy in the Kaiser sat behind the wheel. It was fearful to see how fast fire can work, and just terrifying to see bones hanging over a steering wheel. I remember thinking the guy no doubt died before any fire started, and we were feeling more than he was.

That didn’t help. I said a prayer under my breath. The truck driver wasn’t to blame, but he took it hard as a Presbyterian. Jesse tried to comfort him, without much luck. The road melted and stank and began to burn. Nobody was drinking, but it was certain sure we were all more sober than we’d ever been in our lives. Two deputies showed up. Cars drifted in easy, because of the smoke. In a couple of hours there were probably twenty cars lined up on either side of the wreck.

“He must of been asleep or drunk,” Jesse said about the driver of the Kaiser. “How in hell can a man run under a tanker truck?”

When the cops reopened the road, night hovered over the plains. Nobody cared to run much over sixty, even beneath a bright moon. It seemed like a night to be superstitious, a night when there was a deer or pronghorn out there just ready to jump into your headlights. It wasn’t a good night to drink, or shoot pool, or mess around in strange bars. It was a time for being home with your woman, if you had one.

On most nights, ghosts do not show up beside the metal crosses, and they sure don’t show up in owl light. Ghosts stand out on the darkest, moonless nights, and only then when bars are closed and the only thing open is the road.

I never gave it a thought. I chased Jesse’s taillights, which on that Lincoln were broad, up-and-down slashes in the dark. Chip sat beside me, sad and solemn. I rubbed his ears to perk him, but he just laid down and snuffled. Chip was sensitive. He knew I felt bad over that wreck.

The first ghost showed up on the left berm and fizzled before the headlights. It was a lady ghost, and a pretty old one, judging from her long white hair and long white dress. She flicked on and off in just a flash, so maybe it was a road dream. Chip was so depressed he didn’t even notice, and Jesse didn’t, either. His steering and his brakes didn’t wave to me.

Everything stayed straight for another ten miles, then a whole peck of ghosts stood on the right berm. A bundle of crosses shone all silvery white in the headlights. The ghosts melted into each other. You couldn’t tell how many, but you could tell they were expectant. They looked like people lined up for a picture show. Jesse never gave a sign he saw them. I told myself to get straight. We hadn’t had much sleep in the past two nights, and did some drinking the night before. We’d rolled near two thousand miles.

Admonishing seemed to work. Another twenty minutes passed, maybe thirty, and nothing happened. Wind chased through the open windows of the DeSoto, and the radio gave mostly static. I kicked off my boots because that helps you stay awake, the bottoms of the feet being sensitive. Then a single ghost showed up on the right-hand berm, and boy-howdy.

Why anybody would laugh while being dead has got to be a puzzle. This ghost was tall, with Indian hair like Jesse’s, and I could swear he looked like Jesse, the spitting image. This ghost was jolly. He clapped his hands and danced. Then he gave me the old road sign for “roll ’em,” his hand circling in the air as he danced. The headlights penetrated him, showed tall grass solid at the roadside, and instead of legs he stood on a column of mist. Still, he was dancing.

It wasn’t road dreams. It was hallucination. The nighttime road just fills with things seen or partly seen. When too much scary stuff happens, it’s time to pull her over.

I couldn’t do it, though. Suppose I pulled over, and suppose it wasn’t hallucination? I recall thinking that a man don’t ordinarily care for preachers until he needs one. It seemed like me and Jesse were riding through the Book of Revelations. I dropped my speed, then flicked my lights a couple times. Jesse paid it no attention, and then Chip got peculiar.

He didn’t bark; he chirped. He stood up on the front seat, looking out the back window, and his paws trembled. He shivered, chirped, shivered, and went chirp, chirp, chirp. Headlights in back of us were closing fast.

I’ve been closed on plenty of times by guys looking for a ditch. Headlights have jumped out of night and fog and mist when nobody should be pushing forty. I’ve been overtaken by drunks and suiciders. No set of headlights ever came as fast as the ones that began to wink in the mirrors. This Highway 2 is a quick, quick road, but it’s not the salt flats of Utah. The crazy man behind me was trying to set a new land speed record.

Never confuse an idiot. I stayed off the brakes and coasted, taking off speed and signaling my way onto the berm. The racer could have my share of the road. I didn’t want any part of that boy’s troubles. Jesse kept pulling away as I slowed. It seemed like he didn’t even see the lights. Chip chirped, then sort of rolled down on the floorboards and cried.

For ninety seconds, I feared being dead. For one second, I figured it already happened. Wind banged the DeSoto sideways. Wind whooped, the way it does in winter. The headlights blew past. What showed was the curve of a Hudson fender—the kind of curve you’d recognize if you’d been dead a million years—and what showed was the little, squinchy shapes of a Hudson’s taillights; and what showed was the slanty doorpost like a nail running kitty-corner; and what showed was slivers of reflection from cracked glass on the rider’s side; and what sounded was the drumbeat of a straight-eight engine whanging like a locomotive gone wild; the thrump, bumpa, thrum of a crankshaft whipping in its bed. The slaunch-forward form of Miss Molly wailed, and showers of sparks blew from the tailpipe as Miss Molly rocketed.

Chip was not the only one howling. My voice rose high as the howl of Miss Molly. We all sang it out together, while Jesse cruised three, maybe four miles ahead. It wasn’t two minutes before Miss Molly swept past that Linc like it was foundationed in cement. Sparks showered like the Fourth of July, and Jesse’s brake lights looked pale beside the fireworks. The Linc staggered against wind as Jesse headed for the berm. Wind smashed against my DeSoto.

Miss Molly’s taillights danced as she did a jig up the road, and then they winked into darkness as Miss Molly topped a rise, or disappeared. The night went darker than dark. A cloud scudded out of nowhere and blocked the moon.

Alongside the road the dancing ghost showed up in my headlights, and I could swear it was Jesse. He laughed like at a good joke, but he gave the old road sign for “slow it down,” his hand palm down like he was patting an invisible pup. It seemed sound advice, and I blamed near liked him. After Miss Molly, a happy ghost seemed downright companionable.

“Shitfire,” said Jesse, and that’s all he said for the first five minutes after I pulled in behind him. I climbed from the DeSoto and walked to the Linc. Old Potato dog sprawled on the seat in a dead faint, and Jesse rubbed his ears trying to warm him back to consciousness. Jesse sat over the wheel like a man who had just met Jesus. His hand touched gentle on Potato’s ears, and his voice sounded reverent. Brother Jesse’s conversion wasn’t going to last, but at the time it was just beautiful. He had the lights of salvation in his eyes, and his skinny shoulders weren’t shaking too much. “I miss my c’har,” he muttered finally, and blinked. He wasn’t going to cry if he could help. “She’s trying to tell me something,” he whispered. “Let’s find a bar. Miss Molly’s in car heaven, certain sure.”

We pulled away, found a bar, and parked. We drank some beer and slept across the car seats. Nobody wanted to go back on that road.

When we woke to a morning hot and clear, Potato’s fur had turned white. It didn’t seem to bother him much, but, for the rest of his life, he was a lot more thoughtful.

“Looks like mashed Potato,” Jesse said, but he wasn’t talking a whole lot. We drove home like a couple of old ladies. Guys came scorching past, cussing at our granny speed. We figured they could get mad and stay mad, or get mad and get over it. We made it back to Jesse’s place about two in the afternoon.

A couple of things happened quick. Jesse parked beside his house trailer, and the front end fell out of the Lincoln. The right side went down, thump, and the right front tire sagged. Jesse turned even whiter than me, and I was bloodless. We had posted over a hundred miles an hour in that thing. Somehow, when we crawled around underneath inspecting it, we missed something. My shoulders and legs shook so hard I could barely get out of the DeSoto. Chip was polite. He just yelped with happiness about being home, but he didn’t trot across my lap as we climbed from the car.

Nobody could trust their legs. Jesse climbed out of the Linc and leaned against it. You could see him chewing over all the possibilities, then arriving at the only one that made sense. Some hammer mechanic bolted that front end together with no locknut, no cotter pin, no lock washer, no lock nothin’. He just wrenched down a plain old nut, and the nut worked loose.

“Miss Molly knew,” Jesse whispered. “That’s what she was trying to tell.” He felt a lot better the minute he said it. Color came back to his face. He peered around the corner of the house trailer, looking toward Miss Molly’s grave.

Mike Tarbush was over there with his ’48 Roadmaster. Matt Simons stood beside him, and Matt’s ’56 Dodge sat beside the Roadmaster, looking smug; which that model Dodge always did.

“I figger,” Brother Jesse whispered, “that we should keep shut about last night. Word would just get around that we were alkies.” He pulled himself together, arranged his face like a horse trying to grin, and walked toward the Roadmaster.

Mike Tarbush was a man in mourning. He sat on the fat trunk of that Buick and gazed off toward the mountains. Mike wore extra large of everything, and still looked stout. He sported a thick red mustache to make up for his bald bead. From time to time he bragged about his criminal record, which amounted to three days in jail for assaulting a pool table. He threw it through a bar window.

Now his mustache drooped, and Mike seemed small inside his clothes. The hood of the Roadmaster gaped open. Under that hood things couldn’t be worse. The poor thing had thrown a rod into the next county.

Jesse looked under the hood and tsked. “I know what you’re going through,” he said to Mike. He kind of petted the Roadmaster. “I always figured Betty Lou would last a century. What happened?”

There’s no call to tell about a grown man blubbering, and especially not one who can heave pool tables. Mike finally got straight enough to tell the story.

“We was chasing The Dog,” he said. “At least I think so. Three nights ago over to Kalispell. This Golden Hawk blew past me sittin’.” Mike watched the distant mountains like he’d seen a miracle, or else like he was expecting one to happen. “That sonovabitch shore can drive,” he whispered in disbelief. “Blown out by a damn Studebaker.”

“But a very swift Studebaker,” Matt Simons said. Matt is as small as Mike is large, and Matt is educated. Even so, he’s set his share of fence posts. He looks like an algebra teacher, but not as delicate.

“Betty Lou went on up past her flat spot,” Mike whispered. “She was tryin’. We had ninety on the clock, and The Dog left us sitting.” He patted the Roadmaster. “I reckon she died of a broken heart.”

“We got three kinds of funerals,” Jesse said, and he was sympathetic. “We got the no-frills type, the regular type, and the extra special. The extra special comes with flowers.” He said it with a straight face, and Mike took it that way. He bought the extra special, and that was sixty-five dollars.

Mike put up a nice marker:

Brother Jesse worked on the Lincoln until the front end tracked rock solid. He named it Sue Ellen, but not Miss Sue Ellen, there being no way to know if Miss Molly was jealous. When we examined Miss Molly’s grave, the soil seemed rumpled. Wildflowers, which Jesse sowed on the grave, bloomed in midsummer. I couldn’t get it out of my head that Miss Molly was still alive, and maybe Jesse couldn’t either.

Jesse explained about the Lincoln’s name. “Sue Ellen is a lady I knew in Pocatello. I expect she misses me.” He said it hopeful, like he didn’t really believe it.

It looked to me like Jesse was brooding. Night usually found him in town, but sometimes he disappeared. When he was around, he drove real calm and always got home before midnight. The wildness hadn’t come out of Jesse, but he had it on a tight rein. He claimed he dreamed of Miss Molly. Jesse was working something out.

And so was I, awake or dreaming. Thoughts of The Road Dog filled my nights, and so did thoughts of the dancing ghost. As summer deepened, restlessness took me wailing under moonlight. The road unreeled before my headlights like a magic line that pointed to places under a warm sun where ladies laughed and fell in love. Something went wrong, though. During that summer the ladies stopped being dreams and became only imagination. When I told Jesse, he claimed I was just growing up. I wished for once Jesse was wrong. I wished for a lot of things, and one of the wishes came true. It was Mike Tarbush, not me, who got in the next tangle with Miss Molly.

Mike rode in from Billings, where he’d been car shopping. He showed up at Jesse’s place on Sunday afternoon. Montana lay restful. Birds hunkered on wires, or called from high grass. Highway 2 ran watery with sunlight, deserted as a road ever could be. When Mike rolled a ’56 Merc up beside the Linc, it looked like Old Home Week at a Ford dealership.

“I got to look at something,” Mike said when be climbed from the Mercury. He sort of plodded over to Miss Molly’s grave and hovered. Light breezes blew the wildflowers sideways. Mike looked like a bear trying to shake confusion from its head. He walked to the Roadmaster’s grave. New grass sprouted reddish green. “I was sober,” Mike said. “Most Saturday nights, maybe I ain’t, but I was sober as a deputy.”

For a while nobody said anything. Potato sat glowing and white and thoughtful. Chip slept in the sun beside one of the tabbies. Then Chip woke up. He turned around three times and dashed to hide under the bulldozer.

“Now, tell me I ain’t crazy,” Mike said. He perched on the front fender of the Merc, which was blue and white and adventuresome. “Name of Judith,” he said about the Merc. “A real lady.” He swabbed sweat from his bald head. “I got blown out by Betty Lou and Miss Molly. That sound reasonable?” He swabbed some more sweat and looked at the graves, which looked like little speed bumps on the prairie. “Nope,” be answered himself, “that don’t sound reasonable a-tall.”

“Something’s wrong with your Mercury,” Jesse said, real quiet. “You got a bad tire, or a hydraulic line about to blow, or something screwy in the steering.”

He made Mike swear not to breathe a word. Then he told about Miss Molly and about the front end of the Lincoln. When the story got over, Mike looked like a halfback hit by a twelve-man line.

“Don’t drive another inch,” Jesse said. “Not until we find what’s wrong.”

“That car already cracked a hundred,” Mike whispered. “I bought it special to chase one sumbitch in a Studebaker.” He looked toward Betty Lou’s grave. “The Dog did that.”

The three of us went through that Merc like men panning gold. The trouble was so obvious we missed it for two hours while the engine cooled. Then Jesse caught it. The fuel filter rubbed its underside against the valve cover. When Jesse touched it, the filter collapsed. Gasoline spilled on the engine and the spark plugs. That Merc was getting set to catch on fire.

“I got to wonder if The Dog did it,” Jesse said about Betty Lou after Mike drove away. “I wonder if The Road Dog is the Studebaker type.”

Nights started to get serious, but any lonesomeness on that road was only in a man’s head. As summer stretched past its longest days, and sunsets started earlier, ghosts rose beside crosses before daylight hardly left the land. We drove to work and back, drove to town and back. My job was steady at a filling station, but it asked day after day of the same old thing. We never did any serious wrenching; no engine rebuilds or transmissions, just tune-ups and flat tires. I dearly wanted to meet a nice lady, but no woman in her right mind would mess with a pump jockey.

Nights were different, though. I figured I was going crazy, and Jesse and Mike were worse. Jesse finally got his situation worked out. He claimed Miss Molly was protecting him. Jesse and Mike took the Linc and the Merc on long runs, just wringing the howl out of those cars. Some nights, they’d flash past me at speed no sane man would try in darkness. Jesse was never a real big drinker, and Mike stopped altogether. They were too busy playing road games. It got so the state cop never tried to chase them. He just dropped past Jesse’s place next day and passed out tickets.

The dancing ghost danced in my dreams, both asleep and driving. When daylight left the land, I passed metal crosses and remembered some of the wrecks.

Three crosses stood on one side of the railroad track, and four crosses on the other side. The three happened when some Canadian cowboys lost a race with a train. It was too awful to remember, but on most nights those guys stood looking down the tracks with startled eyes.

The four crosses happened when one-third of the senior class of ’59 hit that grade too fast on prom night. They rolled a damned old Chevrolet. More bodies by Fisher. Now the two girls stood in their long dresses, looking wistful. The two boys pretended that none of it meant nothin’.

Farther out the road, things had happened before my time. An Indian ghost most often stood beside the ghost of a deer. In another place a chubby old rancher looked real picky and angry.

The dancing ghost continued unpredictable. All the other ghosts stood beside their crosses, but the dancing ghost showed up anywhere he wanted, anytime he wanted. I’d slow the DeSoto as he came into my lights, and he was the spitting image of Jesse.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Jesse said when I tried to tell him. “I’m on a roll. I’m even gettin’ famous.”

He was right about that. People up and down the line joked about Jesse and his graveyard business.

“It’s the very best kind of advertising,” he told me. “We’ll see more action before snow flies.”

“You won’t see snow fly,” I told him, standing up to him a second time. “Unless you slow down and pay attention.”

“I’ve looked at heaps more road than you,” he told me, “and seeing things is just part of the night. That nighttime road is different.”

“This is starting to happen at last light.”

“I don’t see no ghosts,” he told me, and he was lying. “Except Miss Molly once or twice.” He wouldn’t say anything more.

And Jesse was right. As summer ran on, more graves showed up near Miss Molly. A man named Mcguire turned up with a ’41 Cad.

And Sam Winder buried his ’47 Packard.

And Pete Johansen buried his pickup.

Pete Johansen put up many a days work with her.

Montana roads are long and lonesome, and along the high line is lonesomest of all. From Saskatchewan to Texas, nothing stands tall enough to break the wind that begins to blow cold and clear toward late October. Rains sob away toward the Middle West, and grass turns goldish amber. Rattlesnakes move to high ground, where they will winter. Every creature on God’s plains begins to fat up against the winter. Soon it’s going to be thirty below and the wind blowing.

Four-wheel-drive weather. Internationals and Fords, with Dodge crummy wagons in the hills; cars and trucks will line up beside houses, garages, sheds, with electric wires leading from plugs to radiators and blocks. They look like packs of nursing pups. Work will slow, then stop, New work turns to accounting for the weather. Fuel, emergency generators, hay-bale insulation. Horses and cattle and deer look fuzzy beneath thick coats. Check your battery. If your rig won’t start, and you’re two miles from home, she won’t die—but you might.

School buses creep from stop to stop, and bundled kids look like colorful little bears trotting through late-afternoon light. Snowy owls come floating in from northward, while folks go to church on Sunday against the time when there’s some better amusement. Men hang around town, because home is either empty or crowded, depending on if you’re married. Folks sit before television, watching the funny, goofy, unreal world where everybody plays at being sexy and naked, even when they’re not.

And, nineteen years old is lonesome, too. And work is lonesome when nobody much cares for you.

Before winter set in, I got it in my head to run The Road Dog’s route. It was September. Winter would close us down pretty quick. The trip would be a luxury. What with room rent, and gas, and eating out, it was payday to payday with me. Still, one payday would account for gas and sandwiches. I could sleep across the seat. I hocked a Marlin .30-.30 to Jesse for twenty bucks. He seemed happy with my notion. He even went into the greenhouse and came out with an arctic sleeping bag.

“In case things get vigorous,” he said, and grinned. “Now get on out there and bite The Dog.”

It was a happy time. Dreams of ladies sort of set themselves to one side as I cruised across the eternal land. I came to love the land that autumn, in a way that maybe ranchers do. The land stopped being something that a road ran across. Canadian honkers came winging in vees from the north. The great Montana sky stood easy as eagles. When I’d pull over and cut the engine, sounds of grasshoppers mixed with birdcalls. Once, a wild turkey, as smart as any domestic turkey is dumb, talked to himself and paid me not the least mind.

The Dog showed up right away. In a café in Malta:

In a bar in Tampico:

In another bar in Culbertson:

I rolled Williston and dropped south through North Dakota. The Dog’s trail disappeared until Watford City, where it showed up in the can of a filling station:

And in a joint in Grassy Butte:

That morning in Grassy Butte, I woke to a sunrise where the land lay bathed in rose and blue. Silhouettes of grazing deer mixed with silhouettes of cattle. They herded together peaceful as a dream of having your own place, your own woman, and you working hard; and her glad to see you coming home.

In Bowman, The Dog showed up in a nice restaurant:

Ghosts did not show up along the road, but the road stayed the same. I tangled with a bathtub Hudson, a ’53, outside of Spearfish in South Dakota. I chased him into Wyoming like being dragged on a string. The guy played with me for twenty miles, then got bored. He shoved more coal in the stoker and purely flew out of sight.

Sheridan was a nice town back in those days, just nice and friendly; plus, I started to get sick of the way I smelled. In early afternoon, I found a five-dollar motel with a shower. That gave me the afternoon, the evening, and next morning if it seemed right. I spiffed up, put on a good shirt, slicked down my hair, and felt just fine.

The streets lay dusty and lazy. Ranchers’ pickups stood all dented and work-worn before bars, and an old Indian sat on hay bales in the back of one of them. He wore a flop hat, and he seemed like the eyes and heart of the prairie. He looked at me like I was a splendid puppy that might someday amount to something. It seemed okay when he did it.

I hung around a soda fountain at the five-and-dime because a girl smiled. She was just beautiful. A little horsey-faced, but with sun-blond hair, and with hands long-fingered and gentle. There wasn’t a chance of talking, because she stood behind the counter for ladies’ underwear. I pretended to myself that she looked sad when I left.

It got on to late afternoon. Sunlight drifted in between buildings, and shadows overreached the streets. Everything was normal, and then everything got scary.

I was just poking along, looking in store windows, checking the show at the movie house, when, ahead of me, Jesse walked toward a Golden Hawk. He was maybe a block and a half away, but it was Jesse, sure as God made sunshine. It was a Golden Hawk. There was no way of mistaking that car. Hawks were high-priced sets of wheels, and Studebaker never sold that many.

I yelled and ran. Jesse waited beside the car, looking sort of puzzled. When I pulled up beside him, he grinned.

“It’s happening again,” he said, and his voice sounded amused, but not mean. Sunlight made his face reddish, but shadow put his legs and feet in darkness. “You believe me to be a gentleman named Jesse Still.” Behind him, shadows of buildings told that night was on its way. Sunset happens quick on the prairies.

And I said, “Jesse, what in the hell are you doing in Sheridan?”

And he said, “Young man, you are not looking at Jesse Still.” He said it quiet and polite, and he thought he had a point. His voice was smooth and cultured, so he sure didn’t sound like Jesse. His hair hung combed out, and he wore clothes that never came from a dry goods. His jeans were soft looking and expensive. His boots were tooled. They kind of glowed in the dusk. The Golden Hawk didn’t have a dust speck on it, and the interior had never carried a tool, or a car part, or a sack of feed. It just sparkled. I almost believed him, and then I didn’t.

“You’re fooling with me.”

“On the contrary,” he said, real soft. “Jesse Still is fooling with me, although he doesn’t mean to. We’ve never met.” He didn’t exactly look nervous, but he looked impatient. He climbed in the Stude and started the engine. It purred like racing tune. “This is a large and awfully complex world,” he said, “and Mr. Still will probably tell you the same. I’ve been told we look like brothers.”

I wanted to say more, but he waved real friendly and pulled away. The flat and racy back end of the Hawk reflected one slash of sunlight, then rolled into shadow. If I’d had a hot car, I’d have gone out hunting him. It wouldn’t have done a lick of good, but doing something would be better than doing nothing.

I stood sort of shaking and amazed. Life had just changed somehow, and it wasn’t going to change back. There wasn’t a thing in the world to do, so I went to get some supper.

The Dog had signed in at the café:

And—I sat chewing roast beef and mashed potatoes.

And—I saw how the guy in the Hawk might be lying, and that Jesse was a twin.

And—I finally saw what a chancy, dicey world this was, because without meaning to, exactly, and without even knowing it was happening, I had just run up against The Road Dog.

It was a night of dreams. Dreams wouldn’t let me go. The dancing ghost tried to tell me Jesse was triplets. The ghosts among the crosses begged rides into nowhere, rides down the long tunnel of night that ran past lands of dreams, but never turned off to those lands. It all came back: the crazy summer, the running, running, running behind the howl of engines. The Road Dog drawled with Jesse’s voice, and then The Dog spoke cultured. The girl at the five-and-dime held out a gentle hand, then pulled it back. I dreamed of a hundred roadside joints, bars, cafés, old-fashioned filling stations with grease pits. I dreamed of winter wind, and the dark, dark days of winter; and of nights when you hunch in your room because it’s a chore too big to bundle up and go outside.

I woke to an early dawn and slurped coffee at the bakery, which kept open because they had to make morning doughnuts. The land lay all around me, but it had nothing to say. I counted my money and figured miles.

I climbed in the DeSoto, thinking I had never got around to giving it a name. The road unreeled toward the west. It ended in Seattle, where I sold my car. Everybody said there was going to be a war, and I wasn’t doing anything anyway. I joined the Navy.