Forlesen could not hear what was being said. After a moment (his own speaker had fallen silent) he heard the driver say, “Yes, ma’am. Over and out.” Then the pistol was aimed at Forlesen once more, this time at his face, through the window of the blue car. The driver said, “You roll that thing, bud, and you roll it now or I shoot.”
Forlesen stepped on the accelerator, and his car began to move forward, slowly at first, then picking up speed until he felt sure it was traveling much faster than a man could run. In the mirror above the windshield Forlesen could see the blue car; it did not turn—as he had supposed it might—to follow him, but after a delay continued to descend the road he himself was going up.
He had supposed that this road would lead him to Model Pattern Products (whatever that might be), but when he had been following it for some time it joined another similar but far wider, highway. There were now multiple lines of traffic all going in the same direction, and by traveling in the fast lane he could avoid looking over the side. It was a relief he accepted gratefully; he had a good head for heights, but he had found himself studying the long shadows of the supports whenever the twistings of the road put them on the side upon which he drove.
With that distraction out of the way he discovered that he enjoyed driving, though the memory of the twisted columns remained in the back of his mind. Yet the performance of the yellow car was deeply satisfying: it sped to the top of the high, white, billowing undulations of the highway with a power slight yet sure, and descended in a way that made him almost believe himself a hawk—or the operator of some fantastic machine that could itself soar like a bird—or even such a winged being as had appeared on the cover of the red book. The clear sky, which lay now to the right and left of the highway as well as above it, promoted these fantasies, and its snowy clouds might almost have been other highways like the one on which he traveled—indeed, from time to time he seemed to see moving dots of color on them, as though cars like his own, but immensely remote, dashed over plains and precipices of vapor. He used the defecator and the urinal, dispensed himself a sparkling green beverage; the car was a cozy and secret place of retirement, a second body, his palace and his fortress; he imagined himself a mouse descending a clear stream in half an eggshell, the master of a comet enfolding a hollow world.
He had been traveling in this way for a long while when he saw the hitchhiker. The man did not stand at the side of the road where Forlesen would have expected to see a pedestrian if, indeed, he had anticipated seeing any at all, but balanced himself on the high divider that separated the innermost lane from those on which traffic moved in the opposite direction. As he was some distance ahead, Forlesen was able to observe him for several minutes before reaching the point at which he stood.
He appeared to be a tall man, much stooped; and despite the ludicrousness of his position, his attitude suggested a certain dignity. His hands and arms were in constant motion—not only as he sought to maintain his balance, but because he mimed to each car that passed his desire to ride, acting out in pantomime the car’s stopping, his haste to reach it, his opening the door and seating himself, his gratitude.
Nor did he care, apparently, in which direction he rode. While Forlesen watched, he turned around and for a few moments sought to attract the attention of a passing vehicle on the opposite side; then, as though he realized that he was unlikely to have better fortune there than in the direction he had chosen originally, turned back again. His clothing was stiffly old-fashioned, once fairly good perhaps, but now worn and dusty. When Forlesen stopped before this scarecrow figure and motioned toward the seat beside him, the hitchhiker seemed so startled at having gotten a ride at last that Forlesen wondered if he was going to get in. Traffic zoomed and swirled around them like a summer storm.
With his long legs folded high and the edge of the dashboard pressing against his shins he looked (Forlesen thought) like a cricket. An old cricket, for despite his agility and air of alertness the hitchhiker was old, his mouth full of crooked and stained old teeth and new white straight ones which were surely false, his bright, dark eyes surrounded by wrinkles, the hand he extended crook fingered and callused. “Name’s Abraham Beale.” Bad teeth in a good smile.
“Emanuel Forlesen,” Forlesen said, taking the hand as he started the car rolling again. “Where are you going, Mr. Beale?”
“Anywhere.” Beale was craning his neck to look out the small window in the back of the car. “Glad you didn’t get hit,” he said. “ ’Fraid you would.”
“I’m sure they could see I had stopped,” Forlesen said, “and there are plenty of other lanes.”
“Half of them’s asleep. More’n half. You’re awake, so I guess you thought everybody was, ain’t that right?”
“They’re driving; I’d think they’d run off the road if they were sleeping.”
Beale was dusting his high-crowned, battered old hat with his big hands, patting and brushing it gently as though it were a baby animal of some delicate and appealing kind, a young rabbit or a little coatimundi. “I could see them,” he said. “From where I was up there. Most of them didn’t even see me—off in cloudland somewheres.”
“I’m going to Model Pattern Products,” Forlesen said.
The older man shook his head, and, having finished with his hat, set it on one knee. “I already tried there,” he said, “nothin’ for me.” In a slightly lower voice, the voice of a man who is ashamed but feels he should not be, he added: “Lost my old job. I been trying to hook on somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Forlesen found, somewhat to his surprise, that he
“About everything. There ain’t much I can’t turn a hand to. By rights I’m a lawyer, but I’ve soldiered some and worked stock out west, and lumberjacked, and once I fired on the railroad. And I’m a pretty good reaper mechanic if I do say so myself.” Beale took a round tin box of snuff from one of the pockets of his shabby vest and put a pinch of the brown contents under his lip, then offered the box to Forlesen.
“You’ve had an interesting time,” Forlesen said, waving it away. “I would have guessed you were a farmer, I think, if I had had to guess.”
“Well, I’ve followed a plow and I ain’t ashamed to say it. I was raised on the farm—oldest of thirteen children, and we all helped. I’d farm again if I had the land; it would be something. You know what? My dad, he left the old place to me, and the same day I got the letter that said I was to have it—from a esteemed colleague there, you know, a old fellow named Abner Bunter, we used to call him Banty; my dad’d had him do his will for him, me not being there—I got another that said the state was taking her for a highway. Had it and lost it between rippin’ up one envelope and the other. I remember when it happened I went out and bought a cigar; I had been workin’, but I couldn’t work no more, not right then.”
“Didn’t they pay you for it?” Forlesen asked. He had been coming up behind a car the color of sour milk, and changed lanes as he spoke, shooting into an opening that allowed him to pass.
“You bet. There was a check in there,” Beale said. “I planted her, but she didn’t grow.”
