could not possibly be.
He returned to the road instead, confident now that a well-dressed man would soon get a ride, that even a well-dressed man with scorched cheeks and a bloody finger would not have to wait for long. The statue of ice that had watched him eat his waffle watched him again; it wore an expression of sullen satisfaction, possibly because of the slight change in angle. The ocean spoke to him as an angry mother berates her child; but though he could hear the anger and rebuke in its voice, he could not understand what it was it wished him to do, what the waves thought he ought to have done.
It was half an hour before the first car passed, and it did not stop. After a second wait that seemed equally long, a large red bus lumbered by, its driver ostentatiously oblivious to the frantic figure not at an approved stop. On the television news, he had often heard about drivers who would not pick up even the dying, but it had not occurred to him before that many of these must have been company drivers forbidden by their companies to provide aid, or that this must have been concealed through some private arrangement between the companies and the news media.
He counted the waves as they spoke on the ice-locked beach; and when he had come to a hundred and seventeen, the convertible passed, driven by the bespectacled clerk. He stepped into the middle of the road to make it stop; but save for swerving around him, the clerk ignored him still.
Deciding it was useless, he turned away and trudged after the convertible, which soon vanished around a snow-blind curve. The bus had passed, and so it seemed likely to him that there was a bus stop somewhere along the road, a bus stop from which country people who did not have cars or trucks could reach the city—a bus stop, and perhaps even a bench. His legs trembled from all the walking and standing he had done that morning; his head, which had ached off and on ever since he had awakened in United, throbbed now with pain.
A car behind him pinged and chittered like a broken music box. He did not turn to look, sure that no matter what he did it would not stop and unwilling to step from the cleared strip to its snow-packed edges.
“You need a ride?” It was Fanny, calling through the open window of one of the subcompacts he had looked at in the parking lot.
He tried to smile. “Hey, do I!” She might be Klamm’s spy; but if Klamm and the police were against North, was that so bad? Like the doors of the car he had driven for North, this one had doors hinged toward the rear. He twisted the handle, opened the door, and got in.
“Didn’t you have luggage or anything?” She sounded sincere and slightly stupid.
“Not much,” he told her.
Her left foot depressed the long clutch pedal as she pulled the shift rod smoothly back. “I see. Well, I wish you’d stayed on. Anyway they would’ve called a cab or something for you when you checked out, you know.”
“I didn’t check out.”
The clutch pedal came smoothly up; the engine hesitated as if ready to die, then caught hold. The little car shook itself and lurched ahead. “They said you did.”
“They locked me out.”
“You didn’t pay?”
“We were paid for several days yet,” he said.
“They wouldn’t do that.”
He shrugged, looking out at the snowy countryside.
The little car staggered into second. “Anyway, there went my winter job. This fall they begged me—I mean
“Maybe that woman at the beauty shop could find something for you.” He turned to look at her. “I was going to say, the one who did your hair, but your hair hasn’t been touched.”
“You noticed.” When she had shifted into third, she patted her hair. “Naw, she wanted to shampoo and set it, but it don’t really need it. I don’t really need a perm either—I knew she’d tell me that. I just wanted somebody to talk to. Where are you going anyway?”
“The railway station.”
“You’re blowing town?”
He nodded. “I’m going to Marea.”
“That’s good. I mean, things don’t seem to be working out so good for you here.”
“Will you drop me there?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.” He hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t mention this, but do you know the name of the man I was staying with?”
“I don’t pay attention to that kind of thing.”
“Yesterday morning we ate breakfast together in the coffee shop, but you weren’t our waitress.”
“You probably got Maisie, or maybe Edith. See, they kept three of us on, and we were supposed to work two days and off one, Maisie and Edith yesterday, me and Maisie today.”
He told her, “The other man in my room was using the name Campbell, but he was really William T. North.”
She did not answer.
He said, “You know people in the Iron Boot. You know who William T. North is.”
“And you want me to put you on a train for Marea.”
