It would be restful, in a way, driving on and on through Ohio and Kansas and Colorado or Arizona or whatever states lay between him and Los Angeles. Five or six days of peace and quiet, no need to make small talk, no kids to amuse—
His frame of mind began to darken not long after he got on the. Pennsylvania Turnpike. If you have enough time to think, you will eventually think of the things you should have thought of before; and now, as he rolled through the thickening snow on this gray and silent afternoon, certain aspects of a trunkless car occurred to him that in his rush to get on the road he had succeeded in overlooking earlier. What about a tool kit, for instance? If he had a flat, what would be use for a jack and a wrench? That led him to a much more chilling thought: what would he use for a spare tire? A trunk was something more than a cavity back of the rear seat; in most cars it contained highly useful objects.
None of which he had with him.
None of which he had even thought about, until just this minute.
He contemplated the prospects of driving from coast to coast without a spare tire and without tools, and his mood of warm security evaporated abruptly. At the next exit, he decided, he’d hunt for a service station and pick up a tire, fast. There would be room for it on the back seat next to his luggage. And while he was at it, he might as well buy—
The U-Haul, he suddenly observed, was jackknifing around awkwardly in back, as though its wheels had just lost traction. A moment later the car was doing the same and he found himself moving laterally in a beautiful skid across an unsanded slick patch on the highway.
Steer in the direction of the skid, that’s what you’re supposed to do, he told himself, strangely calm. Somehow he managed to keep his foot off the brake despite all natural inclinations, and watched in quiet horror as car and trailer slid placidly across the empty lane to his right and came to rest, upright and facing forward, in the piled-up snowbank along the shoulder of the road.
He let out his breath slowly, scratched his chin, and gently fed some gas. The spinning wheels made a high-pitched whining sound against the snow. He went nowhere. He was stuck.
II
The little man had a ruddy-cheeked face, white hair so long it curled at the ends, and metal-rimmed spectacles. He glanced at the snow-covered autos in the used-car lot, scowled, and trudged toward the showroom.
“Came to pick up my car,” he announced. “Valve job. Delayed by business in another part of the world.”
The dealer looked uncomfortable. “The car’s not here.”
“So I see. Get it, then.”
“We more or less sold it about a week ago.”
“Sold it? Sold my car? My car?”
“Which you abandoned. Which we stored here for a whole year. This ain’t no parking lot here. Look, I talked to my lawyer first, and he said—”
“All right. All right Who was the purchaser?”
“A guy, he was transferred to California and had to get a car fast to drive out. He—”
“His name?”
“Look, I can’t tell you that. He bought the car in good faith. You got no call bothering him now.”
The little man said, “If I chose, I could drew the information from you in a number of ways. But never mind. I’ll locate the car easily enough. And you’ll certainly regret this scandalous breach of custodial duties. You certainly shall.”
He went stamping out of the showroom, muttering indignantly.
Several minutes later a flash of lightning blazed across the sky. “Lightning?” the auto dealer wondered. “In January? During a snowstorm?”
When the thunder came rumbling in, every pane of plate glass in every window of the showroom shattered and fell out in the same instant.
Sam Norton sat spinning his wheels for a while in mounting fury. He knew it did no good, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do at this point, except hit the gas and hope for the car to pull itself out of the snow. His only other hope was for the highway patrol to come along, see his plight, and summon a towtruck. But the highway was all but empty, and those few cars that drove by shot past him without stopping.
When ten minutes had passed, he decided to have a closer look at the situation. He wondered vaguely if he could somehow scuff away enough snow with his foot to allow the wheels to get a little purchase. It didn’t sound plausible, but there wasn’t much else he could do. He got out and headed to the back of the car.
And noticed for the first time that the trunk was open.
The lid had popped up about a foot, along that neat welded line of demarcation. In astonishment Norton pushed it higher and peered inside.
The interior had a dank, musty smell. He couldn’t see much of what might be in there, for the light was dim and the lid would lift no higher. It seemed to him that there were odd lumpy objects scattered about, objects of no particular size or shape, but he felt nothing when he groped around. He had the impression that the things in the trunk were moving away from his hand, vanishing into the darkest corners as he reached for them. Sut then his fingers encountered something cold and smooth, and he heard a welcome clink of metal on metal. He pulled.
A set of tire chains came forth.
He grinned at his good luck. Just what he needed! Quickly he unwound the chains and crouched by the back wheels of the car to fasten them in place. The lid of the trunk slammed shut as he worked—hinge must be loose, he thought—but that was of no importance. In five minutes he had the chains attached.
Getting behind the wheel, he started the car again, fed some gas, delicately let in the clutch, and bit down hard on his lower lip by way of helping the car out of the snowbank. The car eased forward until it was in the clear. He left the chains on until he reached a service area eight miles up the turnpike. There he undid them; and when he stood up, he found that the trunk had popped open again.
Norton tossed the chains inside and knelt in another attempt to see what else might be in the trunk; but not even by squinting did he discover anything. When he touched the lid, it snapped shut, and once more the rear of the car presented that puzzling welded-tight look.
Mine not to reason why, he told himself. He headed into the station and asked the attendant to sell him a spare tire and a set of tools. The attendant, frowning a bit, studied the car through the station window and said, “Don’t know as we got one to fit. We got standards and we got smalls, but you got an in-between. Never saw a size tire like that, really.”
“Maybe you ought to take a closer look,” Norton suggested. “Just in case it’s really a standard foreign-car size, and—”
“Nope. I can see from here. What you driving, anyway? One of them Japanese jobs?”
“Something like that.”
“Look, maybe you can get a tire in Harrisburg. They got a place there, it caters to foreign cars, get yourself a muffler, shocks, anything you need.”
“Thanks,” Norton said, and went out.
He didn’t feel like stopping when the turnoff for Harrisburg came by. It made him a little queasy to be driving without a spare, but somehow he wasn’t as worried about it as he’d been before. The trunk had had tire chains when he needed them. There was no telling what else might turn up back there at the right time. He then drove on.
Since the little man’s own vehicle wasn’t available to him, he had to arrange a rental. That was no problem, though. There were agencies in every day that specialized in such things. Very shortly he was in touch with one, not exactly by telephone, and was explaining his dilemma. “The difficulty,” the little man said, “is that he’s got a head start of several days. I’ve traced him to a point west of Chicago, and he’s moving forward at a pretty steady 450 miles a day.”