He sat on the edge of the bed looking down at the floor. ‘I’m still driving them to Lexington?’
‘Unless you want out. Leave the van, and fly home.’
‘Nope.’ He shook his head. ‘A bargain’s a bargain. And I may as well come all the way. That van’s none too easy in reverse... don’t know that you could handle it.’
I half smiled and didn’t argue. I’d wanted him with me, but only willingly, and I’d got that. He knotted his tie and brushed his hair and then took a sidelong glance at my own appearance, which fell a ton short of his. He was a fleshy man of about fifty, bald, pale-skinned, and unexcitable. His nerves, I thought, were going to be at least equal to the evening’s requirements.
‘Let’s go, then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I paid in advance.’
I followed him across to the van and climbed up into the cab. Sam started the engine, told me he’d filled up with gas when he’d first reached Kingman, and rolled out south-east on the road to the farm. His broad face looked perfectly calm in the glow from the dashboard, and he handled his six-stall horsebox like a kiddicar. He went eight miles in silence, and then all he said was, ‘I’d sure hate to live this far from town, with nowhere to get a beer.’
We passed the third of the three side roads and started on the last ten uninhabited miles to the farm. Three miles farther on Sam gave an alarmed exclamation and braked from his cautious thirty to a full stop. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘That gauge.’ He pointed, and I looked. The needle on the temperature gauge was quivering on red.
‘Have to look see,’ he grunted, and switched off the engine. My thoughts as he disappeared out of the cab were one enormous curse. Of all hopeless, dangerous places for his van to break down.
He came back and opened the door my side. I jumped down beside him and he took me round to show me the exhaust.
‘Look,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Water.’
Several drops slid out, glistening in the light of his torch.
‘Gasket,’ he said, putting into one word the enormity of the disaster, and what he thought of fate for trapping us in it.
‘No water in the radiator,’ I said.
‘Right.’
‘And if we go on, the engine will seize up.’
‘Right again.’
‘I suppose you don’t carry any extra water in the van?’
‘We sure do,’ he said. ‘Never travel without it.’
‘Can’t we pour some in the radiator...?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We can. There’s two gallons. We can pour in a quarter, and go three miles maybe before it’s all leaked out, and then another quarter, another three miles. Four quarts, twelve miles. And that’s it.’
Thirteen miles out from Kingman. We could just about get back. Seven to the farm. We could refill the radiator at the farm, but Sam couldn’t set out on his two thousand mile journey with a stolen cargo in a van emptying like a dry dock.
‘There’s an extra gasket, of course,’ he said.
‘A spare one?’
‘Sure. Always carry a full set of spares. Never know where you’re going to need them. Universal joints, big ends, carburettors, I carry them all. Anyone with any sense does that.’
‘Well,’ I said in relief, ‘how long will it take you to fit the spare?’
He laid the engine bare and considered it in the torch light.
‘Cylinder head gasket. Say three hours.’
‘Three hours!’
‘Won’t take much less,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’
I looked at my watch. Eight-fifty. Three hours made eleven-fifty; and if we then went on to the farm and picked up the horses we couldn’t be back through Kingman until one-fifteen.
Matt would reach Pittsville Boulevard by nine-thirty, and finish his insurance business long before ten. If he drove straight home again he would be on the farm road at midnight. If Sam changed the gasket, so would we.
If Matt stopped to play the tables, he would be at least an hour later. His clothes had suggested he would stop. But whether for one hour or six, there was no way of telling.
‘Change the gasket,’ I said abruptly. ‘Then we’ll see.’
Sam nodded philosophically. It was what he would have done in any case if the van had broken down anywhere else, and without more ado he sorted out what he wanted and started unscrewing.
‘Can I help?’ I said.
He shook his head and clipped his torch on to a convenient spar to give a steady working light. There seemed to be little haste in his manner, but also no hesitation and a good deal of expertise. The heap of unplugged parts grew steadily on a square of canvas at his feet.
I walked away a few steps and felt for the cigarettes. Two left. I’d still forgotten to buy more. The smoke didn’t help much towards making the next decision: to go on, or to go back.
I’d already gambled on Matt staying to play. If it had been Yola, I would have felt surer that it would be for most of the night: but her brother might not have the fever, might only want a short break in his boring stint with the horses. How short? How long?
The decision I came to, if you could call it that, was to wait and see what time Sam restarted the engine.
The night, outside the bright pool by the van, was as dark as the one before. The stars glittered remotely, and the immensity of the American continent marked their indifference to the human race. Against such size, what did one man matter? A walk into the desert...
Carefully I pinched out the end of my cigarette and put the stub in my pocket. A good criminal, I thought wryly: I’d always been that. I had a job to do, and even when I’d finished it, I was going for no walks into the desert. I was going back to Santa Barbara, to have breakfast with Walt and Eunice and Lynnie. The prospect at that moment seemed totally unreal, so far were the Arizona hills from the lush coast, so far had I been into the wasteland inside me.
I went back to Sam and asked how it was going. He had the cylinder head off and was removing the cracked gasket.
‘So, so,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m breaking the record.’
I did my best at a smile. He grunted, and said he could do with a cup of coffee, and I said so could I. We hadn’t brought any.
He worked on. The air was still warmer than an English summer and he wiped sweat off his bald forehead with the back of a greasy hand. The light shone on his thick stubby fingers, and the click of his spanners echoed across the empty land. The hands on my watch went round in slow fractions. The gasket was wasting the night. And where was Matt?
After two hours Sam’s spanner slipped on a nut and he cursed. In spite of his calm, the tension wasn’t far from the surface. He stopped what he was doing, stretched upright, took three deep breaths and a look at the night sky, and waited for me to say something.
‘You’re doing fine,’ I said.
He sniffed. ‘What’ll happen if they catch us here?’
‘We won’t get the horses.’
He grimaced at my non-answer and went back to his task. ‘What have you been doing all day?’
‘Nothing. Sitting still.’
‘You look half dead,’ he commented. ‘Pass me those two washers, will you?’
I gave him the washers. ‘How much longer?’
‘Can’t say.’
I stifled the urge to tell him to hurry. He was going as fast as he could. But time was ticking away, and the postponed decision had got to be made. Turning my back on the tugging desert I climbed up to sit in the cab. Eleven-twenty. Matt could be a bare quarter of an hour out from Kingman. Or glued to the green baize and the tricky numbers in Las Vegas.
Which?
For a long half hour I looked out of the back windows while no helpful telepathic messages flowed through them. A straightforward gamble, I thought. Just decide if the winnings were worth the risk.