By now he had scouted the Boise area and found nothing. To Susan he said, “I think I’ll have to get out on the road.”
“To where?” she said. “You mean a long trip?”
“Maybe to L.A. Or to Salt Lake City. Or Portland. Some place where I can find something warehoused. I can’t let that money sit.”
He began to make calls long-distance, trying to scout something in advance.
Two days later he had the Merc entirely lubed and checked over, its tires rotated, and then, with a suitcase in the trunk, he set off by himself on Highway 26, going west into Oregon and California.
9
The first stretch of driving brought him entirely through Oregon and into the northern-most part of California. Turning south he passed through Klamath Falls, through the border station, and then made the difficult drive past Mount Shasta and along the twisting grades near Dunsmuir in the deepest part of the lumber country, with lakes and fast-moving water always within sight.
Early in the morning he left the mountainous lumber country and came out onto furiously-hot flat valley farmland. Worn out, he pulled off the road at the first motel.
The motel amounted to nothing more than shack-like cabins facing one another in two lines, with gravel strewn about, and giant century plants at the office door. In a pair of lawn chairs a middle-aged couple slept, shaded by a beach umbrella. Several cars had pulled off the road and parked. He saw and heard a few children scratching in the dust in the shadows by a cabin porch.
However, he had already shut off his motor. After haggling with the motel owner he made his regular deaclass="underline" use of the cabin for a period of eight hours for a dollar and a half. His tenancy did not entitle him to bathe, or to get into the bed, but he could wash his face, use the hand towel but not the bath towel, lie on the bed without throwing back the covers or touching the sheets, and naturally he could make use of the potty. At eight in the morning he locked up his car, entered the badly-ventilated cabin, and lay down for his nap.
At four in the afternoon the owner woke him. A number of cars had begun to show up, and the cabin was needed. He collected his watch, which he had taken off, and his shoes, and padded groggily outside into the still-blinding sunlight. As soon as he was out, the owner’s wife hurried in with a fresh hand towel and soap.
“Any place around here I can eat?” he asked the owner, a short balding cross-looking man.
“There’s a coffee shop and gas station about ten miles farther on,” the man said, striding off to greet a Plymouth full of people that had come crunching over the gravel toward the motel office.
Bruce got back into his car, started up the engine, and drove back onto the road.
When he spied the coffee shop he drove up to the pumps of the gas station, told the attendant to fill the tank, and, leaving the car there, jogged across the highway to the coffee shop. While he ate a meal of meatloaf with gravy, canned peas, coffee and berry pie, he watched the attendant checking the water and tires and battery.
Lighting a cigarette he sat at his empty plate, conscious of his loneliness.
The all-night drive had not given him any pleasure. The glare of oncoming headlights had bothered him more than usual. And the straining, hour by hour, to stay awake and see each of the reflector-posts that indicated bends. He had played the car radio all night, hearing mostly static and indistinct snatches of popular tunes from stations too far off to be identified. They floated in and out. Faint voices of announcers, speaking from other states, selling products for stores that he would never see.
And of course he had run over a variety of running shapes, some of them rabbits, some possibly snakes and lizards. And just at sunup two brilliantly-colored birds had flitted directly in front of him and then vanished. Later, at a gas station, when he had raised the hood, he had found both birds dead and crushed at the bottom of the radiator. He had been unable to avoid any of the things he ran over, and that depressed him. He could not drive the highway without killing one small animal after another. And the number of already-dead animals, flattened out on the pavement ahead of him, exceeded all count.
At night, on the highway, he passed through closed-up towns in which not a single light had been left on. Those towns alarmed him. No persons, no motion. Not even cars parked at the gray-dark shops. The gas stations empty and deserted, too; a terrible sight for the driver to see. But sooner or later a lit-up gas station put in an appearance, often with one or more giant diesel trucks parked nearby with motors on, the drivers inside the café eating roast beef sandwiches. Spot of yellow light, with jukebox going, washroom standing door-ajar, gleaming white tiles and bowl, paper towels, mirror. Entering, he had washed his face, and looked out past the open door, at the lumber forest. At the flat blackness outside the washroom. How lonely it all was. How silent.
He thought, Once you get used to spending your nights with someone else, then you are sunk for this. Once you learn how it feels to wake up and see another face near yours. And have another person flop over against you in the early hours of dawn when the room gets cold. It’s more than sex. Sex is over with in a few minutes. This is peaceful, and it goes on as long as you have her lying with you. It puts an end to an awful thing; it starts something better than anything else in life.
It changes everything, he thought. Spreads out and covers every kind of event.
That was something he had not expected or known about. Sleeping a night now and then with a girl had no relationship with it. His anticipation of what it would be like with Susan had fallen short of the actuality. It had a much greater hold on him than he would have expected. That nine or ten days could completely change him, his views and preferences, affecting even this, his sense of driving, his feel of the road …
After his meal he picked up his car and continued the drive on down California to the Bay Area. He arrived late at night, crossed the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, found an underpass that took him off the freeway, and at last reached Market Street. He parked and got out, feeling shaky but excited.
Something about Market Street had changed. He walked along the well-lit sidewalk, past the towering noble movie houses, and then he realized what it was. The clanking old streetcars had gone. Instead, buses shot quietly along at the curb.
Hands in his pockets he strolled in the direction of the waterfront. When he reached First and Market he began to notice small shops that sold Army surplus pots and clothing and shoes, so he crossed to the other side and started back. At Fifth and Market he wandered off onto one side street and then another, seeing all the different small shops, some prosperous and some not. After an hour or so he found himself staring at a display of tape recorders and cameras and typewriters, among which was a small aluminum portable that he had never seen before. The brand name was Mithrias. Presently he noticed a cord hanging out of the back. The thing was electric. And he could make out a belt disappearing from the carriage inside to the motor, so it had an electric carriage return. Nothing on it stated that it was an import, but he recognized it as the Japanese portable Milt had told him about.
The tag could be partly read. He read it, but it gave ordinary information, in acceptable and idiomatic English. But he knew that this was the Japanesse machine. His instincts, his talent, told him.
The store, of course, was shut. But he did not have to know any more than this; the machine, to some extent, had been distributed in the Bay Area. Someone had jobbed it to this retailer. Naturally San Francisco and Los Angeles would be the most likely spots to find it, since the machines would come in by ships and these were ports. As were Seattle and San Diego. But the retail trade was higher, here.