Briefly as he drove he thought about the girl, the nineteen-year-old Irma something… what did she say her name was? He wondered what had become of her in the week since he had last seen her, wondered what she had done since deserting him at the bombed bridge. Or since he had deserted her. Where was she now?
Night found him still rolling southward.
He cautiously refrained from using the road lights for fear their brilliant beams might attract shooting. The white concrete strip was not hard to see as it unrolled before him; he drove with only the dim parking lights aglow, to give warning to anyone who might be in his path. Far over on the horizon an unseen structure illuminated the night with its fiery, burning glow. Another farmhouse, he supposed.
Sometime during the early morning hours he stopped for a few minutes to get out of the car, to stretch his legs and stand stiffly on the pavement examining the dawn stars. Waiting there, standing only half awake in the very dead stillness of the waning nights he picked up the sound of another car coming toward him, heard the fast approaching whine of a motor in labor and the peculiar sound of hot tires taking punishment on the cement roadway. Turning quickly, he discovered distant headlights probing the earth and sky.
Gary hesitated but a few indecisive seconds, and then leaped behind the wheel of his automobile to roll it forward across the road. He cut diagonally across the pavement to let the front wheels come to rest in a shallow ditch paralleling the highway, snapped off the motor and the lights and leaped out again, leaving one door hanging open as though the car had been abandoned. Recrossing the road, he sped back a hundred feet along the highway and dropped into the opposite ditch, to watch the approach of the strange car with his eyes barely above the rim of the depression.
It roared toward him through the night, making no attempt at caution or secrecy, the noise and the headlights magnified many times in the vacant stillness. When it was but half a mile distant he dropped forward into the bottom of the ditch, hiding his face to prevent its contrasting whiteness from betraying him. He followed the rapid progress of the car with his ears, judging its nearness by the overtaxed revolutions of the motor. It must be doing eighty or ninety miles an hour. He thought he could hear someone shouting or screaming above the noise of it.
It came rushing on, the reflected fan-glare of the headlights briefly illuminating the bottom of the ditch so that he saw his own outstretched hands before him. It was abreast of him, above him for a fraction of a second, and then it was gone, passing him and his ditched automobile as though both objects were nonexistent. Carefully he raised his eyes to the rim of the shoulder, staring after the receding red splotches as they dwindled with distance. He stayed where he was, watching them until they were gone from sight, until the faraway beams of the headlamps had been lost in the night, until even the sounds of the motor and the tires had dwindled into nothing And then he climbed back onto the road.
Now why, he asked himself, had he done that? Was it caution born of long-ago battle training, or was it nothing more than fear of another moving car in the darkness? They had not been interested in his automobile, hadn't so much as slackened speed to look at it. Why, then, had he acted as he did?
He crossed over to his car and stood staring at it, still thinking of that other one He could find no ready answer — but he realized he wanted to play the cautious role. Staring down at the rear of his car, he remembered the bright red taillights of that other, and without stopping to analyze the reasons for doing so, raised his foot to smash both red glasses and the small bulbs beneath them. Stepping forward to the dash, he pulled on the parking lights and again returned to the back bumper. There was no revealing gleam.
Gary jockeyed the car onto the pavement and once again drove south, toward Kentucky. He moved along slowly with the windows open so that he might hear the coming of another motor, drove with constant attention to the far road ahead and the rear-vision mirror, that he might see approaching lights while still some distance away. Only after sunrise did he leave the highway and pull up a dusty country road to catch a brief sleep.
The bridge spanning the Mississippi was intact, one of the very few the army had left that way. Two other bridges had been found and passed by as useless before he arrived at this whole one. And the opposite end of the intact structure was heavily guarded as always; this one was blocked by a big troop carrier parked sideways just beyond the middle, two soldiers manning a heavy machine gun in the rear of the truck. Behind them, Gary saw an armed patrol waiting for something to happen. He intended to be the something.
He stopped his car near the bridge, got out of it and walked onto the span, warily watching the two men behind the machine gun. When one of them moved, he came to a sudden halt. Unbuttoning his shirt, he lifted out the chain hanging around his neck and held the dogtags high in the air, knowing that he was making his point when the morning sun glistened on their metallic surfaces. One of the machine gunners called to someone else behind him and presently a third soldier joined the pair stationed on the truck. The newcomer studied Gary briefly with field glasses and then climbed down again dafter a word to the gunner. Gary waited, knowing army procedure, knowing what that word was. After long minutes the third man reappeared, this time accompanied by an officer who wore a small white stripe painted on the fore of his helmet. Both men stood in the truck and put glasses to their eyes to observe him.
Gary righted one of his tags so that it might be read and held it between thumb and forefinger, hope. fully watching the patrol. It was very doubtful that the field glasses were sufficiently powerful to pick out the small lettering at that distance, but still it was worth trying. Holding the tag aloft, he began a slow walk toward the center of the span. Very quickly he saw the gesture was in vain and the movement an error. The officer half turned to one of the watching riflemen, and Gary slammed his body to the bridge as that soldier lifted his carbine. Even as he fell he saw that it was no more than a warning — the carbine pointed at the sky and the single slug screamed through the summer air overhead. Gary scrambled backward five yards before regaining his feet. When he stood up, he clenched his fist around the dogtags and shook that fist at the watching officer.
The officer made no reply.
Gary retreated to the automobile and sat down facing the bridge. Shortly thereafter the officer and the other man left the truck and the two machine gunners returned to their perpetual watch of the bridge. Gary looked at them, felt a sudden resentment rising within him and cupped his hands to shout a single, descriptive word. The word had its beginning root in muttonhead.
“That goes for me too,” a quiet voice cut in.
Gary whirled, startled and alert. A tousled, unshaven soldier leaned against a bridge girder not far away. The man's uniform was in rags.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Gary demanded.
“The field over yonder" — he pointed with a lazy thumb. “Was sleeping — until that shot woke me. Warm welcome, huh?”
“I'm going to get across this damned bridge if I have to break every one of their damned heads!”
“Sure. I said that, two-three days ago.”
Gary stared at him. “Yeah?” He came to a decision. “Sit down and take a load off your feet.”
“Was waiting for the invitation,” the soldier grinned. “Some folks are touchy about company any more.” He crossed the roadway and sat down beside Gary. “Anything to smoke?”
Gary passed him a package of cigarettes. “Won't they let us come over?”
“Nope, not us, not even a general if he's on this side of the creek. Afraid we're carrying the plague. The lieutenant said as how he was sorry, but there it was.”