They walked silently: Harry just ahead: both of them preoccupied with their thoughts, but aware of each other and contented not to be alone.
They had left Yellow Acres soon after 19.00 hours. Each had been given a large wrapped parcel which Morelli had said was a little snack in case they became hungry during the walk. There had been a lot of hand shaking, and Harry had promised to look in on his way back.
He was now thinking of Maria, comparing her to the girl he had spent two nights with in New York who continually called him ‘Ducky’, chain smoked even when they were making love and was as full of boring problems as a pod is full of peas. He wondered about Maria’s ease of manner and her apparent simplicity.
Maybe, he thought, she too had problems, but was in control of herself. He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. Everyone had problems these days. It depended on how they coped with them. Some people could manage alone: others had to talk about them: others couldn’t stop talking about them. It was a matter of personal pride to him not to weary others with his own problems. He grimaced ruefully. He had plenty of them, but this wasn’t the time to think of them. He had developed a built-in mechanism that controlled his thoughts. The three years in Vietnam were not to be thought of. His ruined domestic life wasn’t to be thought of nor the crap game on the ship he had stupidly got into that practically cleaned him out of all the money the Army had presented him with for services rendered.
Oh yes, he had plenty of problems but this was the wrong time to think about them. At least, the job at the restaurant seemed certain. Randy had told him he had telephoned Solo and Solo was very interested.
Randy said suddenly, ‘A couple of miles further on, we come to the highway.’ He paused to look at his watch in the light of the moon. ‘Half after ten. With any luck we could get a ride.’ He drew level with Harry. ‘The highway should be free of hikers by now.’
‘How’s your head feeling?’ Harry asked.
‘It’s all right... aches a bit and is sore, but all right.’ Randy glanced at him curiously. ‘I’m still thrown by the way you handled those kids. You broke his arm... you know that, don’t you?’
‘Does that worry you?’ There was a sudden edge to Harry’s voice.
‘No. It doesn’t worry me... still... a broken arm.’
‘So it does worry you. Have you been in the Army?’
‘Me?’ Randy made a mock gesture of horror. ‘Not likely! I burned my draft card. Catch me being shanghaied to Vietnam!’
‘Someone has to go.’
‘Okay... but not me.’
‘What’s so special about you then?’
‘I just don’t dig for some fat old bastard controlling my life. The draft board is loaded with fat old bastards who would blow their stacks if someone sent them out there. Why should they have the right to send me?’
Harry laughed.
‘You have a point.’ He walked in silence for a while, then said abruptly, ‘If I’d known what I was going into, I might have burned my draft card too, but at the time it seemed a good idea... an escape.’
‘An escape from what?’ Randy asked curiously.
‘This and that.’
‘Plenty of ways of escaping without going out there.’
‘They can get rough with a draft dodger.’
‘They have to catch him first,’ Randy said complacently.
‘What makes you think they won’t catch you?’
‘They haven’t so far. I worry when things happen, not when they don’t.’
‘Like when I broke that junkie’s arm?’
Randy shifted his duffel bag from one shoulder to the other.
‘I don’t say I really worry about it, but it looked as if you meant to bust his arm. I mean it wasn’t an accident. You sure gave him a hell of a belt.’
‘That’s right. I did mean to break his arm. One thing, among many others, you learn in the army is not to make a mistake in a fight. If you have to hit a guy, then you hit him so he stays hit. If I had tapped that junkie, the rest of them would have been all over me. They were higher than kites. By busting his arm, I shocked them sober, and I had to shock them sober. By busting his arm, I stopped them giving you the treatment.’ He glanced at Randy. ‘Still worrying?’
‘You have a point,’ Randy said and grinned.
Ten minutes later they reached the highway and Randy put down his guitar and duffel bag.
‘Let’s wait here for half an hour and see what turns up,’ he said. ‘We could be lucky. Around fifty miles on is an all-night snack bar. Most truckers stop there. If we can get a ride there, we are almost certain to find some trucker going to Miami and after Miami there’s no trouble.’
They waited by the roadside. After some minutes, the headlights of a big truck came over the distant hill. Randy stepped out onto the road and began waving. The truck thundered past, the driver ignoring Randy’s thumb. Randy muttered under his breath while Harry sat down on the grass verge and lit a cigarette. Both men watched the road.
Four trucks went by during the next fifteen minutes, each ignoring Randy’s thumb.
‘It could be quicker to walk,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t think they fancy you.’
‘Give it another quarter of an hour. Could be the creeps don’t like the way I wear my hair. Suppose you try?’
They changed places, but it didn’t help them to get a ride.
Three more trucks stormed by without stopping.
Randy took off his Mexican boots and cooled his feet in the grass.
‘Keep trying,’ he encouraged. ‘Every door is a door of opportunity.’
As he spoke a car’s headlights showed over the hill. In the light of the moon Harry saw the car was a Mustang and it was towing a small two-berth caravan.
‘Not a hope here,’ he said, ‘but I’ll try.’
He moved further into the road so that the searching fingers of the headlights picked him out with the intensity of a spotlight. He jerked his thumb and put on his wide, disarming smile.
He heard the soft squealing of tyres biting into the tarmac as brakes were applied, and to his surprise the car slowed, came alongside him and stopped.
Hurriedly grabbing up his guitar and duffel bag in one hand and his boots in the other, Randy joined Harry.
Harry was peering at the driver.
‘Are you going to Miami?’ he asked. ‘Any chance of a ride, please?’
As he drew nearer, he could see in the reflected light from the dashboard that the driver was a girl and this startled him. He couldn’t see anything of her face. She was wearing anti-dazzle, dark yellow goggles: a white scarf completely concealed her hair and the rest of her face. The ends of the scarf were tucked into a black open neck shirt.
He could feel the eyes hidden behind the goggles searching his face.
‘Can you drive?’
Her voice was low and husky with a faint accent that Harry couldn’t place.
‘Why, sure.’
‘Got a driving license?’
‘Yes. I’m carrying it.’
The girl heaved a long, weary sigh.
‘That’s wonderful. You can have a ride if you’ll drive.’
‘Does that include me?’ Randy asked anxiously.
She turned her head and looked at him, then at Harry.
‘Is he a friend of yours?’ she asked.
‘Yes. He’s all right. He wears his hair like that to keep his head warm.’
‘You know the way?’
‘Straight ahead.’
‘That’s it. I’ve been driving eighteen hours. I’m bushed.’ She opened the car door and slid out. ‘If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll drive off the road. I’m delivering the caravan to Miami. The jerk who ordered it said he would cancel the order if he doesn’t get delivery tomorrow.’
All this seemed a little odd to Harry.
‘Are you in the caravan trade then?’
‘No, I’m one of the mugs who delivers. Get in and get going. I’m bedding down in the caravan. Don’t wake me for pity’s sake until you reach Miami.’