CHAPTER TWO

Hawks came, eventually, to the general store which marked the join of the sand road and the highway. He was carrying his suit coat over his arm, and his shirt, which he had opened at the throat, was wet and sticking to his gaunt body.

He looked past the peeling gasoline pumps, up and down the highway, which burned off into the distance, losing each slight dip in its surface under the shimmering pools of mirages. Only private cars were on it, soughing back and forth past him. The mirages clipped off their wheels as they hissed away through them, and melted the skirts of their fenders.

Hawks turned, pulled open the limply screened door with its grimy bread advertisement pressed through the weave, and stepped inside.

The store was crowded with shelves and cabinets filling almost every square foot of floor space, leaving only narrow aisles. He looked around, blinking sharply once or twice as he did so. There was no one in the store. A narrow, blank door opened into a back room, from which no sound came. Hawks refastened his collar and straightened his necktie.

He had laid his coat on the lid of a Coca-Cola cooler beside him. He picked it up now and swung back the cooler's lid, looking down at the bottles inside. They were all some local brand, bright orange and glassy red, up to their crowns in dirty water. He closed the lid and took a deep breath.

There was a soft crunch of gravel outside as a car rolled up to the gasoline pumps, and a bell rang as its wheels passed over the warning air hoses. Hawks looked out through the screen door. A girl driving an old business coupe looked back at him through her rolled-down window.

Hawks turned toward the rear room. There was no sound. He took a step toward it, awkwardly, opened his mouth and closed it again,

The car door opened and clicked shut as the girl stepped out. She came up to the screen door and peered in. She was a short, dark-haired girl with pale features and wide lips now a little pinched by indecision as she shaded her eyes with her hand. She looked directly at Hawks, and he half shrugged.

She stepped in, and said to Hawks: "I'd like to buy some gasoline."

There was a sound of sudden movement in the back room—a heavy creak of bedsprings and an approaching shuffle of feet. Hawks gestured vaguely in that direction.

"Oh," the girl said. She looked at Hawks' clothes and smiled apologetically. "Excuse me. I thought you worked here."

Hawks shook his head.

A fat, balding man in an undershirt and khaki pants, came out of the back room. He rubbed the pillow-creases on his face and said hoarsely, "Just catchin' forty winks." He cleared his throat and rubbed his neck. "What'll it be?" he said to both of them.

"Well, this gentleman was here first," the girl said.

The man looked at Hawks. "You been waitin'? I didn't hear nobody call."

"I only want to know if a city bus goes by here."

"Suppose a bus had gone by while you was in here? Would a felt pretty foolish, wouldn't you?"

Hawks sighed. "Does a bus pass by here?"

"Lots a busses, friend. But don't none of them stop to pick up local passengers. Let you off anywhere, if you're comin' from the city, but won't pick you up 'less it's a official bus stop. Rules. Ain't you got no car?"

"No, I don't. How far is it to the nearest bus stop?"

" 'Bout a mile and a half down the road, that way." He waved. "Gas station. Henry's Friendly Service."

Hawks wiped his face again.

The man glanced aside toward the girl. "You want some gas, Miss?" He grinned. "Fix you up in a jiffy." He shouldered past Hawks to the doorway, and awkwardly held the screen door open for her with his soft, extended white arm. He said to Hawks from the doorframe: "You better figure out what you're gonna do, friend—walk, hitch-hike, buy somethin'—I ain't got all day." He grinned again toward the girl. "Got to take care of the young lady, here."

The girl smiled uneasily at Hawks and said "Excuse me," softly, as she moved past him. As she stepped through the doorway, she brushed her left hip and shoulder against the frame to clear the owner's bulk on her other side.

The man pursed his lips with a spitting motion behind her back, ran measuring, deprived eyes over her skirt and blouse, and followed her.

Hawks watched through the window as she got back into the car and asked for ten gallons of regular. The man banged the hose nozzle loose from its bracket, and cranked the dial reset lever with an abrupt jerk of his arm. He stood glowering toward the front of the car, his hands in his pockets, while the automatic nozzle pumped gasoline into the tank. As the automatic surge valve tripped shut, while the pump's counter was passing nine and a half, the man immediately yanked the dribbling nozzle out and slammed it back on its bracket. He crumpled the five-dollar bill the girl held out through her window. "C'mon back in the store for your change," he growled, and strode away.

Hawks waited until the man was bent over the counter, fumbling in a cash drawer under its top. Then he said: "I'll take the lady's change back to her."

The man turned and stared at him in fury, money clutched in his fist. Hawks looked toward the girl, who had the screen door half-open, her face pale and strained. "That'll be all right, won't it?" he said to her. She nodded.

"Yes," she said nervously.

The man slapped the change into Hawks' palm. Hawks looked down at it.

"Ain't that right for ten gallons, Mister?" the man said belligerently. "You want to look and see what it says on that Goddamned pump?"

"It's not right for four-tenths less than ten gallons. I did look." Hawks continued to face the man, who turned suddenly and scrabbled in the cash drawer again. He gave Hawks the rest of the change.

Hawks stepped out and gave it to the girl.

The girl said with some effort: "Do—do you need a ride into the city?"

"To the bus stop, yes, thank you." He smiled gently as she looked up. "I forgot I wasn't a boy anymore. I set out on a longer walk than I thought."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me," the girl said. She frowned and shifted her feet. "I have to go all the way into the city," she said. "There's no point just dropping you at the bus stop."

Hawks plucked uneasily at the coat over his arm. Then he put it on and buttoned it. "All right. Thank you."

"Let's go, then," the girl said. They got into the car and pulled out into the traffic stream on the highway.

They sat stiffly in the car as it rolled down the road, its tires thumping regularly over the oozing expansion joints in the concrete.

"I don't look like a pick-up," the girl said.

Hawks, still frowning faintly, looked at her. "You're very attractive."

"But I'm not easy! I'm only offering you a ride. Because you need it, I suppose." Her short hands clicked their scarlet nails against the steering wheel's worn, pitted plastic.

"I know that," he said quietly. "And I don't think you're doing it out of gratitude. That fellow wasn't anybody you couldn't have handled by yourself. I only spared you some effort. I'm not your gallant rescuer, and I haven't won your hand in mortal combat."

"Well, then," she said.

"We're trapping ourselves again," he said. "Neither of us knows quite what to do. We're talking in circles. If that fellow hadn't come out, we'd still be in that store, dancing a ritual dance around each other."

She nodded vehemently. "'Oh, I'm sorry—I thought you worked here!'" she mimicked herself.

"No, uh, I don't," he supplied.

"Well-uh-is anybody here?"

"I don't know. Do you suppose we should call out, or something . . . ?" He trailed away in a tense imitation of an embarrassed mumble.

The girl thumped her left foot impatiently against the floorboards. "Yes, that's exactly how it would have been! And now we're doing it here, instead of there! Can't you do something about it?"

Hawks took a deep breath. "My name is Edward Hawks. I'm forty-two years old, unmarried, and I'm a college graduate. I work for Continental Electronics."

The girl said: "I'm Elizabeth Cummings. I'm just getting started as a fashion designer. Single. I'm twenty-five." She glanced aside at him. "Why were you walking?"

"I often walked when I was a boy," he said. "I had many things to think about. I couldn't understand the world, and I kept trying to discover the secret of living successfully in it. If I sat in a chair at home and thought, it worried my parents. So I walked to be alone with myself. I walked miles. And I couldn't discover the secret of the world, or what was wrong with me. But I felt I was coming closer and closer. Then, when enough time had passed, I gradually learned how I could behave properly in the world as I saw it." He smiled. "That's why I was walking this afternoon."

"And where are you going now?"

"Back to work. I have to do some preliminary setting-up on a project we're starting tomorrow." He looked briefly out through the window, and then brought his glance back to Elizabeth. "Where are you going?"

"I have a studio downtown. I have to work late tonight, too."

"Will you give me your address and 'phone number, so I can call you tomorrow?"

"Yes," she said. "Tomorrow night?"

"If I may."

She said: "Don't ask me questions if you know the answers." She looked at him. "Don't tell me unimportant things just to pass the time."

"Then I'll have many more things to tell you."

She stopped the car in front of Continental Electronics' main gate, to let him out. She touched his sleeve as he opened the car door. "That's too hot to wear on a day like this."

He stopped beside the car, opened the jacket, took it off and folded it over his arm. Then he smiled, raised his hand in a tentative gesture, turned, and walked through the gate a guard was holding open for him.