With daylight (it was exactly a week since he last dressed for the office) he found himself passing through farmland over which a light snow had fallen ahead of him, softening, smoothing some of the rudeness, but not enough to hide the truth that nothing was planted.

Pete offered tobacco and paper, but Claude brought out his cigarettes and they both decided to try those. Pete provided the match. When he had their cigarettes burning strongly he turned to look back at the road, then straight up ahead. "We'll get there for supper if we get there," he said, and Claude laughed. Pete was a young man, but had a wild old grin stretched all out of shape in the corners and punched full of holes.

Are you the owner of this car?" A cop has something you don't have, something you gave him earlier.

"No, I'm just delivering it to Oklahoma City for a lady. "

"Do you have plates for this car?" A cop needn't be vicious, but he can be so, safely.

"Just those stickers."

"Do you have the registration?" Presidents and premiers can annihilate millions, but only a cop can explain away your solitary murder.

Yet he could not enjoy the walk. In the morning especially a bougainvillaea looks handmade, lawns are always lawns, and it is true indeed that dogs smell fear. Cats don't say.

Lured by smooth roads onto a new turnpike, he read with surprise the rules he was handed, don't stop, don't turn around, pay when you get there; he made his escape at the first exit he saw, for fiftyfive cents, and now he was on the old road buzzing the staid turnpike by turns over and under, teasing it crazy.

Twentyone is too old to go anywhere alone, you know that. I want to go with someone. I don't mean as a bride, I'm not so gauche as that, but as a mistress or paramour or concubine or companion or friend or pal or anything else. I just don't want to be left alone! I want to get out of here!" She said it again for all the wide-faced flowers to hear: "I want to get out of here!