Fires. Essays, Poems, Stories

traffic on the road. The wet fields on either side looked freshly green and sparkled in the early morning sun.
    She smoked her cigarette and stared out the window. She wondered if she should spend the energy to change the subject But she was becoming irritated too. She was sick of this whole thing. It was too bad she'd agreed to come with him. She should've stayed in Hollywood. She didn't like people who were forever trying to find themselves, the brooding, introspective bit
    Then she said, "Look! Look at those places," she exclaimed.
    Out in the fields on their left were sections of portable barracks, housing for the farmworkers. The barracks stood on blocks two or three feet off the ground, waiting to be trucked to another location. There were twenty-five or thirty such barracks. They had been raised off the ground and left standing so that some of the barracks faced the road and some of them were facing in other directions. It looked as if an upheaval had taken place.
    Took at that," she said as they sped past.
    "John Steinbeck," he said. "Something out of Steinbeck."
    "What?" she said. "Oh, Steinbeck. Yes, that's right. Steinbeck."
    He blinked his eyes and imagined he saw the pheasant. He remembered his foot punching down on the accelerator as he tried to hit the bird. He opened his mouth to say something. But he couldn't find any words. He was amazed, and at the same time deeply moved and ashamed, at the sudden impulse—which he'd acted upon—to kill the pheasant. His fingers stiffened on the wheel.
    "What would you say if I told you I killed that pheasant intentionally? That I tried to hit it?"
    She gazed at him for a minute without any interest. She didn't say anything. Something became clear to him then. Partly, he supposed later, it was a result of the look of bored indifference she turned on him, and partly it was a consequence of his own state of mind. But he suddenly understood that he no longer had any values. No frame of reference, was the phrase that ran through his mind.
    "Is it true?" she said.
    He nodded. "It could have been dangerous. It could have gone through the windshield. But it's more than that," he said.
    "I'm sure it's more than that. If you say so, Gerry. But it doesn't surprise me, if that's what you think. I'm not surprised," she said. "Nothing about you surprises me any more. You get your kicks, don't you?"
    They were entering Potter. He cut his speed and began looking for the restaurant he'd seen advertised on the billboard. He located it a few blocks into the downtown area and pulled up in front onto the gravelled parking area. It was still early in the morning. Inside
    the restaurant, heads turned in their direction as he eased the big car to a stop and set the brake. He took the key from the ignition. They turned in the seat and looked at each other.
    "I'm not hungry any more/' she said. "You know something? You take away my appetite."
    "I take away my own appetite/' he said.
    She continued to stare at him. "Do you know what you'd better do, Gerald? You'd better do something."
    "Ill think of something." He opened the car door and got out. He bent down in front of the car and examined the smashed headlamp and the dented fender. Then he went around to her side of the car and opened the door for her. She hesitated, then got out of the car.
    "Keys," she said. "The car keys, please."
    He felt as if they were doing a scene and this was the fifth or sixth take. But it still wasn't clear what was going to happen next. He was suddenly tired through to his bones, but he felt high too and on the edge of something. He gave her the keys. She closed her hand and made a fist.
    He said, "I suppose 111 say goodbye then, Shirley. If that isn't too melodramatic." They stood there in front of the restaurant. "I'm going to try and get my life in order," he said. "For one thing, find a job, a real job. Just not see anybody for a while. Okay? No tears, okay? Well stay friends, if you want. We had some good times, right?"
    "Gerald, you are nothing to me," Shirley said. "You're an ass. You can go to hell, you son of a bitch."
    Inside the restaurant, two waitresses and a few men in coveralls all moved to the front window to watch after the woman outside slapped the man on his cheek with the back of her hand. The people inside were at first shocked and then amused with the scene. Now the woman in the parking area was pointing down the road and shaking her finger. Very dramatic. But the man had already