Nobody's Fool

had detained him there in the cold for nearly half an hour, talking on the radio, while Clive Jr. first stood in the frigid wind, then finally sat in the Lincoln. Eventually, the cop let him go again, this time with a stern warning. “I think I may just follow you a ways, Mr. Peoples. Do ninety again, and we’ll see who grins.”
    And so Clive Jr. had gotten off at the next exit, headed south along the deserted two-lane blacktops of the western Alleghenies, flying through at two in the morning a series of tiny, dying villages with little more than a dark, run-down gas station/garage/convenience store to offer. America, it occurred to him now, was still full of bad locations.
    Feeling the shoulder again, Clive Jr. pulled the Lincoln back onto the blacktop, surprised by the fact that the car did not react immediately to his command. There seemed to be a split-second delay between his turning the wheel and the car’s responding, which caused Clive Jr. to wonder if he had been in a rut. But when he hit a straightaway, the car felt fine again. The sensation was strange but also familiar, though he had to travel back more than fifty years to locate it. How old had he been at that amusement park when he was placed in one of the brightly painted kiddie cars that slowly circled an oval track? He couldn’t remember, but what he did recall was his sense of disappointment to discover that the little car’s steering wheel was a fraud, that his spinning it left or right, fast or slow, had no effect upon the car’s direction, anymore than the two fake pedals—supposedly accelerator and brake—on the floor had. And he remembered trying to conceal his disappointment from his father and mother, even, perhaps, from himself.
    In a wide spot in the road called Hatch, Clive Jr. flew out of the woods, took the blinking yellow caution light at sixty-five and was just as quickly back in the woods again, tall trees forming a cathedral arch above. Then the three-quarter moon came out from behind some clouds and sat on the Lincoln’s hood ornament, on what Clive Jr. imagined must be the western horizon, lighting his way. He wondered how fast he’d have to go to keep the moon right there, to keep the sun from rising behind him. It would have been nice to prevent another sunrise. Speed, enough of it, could do that. He checked his rearview to make sure that nothing, not even the dawn, was gaining on him, and was gratified to see that the small rectangle of mirror was perfectly black.
    Even had he not been looking at the rearview, it was unlikely that hewould have seen the pothole or, having seen it, would have been able to avoid it. The Lincoln’s right front tire hit the hole dead center, the right rear wheel a quickened heartbeat later, sending a shiver throughout the Lincoln and a buzz through the steering wheel and into Clive Jr.’s soft hands. “Ouch,” he said out loud and, hearing his voice, considered it might be wise to slow down. He couldn’t, after all, outrun the dawn. Then he felt the Lincoln on the shoulder again, and felt that too when he turned the steering wheel, the Lincoln did not respond.
    Before him, a two-hundred-yard straightaway and, at sixty-five miles an hour, not much time. Enough, though, to recall Harold Proxmire’s warning to get the Lincoln’s axle checked after Joyce parked it on the tree stump, enough time to imagine what lay ahead at the end of the straightaway, enough time to imagine what it would feel like to leave the road, to be briefly airborne, headlights straining to locate the other side of the ravine, with only darkness and silence below, time to reflect that his own father had been killed going thirty miles an hour on a quiet residential street without the car hitting anything, time to calculate his own slim odds.
    When to Clive Jr.’s surprise the Lincoln’s steering responded again and he took the curve at sixty, sending pebbles screaming off into the dark ravine, he was curiously devoid of emotion, and when he ran his tongue over his swollen lower lip, he was disappointed to discover that very little of the salty blood taste lingered there. By applying pressure on the swelling with his teeth, however, he was able to burst the ruptured skin like a grape, after which his tongue was again rich with the sweet taste of blood.
    Ahead a vista opened in the trees, and far below Clive Jr. saw a major highway running straight toward