Running Blind (The Visitor)

front-wheel-drive only, no traction control. Ground clearance was enough for a decent-sized snowball and not much more. The rest of the winter, she’d be walking or begging rides from her neighbors.
    But it was smooth and quiet and it rode like a dream. She drove the two miles west and slowed for the left into the shopping center. Waited for an oncoming truck to labor past and swooped into the parking lot. Turned tight and drove around behind the right-hand arm of stores and parked up alone in the overspill lane. Pulled the key and dropped it in her bag. Got out and walked through the cold toward the supermarket.
    It was warmer inside. She took a cart and walked every aisle, using time. There was no system in her shopping. She just looked at everything and took what she figured she was out of. Which was not very much, because the market didn’t sell the things she was really interested in. No music books, no garden plants. She ended up with little enough in the cart to get her into the express line at the checkout.
    The girl put it all into one paper sack and she paid cash for it and walked out with the sack cradled in her arms. Turned right on the narrow sidewalk and window-shopped her way along the row. Her breath hung in the air. She stopped outside the hardware store. It was an old-fashioned place. It carried a little bit of everything. She had shopped there before, for sacks of bonemeal and ericaceous fertilizer to help her azaleas.
    She juggled the grocery sack into one arm and pulled the door. A bell rang. There was an old guy in a brown coat at the register. He nodded a greeting. She moved forward into the crowded aisles. Walked past the tools and the nails and found the decorating section. There were rolls of cheap wallpaper and packets of paste. Paintbrushes and paint rollers. And cans of paint. A display as tall as she was. Color charts were held in racks clipped to the shelves. She put her groceries on the floor and took a chart from a rack and opened it up. It was banded into colors like a huge rainbow. A big variety of shades.
    “Help you, miss?” a voice said.
    It was the old guy. He’d crept up behind her, helpful and anxious for a sale.
    “Does this stuff mix with water?” she asked.
    The old guy nodded.
    “They call it latex,” he said. “But that just means water-based. You can thin it with water, clean the roller with water.”
    “I want a dark green,” she said.
    She pointed at the chart.
    “Maybe like this olive,” she said.
    “The avocado is attractive,” the old guy said.
    “Too light,” she said.
    “You going to thin it with water?” he asked.
    She nodded. “I guess.”
    “That’ll make it lighter still.”
    “I think I’ll take the olive,” she said. “I want it to look kind of military.”
    “OK,” the old guy said. “How much?”
    “One can,” she said. “A gallon.”
    “Won’t go far,” he said. “Although if you thin it, that’ll help.”
    He carried it back to the register for her and rang up the sale. She paid cash and he put it in a bag with a free wooden stirring stick. The store’s name was printed off-center on the stick.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    She carried the grocery sack in one hand and the hardware bag in the other. Walked along the row of stores. It was cold. She looked up and checked the sky. It was blackening with clouds. They were scurrying in from the west. She looped around behind the last store. Hurried to her car. Dumped her bags on the backseat and climbed in and slammed her door and started the engine.
    THE COP WAS cold, which kept his attention focused. Summertime, sitting and doing nothing could make him sleepy, but there was no chance of that with the temperature as low as it was now. So he saw the approaching figure when it was still about a hundred yards away down the hill. The crest of the slope meant he saw the head first, then the shoulders, then the chest. The figure was walking purposefully toward him, rising up over the foreshortened horizon, revealing more and more of itself, getting bigger. The head was gray, thick hair neatly trimmed and brushed. The shoulders were dressed in Army uniform. Eagles on the shoulder boards, eagles through the lapels, a colonel. A clerical collar where the shirt and tie should be. A padre. A military chaplain, approaching fast up the sidewalk. His face bobbed up and down with every stride. The white band of the collar moved below it. The guy was walking quickly. Practically