Yesterday's News

tomorrow?”
    “Watched you with them fuckin white boys up the alley. You the kind comes through. You learns that on the bum, you know?”
    I took out the Crestview card I had and wrote my name on it. I put it in Vip’s shirt pocket.
    “Tomorrow’s a long day. When are you going to call me?”
    “Don’t gots no watch, man. Wanna leave me yours?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Then be sometime after sun-up. I don’t lays around all day like some peoples I could mention.”
    I rose.
    Vip said, “And bring cash money when you comes. You overpaying for this cheap shit I gots to drink.”

Thursday morning broke bright and clear. I opened the window, drawing in deep breaths of ocean air, the seagulls shrieking. I hit the bathroom, then pulled on running shorts, shoes, and a tee shirt Nancy had given me with the legend pushing forty is exercise enough.
    Walking by the motel office, I spotted Jones bustling behind the desk. I opened the door and said, “Emil. You’re up pretty early.”
    He looked annoyed. “Goddam receipts.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I can’t find them. I’m the only goddam employee of this chickenshit outfit, and I can’t find the goddam receipts book that I musta laid some goddam place.” He leaned over the counter. “The hell is that getup?”
    “I’m going running. Any jogging trails you can recommend?”
    “Jogging trails? You’ve gotta be shitting me.”
    “How about just a nice road, reasonably flat, that I can go out about two miles and then come back.”
    Jones pointed. “You drive west of here yet?”
    “No.”
    “Well, head west along Crestview. The road’ll drop toward sea level pretty quick, then she’s flat and steady along the water for a while. Take her acrost the river bridge. Other side of the bridge oughta be about two miles.”
    “Thanks, Emil.”
    I told him a guy who sounded down and out might telephone for me. Jones groused about it, but finally agreed to take any message.
    As I left the office, I heard him mutter, “Jogging trails.”

    Crestview descended fifty feet, my hamstrings bunching as I thumped downhill. The harbor smell was pungent, probably from the natural human pollution of too many shacks, with too little plumbing, lying in an uneven string along the water to my left. The houses on the other side of the street were bigger though apparently no younger, with the mismatched proportions of the homemade. I counted a trailer about every fourth lot.
    There wasn’t much vehicular traffic. A cadaverous guy in a baseball cap driving an old yellow pickup waved to me as he headed east. A newsboy with no front teeth on a heavy-frame Schwinn almost collided with me at a hedged driveway. An asthmatic Buick with two primer-painted fenders and a mud-splattered rear end chugged up behind me, passed, and continued around the bend, spewing a noxious combination of oil and smoke out its rope-rigged tail pipe.
    You can learn more about an area walking or jogging than driving. I think it’s because you have the freedom to appreciate something three or four times from slightly different aspects. A wooden lobster boat, sloughed in a side yard, being cannibalized fore and aft to supply its successor. A dozen lobster pots, the old kind with slat-and-wire construction, rising in alternating tiers on a sagging front porch. Engine parts, heaped in uneven piles outside a double garage with only one door still hinged. A cardboard for sale by owner sign tacked optimistically to a stake in the seared lawn of a plywood cottage with a tin roof.
    Halfway through the bend in the road I could see the bridge looming a mile away. A refugee from an erector set, its head and shoulders were covered by a mist the low-angle sun hadn’t yet burned off. Picking up the pace a mite, I heard a car with a powerful engine start somewhere behind me. The driver throttled down and seemed to approach, the sound diminishing again. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the front of a Camaro, its amber parking lights watching me from the mouth of the bend. After a minute, I looked again. The car hadn’t moved.
    I tried to think of what the driver could be doing other than following me. I couldn’t come up with anything. On the other hand, he was keeping his distance. Only a quarter mile now from the bridge, I told myself I was imagining things.
    I went by a few more houses and a shanty “Open for Breakfast” but hosting only two cars outside it. One was the beat-up Buick that had