Over the rattling of fenders, humming of tires and chattering of gears there was a charming melody of whispers and tiny giggles. Cool air moving slowly through the open or smashed-out side windows hinted of blooming roadside vegetation, and occasionally a faint fragrance of perfume swirled from the back seat. "Moriarty", my driver suddenly exclaimed with something so definite, so final in his tone I once more repeated the absurdity, mustering all my latent powers of hypocrisy to sound convinced. We were coming to an intersection, turning right, chuffing to a stop. Forced to realize that this was the end of a very short line I scanned a road marker and discovered what the end of a slightly longer line would be for the old Mexican: Moriarty, New Mexico. "Gracias. Adios", I said, exhausting my Spanish vocabulary on my host and exchanging one of a scarcely-tapped store of smiles with my host's daughters. I waved with discretion and moderation to the vague golden faces fading through rising dust and the distortions of the back window glass. Then I saw the father's head slightly turn; gauche rainbow shapes replaced the poignant ovals of gold. Autos whizzed past. White-shirted and conservatively-cravated drivers stared conspicuously toward the eastern horizon and past my supplicating and accusing gaze. Suddenly a treble auto horn tootley-toot-tootled, and, thumbing hopefully, I saw emergent in windshield flash: red lips, streaming silk of blonde hair and- ah, trembling confusion of hope, apprehension, despair- the leering face of old Herry. "Mor-ee-air-teeeee", he shrieked, his white teeth grossly counterpointing those of the glittering blonde. Over the rapidly-diminishing outline of a jump seat piled high with luggage Herry's black brushcut was just discernible, near, or enviably near that spot where- hidden- more delicately-textured, most beautifully tinted hair must still be streaming back in cool, oh cool wind sweetly perfumed with sagebrush and yucca flowers and engine fumes. Damn his luck. I would have foregone my romantic chances rather than leave a friend sweltering and dusty and- Well, at least I wouldn't have shouted back a taunt. Still nursing anger I listlessly thumbed a car that was slowly approaching, its pre-war chrome nearly blinding me. It was stopping. Just as I straightened up with my duffel bag, I heard: "Sahjunt Yoorick, meet Mrs. Major J. A. Roebuck". The voice was that of Johnson, tail gunner off another crew. Squeezing a look between Johnson's fat jowls and the car frame a handsome and still darkhaired lady inquired "Y'all drahve"? I nodded. "Onleh one thiihng", Mrs. Roebuck continued. "Ahm goin nawth t'jawn mah husbun in Sante Fe, an y'all maht prefuh the suhthuhn rewt. But Corporal Johnson has alreadeh said it didn make no diffrunce t'hi-im". I said that it didn't make any difference to me either, as far as I knew. How far I knew will shortly become apparent. Let me pass over the trip to Sante Fe with something of the same speed which made Mrs. Roebuck "wonduh if the wahtahm speed limit" (35 m.p.h.) "is still in ee-faket". I let up on the accelerator, only to gradually reach again the 60 m.p.h. which would, I hoped, overhaul Herry and the blonde, and as there were cars whose drivers apparently had something more important to catch than had I, Mrs. Major Roebuck settled down to practicing on Corporal Johnson the kittenish wiles she would need when making her duty call on Colonel and Mrs. Somebody in Sante Fe. When Johnson ejaculated "Howsabout my buying us all a nice cold Co-cola, Ma'am"? Mrs. Roebuck smilingly declined and began suddenly to go on about her son, who was "onleh a little younguh than you bawhs". Johnson never would have believed she had a son that age. Mrs. Roebuck thought Johnson was a "sweet bawh t'lah lahk thet", but her Herman was getting to be a man, there was no getting around it. "Just befoh he left foh his academeh we wuh hevin dack-rihs on the vuhranduh, Major Roebuck an Ah, an Huhmun says 'May Ah hev one too'? just as p'lite an- an cohnfidunt, an Ah says 'Uh coahse you cain't', but he says 'Whah nawt, you ah hevin one'? an Ah coudn ansuh him an so Ah said 'Aw right, Ah gay-ess, an his fathuh didn uttuh one wohd an aftuh Huhmun was gone, the majuh laughed an tole me thet he an the bawh had been hevin an occasional drink t'gethuh f'ovuh a yeah, onleh an occasional one, but just the same it was behahn mah back, an Ah doan think thet's nahce at all, d'you"? "No, I don't", Johnson said. "I'm a good Baptist, and drinking &&&". Mrs. Roebuck very kindly let me drive through Sante Fe to a road which would, she said, lead us to Taos and then Raton and "eventshahleh" out of New Mexico. How lightly her "eventshah-leh" passed into the crannies where I was storing dialect material for some vaguely dreamed opus, and how the word would echo. And re-echo. Hardly had Mrs. Roebuck driven off when a rusty pick-up truck, father or grandfather of Senor "Moriarty's" Ford sedan, came screeching to a dust-swirling stop, and a brown face appeared, its nose threatened by shards of what had once been the side window. "Get in, buddies. Get in". The straight, black hair flopped in a vigorous nod, the slender nose plunged toward glass teeth and drew safely back. Johnson unwired the right hand door, whose window was, like the left one, merely loosely-taped fragments of glass, and Johnson wadded himself into a narrow seat made still more narrow by three cases of beer. "In back, buddy", the driver said to me. Quickly but carefully lowering my duffel bag over the low side-rack, I stepped on the running board; it flopped down, sprang back up and gouged my shin. The truck was hurtling forward. I seized the rack and made a western-style flying-mount just in time, one of my knees mercifully landing on my duffel bag- and merely wrecking my camera, I was to discover later- my other knee landing on the slivery truck floor boards and- but this is no medical report. I was again in motion and at a speed which belied the truck's similarity to Senor X's Ford turtle. Maybe I would beat old Herry to Siberia after all. Whatever satisfaction that might offer. Something pulled my leg. I drew back, drawing back my foot for a kick. But it was only Johnson reaching around the wire chicken fencing, which half covered the truck cab's glassless rear window. The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I though he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear. "Wanna beer"? "Hell, yes", I roared back between dusty lips. Did I want a beer? Did an anteater want ants? "Bueno, amigo. Gracias", I hollered, my first long swallow filling me with confidence and immediately doubling the size of my Spanish vocabulary. At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing; I wouldn't have known the difference. Johnson was trying to grab the wheel, though the swerve of the truck was throwing him away from it. White teeth suddenly vanishing, the driver slammed the side of his bottle against Johnson's ear. We were off the road, gleaming barbed wire pulling taut. I ducked just as the first strand broke somewhere down the line and came whipping over the sideboards. We were in a field, in a tight, screeching turn. Prairie dogs were popping up and popping down. When I fell on my back, I saw a vulture hovering. Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously. This time no wire came whipping into the truck. We were back on the road. I regained my squatting position behind the truck cab's rear window. Johnson's left hand was pressed against the side of his head, red cheeks whitening beneath his fingers. "Tee-wah", the driver cackled, his black eyes glittering behind dull silver chicken fencing. "That was Tee-wah I was talking. You thought I was a Mexican, didn't you, buddy"? I nodded. "Hell, that's all right, buddy", the Indian (I now guessed) said. "Drink your beer". Miraculously, the bottle was still in my hand, foam still geysering over my (luckily) waterproof watch. No sooner had I started drinking than the driver started zigzagging the truck. The beer foamed furiously. I drank furiously. A long time. Emptied the bottle. Teeth again flashing back at me, the driver released a deluge of Spanish in which "amigo" appeared every so often like an island in the stormy waves of surrounding sound. I bobbed my head each time it appeared. Suddenly the Spanish became an English in which only one word emerged with clarity and precision, "son of a bitch", sometimes hyphenated by vicious jabs of a beer bottle into Johnson's quivering ribs. A big car was approaching, its chrome teeth grinning. Beyond it the gray road stretched a long, long way. The car was just about to us, its driver's fat, solemn face intent on the road ahead, on business, on a family in Sante Fe- on anything but an old pick-up truck in which two human beings desperately needed rescue. I tossed the bottle. High, so it would only bounce harmlessly but loudly off the car's steel roof. Too high. On unoccupied roadway the bottle shattered into a small amber flash. "Aye-yah-ah-ah"! The Indian was again raising his bottle, but to my astonished relief- probably only a fraction of Johnson's- the bottle this time went to the Indian's lips. Another car was coming, a tiny, dark shape on a far hill. I started looking on the splintery truck bed for a piece of board, a dirt clod- anything I could throw and with better aim than I had thrown the beer bottle. We were slowing. In the ditch sand was white and soft-looking, only an occasional pebble discernible, faintly gleaming. But Johnson couldn't quickly unwire the truck door, and if I escaped, he might suffer. The car was approaching fast. On the truck bed there was nothing smaller than a piece of rusty machinery; with more time I could have loosened a small burr or cotter pin- Suddenly and not a second too soon I thought of the coins in my pocket. There was no time to pick out a penny; I got a coin between my thumb and forefinger, leaned my elbows in a very natural and casual manner on top of the truck cab and flipped my little missile. There was a blur just under my focus of vision, a crash; the car's far windshield panel turned into a silver web with a dark hole in the center. I heard the screech of brakes behind me, an insane burst of laughter beneath me. Looking back I saw a gray-haired man getting out of his halted car and trying to read our license number. "S-s-sahjunt". Johnson's fat hand, another bottle were protruding from the truck cab, and that self-proclaimed Baptist teetotaler, had a bottle at his own lips. Two cars came over a crest, their chrome and glass flashing. The Indian's arm whipped sidewise- there was a flash of amber and froth, the crash of the bottle shattering against the side of the first car. Brakes shrieked behind us. I saw Johnson's bottle snatched from his hand, saw it go in a swirl of foam just behind the second car. This time there was no sound of brakes but the shrieking of women. I looked back at pale ovals framed in the elongated oval of the car's rear window. "Drink, you son of a bitch"! I quickly turned around and began to drink. But the Indian was jabbing another bottle toward Johnson.