watching Ron Stone and Dave run test loads with one of the new laundry products. It was loud in the washroom. The noise hurt his tender head, but it kept him from hearing his thoughts.
After work he got his car out of the parking lot—Mary had been glad to let him have it for the day since he was seeing about their new house—and drove through downtown and through Norton.
In Norton, blacks stood around on street corners and outside bars. Restaurants advertised different kinds of soul food. Children hopped and danced on chalked sidewalk grids. He saw a pimpmobile—a huge pink Eldorado Cadillac—pull up in front of an anonymous brownstone apartment building. The man who got out was a Wilt Chamberlain-size black in a white planter’s hat and a white ice cream suit with pearl buttons and black platform shoes with huge gold buckles on the sides. He carried a malacca stick with a large ivory ball on the top. He walked slowly, majestically, around to the hood of the car, where a set of caribou antlers were mounted. A tiny silver spoon hung on a silver chain around his neck and winked in the thin autumn sun. He watched the man in the rearview mirror as the children ran to him for sweets.
Nine blocks later the tenements thinned to ragged, open fields that were still soft and marshy. Oily water stood between hummocks in puddles, their surfaces flat, deadly rainbows. On the left, near the horizon, he could see a plane landing at the city’s airport.
He was now on Route 16, traveling past the exurban sprawl between the city and the city limits. He passed McDonald’s. Shakey’s, Nino’s Steak Pit. He passed a Dairy Freez and the Noddy-Time Motel, both closed for the season. He passed the Norton Drive-In, where the marquee said:
FRI—SAT—SUN
RESTLESS WIVES
SOME CAME RUNNING RATED X
EIGHT-BALL
He passed a bowling alley and a driving range that was closed for the season. Gas stations—two of them with signs that said:
SORRY, NO GAS
It was still four days until they got their gasoline allotments for December. He couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry for the country as a whole as it went into this science-fiction-style crisis—the country had been pigging petroleum for too long to warrant his sympathy—but he could feel sorry for the little men with their peckers caught in the swing of a big door.
A mile farther on he came to Magliore’s Used Cars. He didn’t know what he had expected, but he felt disappointed. It looked like a cut-rate, fly-by-night operation. Cars were lined up on the lot facing the road under looped lines of flapping banners—red, yellow, blue, green—that had been tied between light standards that would shine down on the product at night. Prices and slogans soaped on the windshields:
$795
RUNS GOOD!
and
$550
GOOD TRANSPORTATION!
and on a dusty old Valiant with flat tires and a cracked windshield:
$75
MECHANIX SPECIAL!
A salesman wearing a gray-green topcoat was nodding and smiling noncommittally as a young kid in a red silk jacket talked to him. They were standing by a blue Mustang with cancer of the rocker panels. The kid said something vehement and thumped the driver’s side door with the flat of his hand. Rust flaked off in a small flurry. The salesman shrugged and went on smiling. The Mustang just sat there and got a little older.
There was a combination office and garage in the center of the lot. He parked and got out of his car. There was a lift in the garage, and an old Dodge with giant fins was up on it. A mechanic walked out from under, holding a muffler in both grease-gloved hands like a chalice.
“Say, you can’t park there, mister. That’s in the right-of-way.”
“Where should I park?”
“Take it around back if you’re goin in the office.”
He drove the LTD around to the back, creeping carefully down the narrow way between the corrugated metal side of the garage and a row of cars. He parked behind the garage and got out. The wind, strong and cutting,
After work he got his car out of the parking lot—Mary had been glad to let him have it for the day since he was seeing about their new house—and drove through downtown and through Norton.
In Norton, blacks stood around on street corners and outside bars. Restaurants advertised different kinds of soul food. Children hopped and danced on chalked sidewalk grids. He saw a pimpmobile—a huge pink Eldorado Cadillac—pull up in front of an anonymous brownstone apartment building. The man who got out was a Wilt Chamberlain-size black in a white planter’s hat and a white ice cream suit with pearl buttons and black platform shoes with huge gold buckles on the sides. He carried a malacca stick with a large ivory ball on the top. He walked slowly, majestically, around to the hood of the car, where a set of caribou antlers were mounted. A tiny silver spoon hung on a silver chain around his neck and winked in the thin autumn sun. He watched the man in the rearview mirror as the children ran to him for sweets.
Nine blocks later the tenements thinned to ragged, open fields that were still soft and marshy. Oily water stood between hummocks in puddles, their surfaces flat, deadly rainbows. On the left, near the horizon, he could see a plane landing at the city’s airport.
He was now on Route 16, traveling past the exurban sprawl between the city and the city limits. He passed McDonald’s. Shakey’s, Nino’s Steak Pit. He passed a Dairy Freez and the Noddy-Time Motel, both closed for the season. He passed the Norton Drive-In, where the marquee said:
FRI—SAT—SUN
RESTLESS WIVES
SOME CAME RUNNING RATED X
EIGHT-BALL
He passed a bowling alley and a driving range that was closed for the season. Gas stations—two of them with signs that said:
SORRY, NO GAS
It was still four days until they got their gasoline allotments for December. He couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry for the country as a whole as it went into this science-fiction-style crisis—the country had been pigging petroleum for too long to warrant his sympathy—but he could feel sorry for the little men with their peckers caught in the swing of a big door.
A mile farther on he came to Magliore’s Used Cars. He didn’t know what he had expected, but he felt disappointed. It looked like a cut-rate, fly-by-night operation. Cars were lined up on the lot facing the road under looped lines of flapping banners—red, yellow, blue, green—that had been tied between light standards that would shine down on the product at night. Prices and slogans soaped on the windshields:
$795
RUNS GOOD!
and
$550
GOOD TRANSPORTATION!
and on a dusty old Valiant with flat tires and a cracked windshield:
$75
MECHANIX SPECIAL!
A salesman wearing a gray-green topcoat was nodding and smiling noncommittally as a young kid in a red silk jacket talked to him. They were standing by a blue Mustang with cancer of the rocker panels. The kid said something vehement and thumped the driver’s side door with the flat of his hand. Rust flaked off in a small flurry. The salesman shrugged and went on smiling. The Mustang just sat there and got a little older.
There was a combination office and garage in the center of the lot. He parked and got out of his car. There was a lift in the garage, and an old Dodge with giant fins was up on it. A mechanic walked out from under, holding a muffler in both grease-gloved hands like a chalice.
“Say, you can’t park there, mister. That’s in the right-of-way.”
“Where should I park?”
“Take it around back if you’re goin in the office.”
He drove the LTD around to the back, creeping carefully down the narrow way between the corrugated metal side of the garage and a row of cars. He parked behind the garage and got out. The wind, strong and cutting,
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