Norwood by Charles Portis

Evansville like that, Norwood in his car, Miss Phillips in hers. There was nothing doing in downtown Evansville. Night lights were burning in the stores but the streets were still and deserted. Miss Phillips began blatting her horn. It boomed and rang and echoed, and Norwood’s first impulse was to step on it, but he stopped. Miss Phillips got back in the Olds.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you now?”
    â€œI want some coffee,” said Miss Phillips. “I don’t like it back there in that car with nobody driving it.”
    At an all-night diner on the edge of town they sat on stools and had coffee and cold sugary fried pies. Miss Phillips was morose. She had knots on her head fore and aft, and her legs were sticky with dried peach juice. The green party dress looked awful. Norwood snapped at the counter girl for putting cream in his coffee. She said she didn’t know where he was from but if you wanted it black you had to say so. He told her he was from a place where they let you put your own cream in your coffee. From little syrup pitchers with spring lids.
    Miss Phillips, wistfully eating her fried pie, was not listening to this byplay. “Sammy would get me a job right off,” she said. “But I wouldn’t want Grady to know where I was. I guess you would tell him.”
    â€œI wouldn’t tell him what time it was,” said Norwood. “After the way he done me.”
    â€œHe’s a disbarred lawyer and he knows a thousand ways to get you in trouble. I’d be afraid you would tell him where I went.”
    â€œNaw, I said wouldn’t. I wisht you would go on. It would be a load off my mind.”
    â€œI’m sorry I talked so ugly to you, Red. Why don’t you let me have one of those cars?”
    Norwood put the keys on the counter. “I don’t want anything more to do with you or them cars. Take both of’em, Laverne, and go on. You can give one to Sammy. Tell him hello for me.”
    â€œI can’t drive but one. You’ll have to unhook ’em.”
    It was a job getting the reflex tow bar off. All he had was a pair of pliers. Somebody with big shoulders and a four-way lug wrench had jammed those nuts down to stay. It was no use, not with pliers. He kicked it and beat it with a rock. Finally he attacked it with a jack handle and chanted “This time . . . this time . . . this time . . .” until it broke loose. Miss Phillips had no goodbye for Norwood. She took the Oldsmobile without a word or a wave and roared off into the Midwestern night flinging driveway gravel. The tow bar, its ingenious patented action now so much junk, was dragging along behind, bouncing on the highway and kicking up sparks.
    Norwood drove the Pontiac out past the last lights of town and turned off on a dirt road. He turned off that road onto a two-rut road and then into what looked like a blackberry patch. He gunned it through the thicket and over arm-size saplings, giving the Indiana forest folk a scare, until it hit some bigger trees and stopped. He forced his door open against the bushes and got out and looked around. This was not such a smart idea. What would a car be doing here? Somebody would report it first thing tomorrow. He tried to back it out but the rear wheels were sunk hub deep in sand and wouldn’t rock free. Well, he was tired of fooling with it. He took a towel from his bag and gave the door handles and the interior a good wiping down. It had been a proud day when he had given the Marine Corps his fingerprints and now they were up there in some drawer in Washington waiting to do him in. He ran his hand under the seat to see if he had left any clues. Any peanuts or guitar picks or things they could look at through a microscope. It smelled a little of Miss Phillips down there. He burned the fiber envelope and its contents and then he zipped up his bag and slung the guitar across his back and walked a good three miles back toward town to the