Norwood by Charles Portis Page A

nearest filling station. He stood on the highway under the station’s harsh blue mercury lights and swatted bugs out of his face.

THE SUN WAS COMING UP before he got a ride. It was a bread truck. The driver was a round sloping man who was wearing an official bread hat with a sunburst medallion and a T-shirt that was so thin hairs were breaking through it. A bulldozer watch fob lay on his lap. Norwood thought at first he had rubber bands around his wrists. They were fat and dimpled like baby wrists.
    â€œThis is against the rules,” said the bread man, “but I just can’t pass a man up. My wife says I’m too kind for my own good.”
    â€œWell, I sure appreciate it,” said Norwood. “I was getting pretty tired.”
    The truck was a delivery model with no passenger seat and Norwood had to sit on a wooden bread box. He laid the guitar across his knees. There was a bad shimmy in the front wheels and this made the guitar bounce and hum.
    â€œI’ll have to make a few stops, but a man begging a ride ought to be glad to get whatever he can.”
    â€œThis is fine. I appreciate it too.”
    â€œHave you got a dollar to help on the gas?”
    Norwood gave him a dollar. “Do you have to pay for your own gas?”
    The man looked straight ahead. “Sometimes I do.”
    â€œHow much does a job like this pay?” said Norwood. “A bread job?”
    â€œWell, it don’t pay as much as heavy construction work but you don’t have to work as hard neither. I used to drive a D-8 cat till I hurt my back. Didn’t do anything while I was on workmen’s compensation. Just went to the show all the time. I like The Road Runner .”
    â€œYeah, I do too.”
    â€œI could watch that scutter for an hour.”
    â€œI believe I could too.”
    The bread man began to rumble with quiet laughter. “That coyote or whatever he is, a wolf or something, every time he gets up on a clift or somewhere with a new plan, why the Road Runner comes along on some skates or has him some new invention like a rocket or a big wrecker’s ball and just busts that coyote a good one.” He laughed some more, then fell into repose. In a minute or two his face clouded with a darker memory. “Noveltoons are not any good at all,” he said. “It’s usually a shoemaker and a bunch of damn mice singing. When one of them comes on I get up and go get me a sack of corn or something.”
    They shimmied on down the road. At the first stop, a roadside grocery store, Norwood got a quart of milk and had the grocer make him a couple of baloney and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise. He leaned on the meat box and ate and watched the bread man do his stuff. The bread man carried old bread out and brought new bread in. He squatted down and arranged it on the rack. Norwood noticed that he was poking finger holes in the competitors’ loaves. Their eyes met, just for a second, and the bread man looked away. He tried to recover by doing peculiar things with his hands, as though he had a funny way of arranging bread. Norwood was not deceived. The bread man had no gift for pantomime and he did not seem to consider that from a range of eight or nine feet it is easy enough to tell whether someone is or is not punching holes in bread.
    He said nothing about it and neither did Norwood. But back on the road the guilty knowledge hung heavy over the conversation. The bread man tried to get something going again. He asked Norwood if that was a Gibson guitar, but before Norwood could answer the man said, “My whole family is musical. Some families are like that. My sister used to play trombone solos in church. Daddy played the accordion and we would all sing. He could really play that thing. And didn’t know note one.”
    â€œThey’re hard to beat,” said Norwood, agreeably. “I like to hear a good accordion.”
    â€œDaddy passed on two days after Labor Day