Free Air - Page 1/176

When the windshield was closed it became so filmed with rain that Claire

fancied she was piloting a drowned car in dim spaces under the sea. When

it was open, drops jabbed into her eyes and chilled her cheeks. She was

excited and thoroughly miserable. She realized that these Minnesota

country roads had no respect for her polite experience on Long Island

parkways. She felt like a woman, not like a driver.

But the Gomez-Dep roadster had seventy horsepower, and sang songs. Since

she had left Minneapolis nothing had passed her. Back yonder a truck had

tried to crowd her, and she had dropped into a ditch, climbed a bank,

returned to the road, and after that the truck was not. Now she was

regarding a view more splendid than mountains above a garden by the

sea--a stretch of good road. To her passenger, her father, Claire

chanted: "Heavenly! There's some gravel. We can make time. We'll hustle on to the

next town and get dry."

"Yes. But don't mind me. You're doing very well," her father sighed.

Instantly, the dismay of it rushing at her, she saw the end of the patch

of gravel. The road ahead was a wet black smear, criss-crossed with

ruts. The car shot into a morass of prairie gumbo--which is mud mixed

with tar, fly-paper, fish glue, and well-chewed, chocolate-covered

caramels. When cattle get into gumbo, the farmers send for the

stump-dynamite and try blasting.

It was her first really bad stretch of road. She was frightened. Then

she was too appallingly busy to be frightened, or to be Miss Claire

Boltwood, or to comfort her uneasy father. She had to drive. Her frail

graceful arms put into it a vicious vigor that was genius.

When the wheels struck the slime, they slid, they wallowed. The car

skidded. It was terrifyingly out of control. It began majestically to

turn toward the ditch. She fought the steering wheel as though she were

shadow-boxing, but the car kept contemptuously staggering till it was

sideways, straight across the road. Somehow, it was back again, eating

into a rut, going ahead. She didn't know how she had done it, but she

had got it back. She longed to take time to retrace her own cleverness

in steering. She didn't. She kept going.

The car backfired, slowed. She yanked the gear from third into first.

She sped up. The motor ran like a terrified pounding heart, while the

car crept on by inches through filthy mud that stretched ahead of her

without relief.

She was battling to hold the car in the principal rut. She snatched the

windshield open, and concentrated on that left rut. She felt that she

was keeping the wheel from climbing those high sides of the rut, those

six-inch walls of mud, sparkling with tiny grits. Her mind snarled at

her arms, "Let the ruts do the steering. You're just fighting against

them." It worked. Once she let the wheels alone they comfortably

followed the furrows, and for three seconds she had that delightful

belief of every motorist after every mishap, "Now that this particular

disagreeableness is over, I'll never, never have any trouble again!"