Free The Driftless Area by Tom Drury Page B

DISTINGUISHED EXPERT , though in what field it did not say, and probably the shirt had not belonged to the driver when the award was earned anyway.
    He had a round and sunburned face and jutting brow, and he would not look Pierre in the eyes but always seemed to be thinking of some other situation, and sometimes he appeared laid back and at other times, for no reason, a look of alarm would flicker across his face.
    And as they went along the driver said he was going down to San Antonio, to help his brother, who had found a lot of money in a car wash. Or rather than sayingit he yelled it, or nearly so, to be heard above the highway sound that rolled through the missing window.
    “How much is it?” said Pierre.
    “Thousands. Tens of thousands.”
    “And somebody left it in a car wash.”
    “So he tells me.”
    “What is it, drug money?”
    “Well, we don’t know. But ill-gotten gains of some kind. It was in a paper sack from a grocery store.”
    “What if whoever left it wants it back?”
    Pierre was only making conversation. The story sounded made up, though it was not that unusual for something you would hear while hitchhiking.
    “Yeah, my brother’s kind of worried about that aspect of it,” said the driver, with his hair dancing around in the back draft of the missing window. “But once he gets it to San Antonio those bastards can’t touch him.”
    “I thought it was in San Antonio.”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    Pierre’s backpack was then riding along in the bed of the pickup, in violation of a fundamental rule of hitchhiking, which is not to get separated from anything you don’t want to lose.
    The end of the ride showed the reason for the rule. When they came to the turnoff for the highway that Pierre would take east the 70 miles to Shale, the driverwent halfway up the exit ramp and stopped there on the shoulder.
    “Why don’t you pull up to the stop sign. I’ll get out there,” said Pierre.
    “No, thanks, this is fine.”
    Pierre looked across at the driver, thinking he had not understood. “You’ve got to go there anyway.”
    “Yeah, I don’t care.”
    “Just right up here,” said Pierre.
    The driver turned in his seat, set his back to the door, and kicked Pierre in the shoulder.
    “Get the fuck out of my truck,” he said.
    “Well, okay, but it seems goddamn small after I gave you gas money.”
    “And don’t forget your stuff.”
    Once he said that Pierre saw his mistake. Still, there was nothing to do but get out. He opened the door and began to step down and the truck took off, throwing him on the pavement.
    But then the driver made a mistake of his own. Instead of leaving as fast as he could, he stopped a little ways off, and looked back through the glassless window, and yelled something, Pierre could not tell what, but it seemed to end with the word fool, which was hard to argue with under the circumstances.
    The backpack held nothing of value, but Pierre hated the thought of the thief getting the paper plates withthe drawings. So he jumped to his feet, took the lucky rock from the pocket of his coat, wound up, and threw the rock at the truck.
    Sometimes things happen that seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics, which states that all systems move toward disorder. Once Pierre had dropped a lighter on the sidewalk, and it landed standing up. Another time, lying in bed with Stella, he asked what she would do if he could toss a quarter across the room and into a coffee cup sitting on the dresser by the Gokstad ship, and she told him, and he threw the coin, and it went in the cup.
    And now the pickup began to move, tires spinning for a hold on the pavement, but it didn’t matter, because the rock in its flight seemed to know what it was meant to do, and it followed a low arc and tailed off, going through the window frame and hitting the driver. The truck went on up the ramp for a short while, losing speed, and then veered west and down a grassy embankment, where it rolled for a