Free The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson Page A

wall. The steering wheel shuddered in his grip, he guided the car off the highway.
    Fifty yards farther on, he braked the car and twisted off the ignition. He sat there for a moment, wordless, glaring straight ahead with baleful eyes. His hands were white-ridged fists quivering in his lap.
    At last he spoke. “Oh, you son-of-a—” Fury sent a jolting shudder down his back.
    “Go ahead,” he said, rage crouching behind the patience of histone. “Go ahead, pour it on. Sure. Go ahead; why not?” His teeth clicked together. “Don’t just stop with a flat tire, though,” he said, words thumping at the closed gates of his teeth. “Kill the generator. Tear out the spark plugs. Split the radiator. Blow up the whole goddamn son-of-a-bitch car!” Apoplectic rage sprayed across the windshield.
    He thudded back against the seat, spent, his eyes shut.
    After a few minutes, he pulled up the door handle and pushed the door open. Cold air rushed over him. Drawing up the collar of his topcoat, he shifted his legs and slid down off the raised seat.
    He landed on gravel, spilling forward, hands out for support. He got up quickly, cursing, and fired a stone across the highway. With my luck it’ll break a car window and put out an old lady’s eye! he thought furiously. With my luck.
    He stood shivering, looking at his car, hunched blackly over the collapsed tire. Great, he thought, just great. How in the hell was he supposed to change it? His teeth gritted. He wasn’t even strong enough for
that
. And, of course, Terry couldn’t watch the children today and Lou had to stay home. It figured.
    A spasm shook him beneath the topcoat. It was cold. Cold on a May night. Even that figured. Even the weather was against him. He closed his eyes. I’m ready for a padded cell, he thought.
    Well, he couldn’t just stand there. He had to get to a phone and call a garage.
    He didn’t move. He stared at the road. And after I call the garage, he thought, the mechanic will come and he’ll talk to me and look at me and recognize me; and there’ll be guarded stares, or maybe even open ones, the kind Berg always gave him—blunt, insulting stares that seemed to say, Jesus, you
are
a creep. And there would be talk, questions, the kind of withdrawn camaraderie a normal man offers to a freak.
    His throat muscles drew in slowly as he swallowed. Even rage was preferable to this; this complete negation of spirit. Rage, at least, was struggle, it was a moving forward against something. This was defeat, static and heavy on him.
    Weary breath emptied from him. Well, there was no other way. He had to get home. He might have called Marty under any other circumstances; but he felt awkward about Marty now.
    He slid his hands into the slash pockets of his coat and started trudging along the roadside gravel.
    I don’t care, he kept telling himself as he walked. I don’t care if I
did
sign a contract. I’m tired of playing guinea pig for a million readers.
    He walked on quickly in his little-boy clothes.
    Moments later, headlight beams bleached across him and he stepped farther away from the road and kept on walking. He certainly wasn’t going to try to get a ride.
    The dark car hulk rolled past him. Then there was a slowing of the tires on the pavement and, looking up, Scott saw that the car was stopping. His mouth tightened. I’d rather walk. He formed the words with his lips, getting them ready.
    The door shoved open and a fedora-topped head appeared.
    “You alone, my boy?” the man asked huskily. The words came out from one side of his mouth. The other side was plugged with a half-smoked cigar.
    Scott trudged toward the car. Maybe it was all right; the man thought he was a boy. He might have expected it. Hadn’t they refused to let him in the movie one afternoon because he wasn’t accompanied by an adult? Hadn’t he been forced to show his identification before that bartender would serve him a drink?
    “You alone, young fellow?” the man asked