He looked out the window and saw they were headed north on the Maine Turnpike-only up to mile thirty-six, so he couldn't have slept too long. The feathery mackerel scales of two hours ago were beginning to merge into a toneless gray that promised rain by afternoon-before he got to Haven, it would probably be dark and he would be soaked.

After hanging up the telephone at the Mobil station, he had stripped off his socks and tossed them into the wastecan on one of the gasoline islands. Then he walked over to Route 1 northbound in his bare feet and stood on the shoulder, old totebag in one hand, the thumb of his other out and cocked north.

Twenty minutes later this van had come along-a fairly new Dodge Caravel with Delaware plates. A pair of electric guitars, their necks crossed like swords, were painted on the side, along with the name of the group inside: THE EDDIE PARKER BAND. It pulled over and Gardener ran to it, panting, totebag banging his leg, headache pulsing white-hot pain into the left side of his head. In spite of the pain, he had been amused by the slogan carefully lettered across the van's back doors: IF EDDIE's ROCKIN”, DON'T COME KNOCKIN”.

Now, sitting on the floor in back and reminding himself not to turn around quickly and thump the snare drum again, Gardener saw the Old Orchard exit coming up. At the same time, the first drops of rain hit the windshield.

“Listen,” Eddie said, pulling over, “I hate to leave you off like this. It's starting to rain and you don't even have any fuckin” shoes.”

“I'll be all right.”

“You don't look so all right,” the girl in the cutoffs said softly.

Eddie whipped off his hat (DON'T BLAME ME; I VOTED FOR HOWARD THE DUCK written over the visor) and said: “Cough up, you guys.” Wallets appeared; change jingled in jeans pockets.

“No! Hey, thanks, but no!” Gardener felt hot blood rush into his cheeks and burn there. Not embarrassment but outright shame. Somewhere inside him he felt a strong painful thud-it didn't rattle his teeth or bones. It was, he thought, his soul taking some final fall. It sounded melodramatic as bell. As for how it felt… well, it just felt real. That was the horrible part about it. Just… real. Okay, he thought. That's what it feels like. All your life you've heard people talk about hitting bottom, this is what it feels like. Here it is. James Gardener, who was going to be the Ezra Pound of his generation, taking spare change from a Delaware bar band.

“Really… no-”

Eddie Parker went on passing the hat just the same. There was a bunch of change and a few one-dollar bills in it. Beaver got the hat last. He tossed in a couple of quarters.

“Look,” Gardener said, “I appreciate it, but

“C'mon, Beaver,” Eddie said. “Cough up, you fuckin” Scrooge.”

“Really, I have friends in Portland, I'll just call a few up… and I think I might have left my checkbook with this one guy I know in Falmouth,” Gardener added wildly.

“Bea-ver's a Scrooge,” the girl in the cutoffs began to chant gleefully. “Bea-ver's a Scrooge, Bea-ver's a Scrooge!” The others picked it up until Beaver, laughing and rolling his eyes, added another quarter and a New York Lottery ticket.

“There, I'm tapped,” he said, “unless you want to wait around for the prunes to work.” The guys in the band and the girl in the cutoffs were laughing wildly again. Looking resignedly at Gardener, as if to say, You see the morons I have to deal with? You dig it?, Beaver handed the hat to Gardener, who had to take it; if he hadn't, the change would have rolled all over the van floor.

“Really,” he said, trying to give the hat back to Beaver. “I'm perfectly okay-”

“You ain't,” Eddie Parker said. “So cut the bullshit, what do you say?”

“I guess I say thanks,” Gardener said. “It's all I can think of right now.”

“Well, it ain't so much you'll have to declare it on your income taxes,” Eddie said. “But it”?] buy you some burgers and a pair of those rubber sandals.”

The girl slid open the door in the Caravel's sidewall. “Get better, understand?” she said. Then, before he could reply, she hugged him and gave him a kiss, her mouth moist, friendly, half-open, and redolent of pot. “Take care, big guy.”

“I'll try.” On the verge of getting out he suddenly hugged her again, fiercely. “Thank you. Thank you all.”

He stood in the breakdown lane of the ramp, the rain failing a little harder now, watching as the van's sidewall door rumbled shut on its track. The girl waved. Gardener waved back and then the van was rolling down the breakdown lane, gathering speed, finally sliding over into the travel lane. Gardener watched them go, one hand still raised in a wave in case they might be looking back. Tears were running freely down his cheeks now, to mix with the rain.

He never did get a chance to buy a pair of rubber sandals, but he got to Haven before dark and he didn't have to walk the last ten or so miles to Bobbi's house, as he'd thought he might; you'd think people would be more apt to pick up a guy hitching in the rain, but that was just when they were most likely to pass you by. Who needed a human puddle in the passenger seat?

But he got a ride outside of Augusta with a farmer who complained constantly and bitterly about the government all the way up to the China town line, where he let Gard out. Gard walked a couple of miles, thumbing the few cars that passed, wondering if his feet were turning to ice or if it was just his imagination, when a pulp-truck pulled to a rackety halt beside him.

Gardener climbed into the cab as fast as he could. It smelled of old woodchips and sour loggers” sweat… but it was warm.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don't mention it,” the driver said. “Name's Freeman Moss.” He stuck out a hand. Gardener, who had no idea that he would meet this man in the not-too-distant future under far less cheery circumstances, took it and shook it.

“Jim Gardener. Thanks again.”

“Shoot a pickle,” Freeman Moss scoffed. He got the truck moving. It shuddered along the edge of the road, picking up speed, Gard thought, not just grudgingly but with actual pain. Everything shook. The universal moaned beneath them like a hag in a chimney corner. The world's oldest toothbrush, its eroded bristles dark with the grease it had been employed to coax out of some clotted gearor cog-tooth, chittered along the dashboard, passing an old air freshener of a naked woman with very large breasts on its way. Moss punched the clutch, managed to find second after an endless time spent grinding gears, and wrestled the pulp-truck back onto the road. “Y'look half-drowned. Got half a thermos of coffee from the Drunken Donuts in Augusta left over from my dinner… you want it?”

Gardener drank it gratefully. It was strong, hot, and heavily laced with sugar. He also accepted a cigarette from the driver, dragging deeply and with pleasure, although it hurt his throat, which was getting steadily sorer.

Moss dropped him off just over the Haven town line at quarter to seven. The rain had slacked off, and the sky was lightening up in the west. “Do believe God's gonna let through some sunset,” the driver said. “I wish like hell I had a pair of shoes I could give you, mister-I usually carry an old pair of sneakers behind the seat, but it was so rainy today I never brought nothin” but m'gumrubbers.”

“Thanks, but I'll be fine. My friend is less than a mile up the road.” Actually Bobbi's place was still three miles away, but if he told Moss that, nothing would do but that he drive Gardener up there. Gardener was tired, increasingly feverish, still damp even after forty-five minutes of the heater's dry, blasting air… but he couldn't stand any more kindness today. In his present state of mind it could well drive him crazy.

“Okay. Good luck.”