The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [13]
Abruptly the highway turned to gravel. Gypsum nuggets, jagged as arrowheads, flew up against the underside of the car and made a fearful din. I had visions of hosepipes rupturing, hot oil spraying everywhere, me rolling to a steamy, hissing halt out here on this desolate road. The wandering sun was just settling on to the horizon, splashing the sky with faint pinks. Uneasily I drove on, and steeled myself for the prospect of a night spent beneath the stars, with dog-like animals sniffing at my feet and snakes finding warmth up a trouser leg. Ahead of me on the road an advancing storm of dust became after a moment a pickup truck, which passed in a hell-bent fashion, spraying the car with rocky projectiles, which thumped against the sides and bounced off the windows with a cracking sound, and then left me adrift in a cloud of dust. I trundled on, peering helplessly through the murk. It cleared just in time to show me that I was twenty feet from a T-Junction with a stop sign. I was going fifty miles an hour, which on gravel leaves you with a stopping distance of about three miles. I jumped on the brakes with all my feet and made a noise like Tarzan missing a vine as the car went into a skid. It slid sideways past the stop sign and out onto a paved highway, where it came to a halt, rocking gently from side to side. At that instant an enormous semi-trailer truck – all silver horns and flashing lights – blared mightily at me as it swept past, setting the car rocking again. Had I slid out on to the highway three seconds earlier it would have crushed the car into something about the size of a stock cube. I pulled on to the shoulder and got out to examine the damage. It looked as if the car had been dive-bombed with bags of flour. Bits of raw metal showed through where the paint had been pinged away. I thanked God that my mother was so much smaller than me. I sighed, suddenly feeling lost and far from home, and noticed ahead a road sign pointing the way to Quincy. I had come to a halt facing in the right direction, so at least something had come of it.
It was time to stop. Just down the road stood a little town, which I shall call Dullard lest the people recognize themselves and take me to court or come to my house and batter me with baseball bats. On the edge of town was an old motel which looked pretty seedy, though judging by the absence of charred furniture in the front yard it was clearly a step up from the sort of place my dad would have chosen. I pulled on to the gravel drive and went inside. A woman of about seventy-five was sitting behind the desk. She wore butterfly glasses and a beehive hairdo. She was doing one of those books that require you to find words in a mass of letters and circle them. I think it was called ‘Word Puzzles for Morons’.
‘Help yew?’ she drawled without looking up.
‘I’d like a room for the night, please.’
‘That’ll be thirty-eight dollars and fifty cents,’ she replied as her pen fell greedily on the word YUP.
I was nonplussed. In my day a motel room cost about $12. ‘I don’t want to buy the room,’ I explained. ‘I just want to sleep in it for one night.’
She looked at me gravely over the tops of her glasses. ‘The room is thirty-eight dollars and fifty cents. Per night. Plus tax. You want it or not?’ She had one of those disagreeable accents that add a syllable to every word. ‘Tax’ came out as ‘tayax’.
We both knew that I was miles from anywhere. ‘Yes, please,’ I said contritely. I signed in and crunched across the gravel to my suite du nuit. There appeared to be no other customers. I went into my room with my bag and had a look around, as you do in a new place. There was a black and white TV which appeared to get only one channel and three bent