Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor [58]
He drove very fast out onto the highway, but once he had gone a few miles, he had the sense that he was not gaining ground. Shacks and filling stations and road camps and 666 signs passed him, and deserted barns with CCC snuff ads peeling across them, even a sign that said "Jesus Died for YOU" which he saw and deliberately did not read. He had the sense that the road was really slipping back under him. He had known all along that there was no more country but he didn't know that there was not another city.
He had not gone five miles on the highway before he heard a siren behind him. He looked around and saw a black patrol car coming up. It drove alongside him and the patrolman in it motioned for him to pull over to the edge of the road. The patrolman had a red pleasant face and eyes the color of clear fresh ice.
"I wasn't speeding," Haze said.
"No," the patrolman agreed, "you wasn't."
"I was on the right side of the road."
"Yes you was, that's right," the cop said.
"What you want with me?"
"I just don't like your face," the patrolman said. "Where's your license?"
"I don't like your face either," Haze said, "and I don't have a license."
"Well," the patrolman said in a kindly voice, "I don't reckon you need one."
"Well I ain't got one if I do," Haze said.
"Listen," the patrolman said, taking another tone, "would you mind driving your car up to the top of the next hill? I want you to see the view from up there, put-tiest view you ever did see."
Haze shrugged but he started the car up. He didn't mind fighting the patrolman if that was what he wanted. He drove to the top of the hill, with the patrol car following close behind him. "Now you turn it facing the embankment," the patrolman called. "You'll be able to see better thataway." Haze turned it facing the embankment. "Now maybe you better had get out," the cop said. "I think you could see better if you was out."
Haze got out and glanced at the view. The embankment dropped down for about thirty feet, sheer washed-out red clay, into a partly burnt pasture where there was one scrub cow lying near a puddle. Over in the middle distance there was a one-room shack with a buzzard standing hunch-shouldered on the roof.
The patrolman got behind the Essex and pushed it over the embankment and the cow stumbled up and galloped across the field and into the woods; the buzzard flapped off to a tree at the edge of the clearing. The car landed on its top, with the three wheels that stayed on, spinning. The motor bounced out and rolled some distance away and various odd pieces scattered this way and that.
"Them that don't have a car, don't need a license," the patrolman said, dusting his hands on his pants.
Haze stood for a few minutes, looking over at the scene. His face seemed to reflect the entire distance across the clearing and on beyond, the entire distance that extended from his eyes to the blank gray sky that went on, depth after depth, into space. His knees bent under him and he sat down on the edge of the embankment with his feet hanging over.
The patrolman stood staring at him. "Could I give you a lift to where you was going?" he asked.
After a minute he came a little closer and said, "Where was you going?"
He leaned on down with his hands on his knees and said in an anxious voice, "Was you going anywheres?"
"No," Haze said.
The patrolman squatted down and put his hand on Haze's shoulder. "You hadn't planned to go anywheres?" he asked anxiously.
Haze shook his head. His face didn't change and he didn't turn it toward the patrolman. It seemed to be concentrated on space.
The patrolman got up and went back to his car and stood at the door of it, staring at the back of Haze's hat and shoulder. Then he said, "Well, I'll be seeing you," and got in and drove off.
After a while Haze got up and started walking back to town. It took him three hours to get inside