"At what? Ourselves?"
A sign said: HAL'S SNAPPY SERVICE. TWENTY-SEVEN MILES.
She's right, he thought, and started slowing down. This is it. He wasn't going any farther until Anna was examined, and he was given an okay to stop somewhere so she could rest.
It was a dusty oasis, an arid anachronism on the desert's edge. Beyond it, the mountains blundered up like giants from a purplish haze, brooding and somehow threatening. Groves of cottonwoods could be seen far ahead, and sprinklings of green reaching into the thinning sage.
The old man shuffled out of the shade by the coke machine. Behind him, through dusty glass, Stan saw the blurred faces staring with still curiosity.
The old man hesitated, then came around between the pumps to the driver's side. He was all stooped bone and leathery skin. His face, Stan thought beneath the rising desperation, resembled an African ceremonial mask.
To the left a '62 Fordster was cranked up for a grease job. But the only life around it was a scrawny dog lying out flat to get all the air possible on its ribby body, its tongue hanging out in the black grease.
"The car's okay," Stan said. "I just want to use your telephone."
"Doctor Morrison, you'd better go on to Salt Lake City. That's an eight-hour stopover."