We washed up, cleaned our teeth, sat on our blankets, while Louie gave us scrambled eggs, coffee that was golden clear, bacon cooked somehow so that it had a nutty flavor, crisp without being brittle. He had a little wood fire going, had let it die down to coals, and a screen propped on some small rocks over these coals was the grate on which he had browned thin slices of the French bread into golden-crisp toast with butter glistening on it.
Every mouthful of food seemed deliciously flavored strength. I felt as though I didn’t need boxing lessons, that I could stand up to any man on earth and blast him to the ground with my bare fists.
We sat around for a few minutes after breakfast, smoking cigarettes, soaking up the warmth of the sunlight. We finished our cigarettes. I looked at Louie. We looked at the girl. She nodded. We started rolling up the blankets, fitting them into the ancient jalopy. No one spoke much. We had no need for words.
Half an hour later, with dishes all done and put away, the car neatly packed, we were on our way, rattling across the desert, the motor full of piston slaps and bearing knocks, but managing to deliver its thirty-seven miles an hour. The sun rose higher. The shadow cast by the automobile shortened. The warmth gave place to heat. The right rear tire developed a puncture. Louie and I changed it. We didn’t find it particularly annoying. We weren’t nervous, and we weren’t hurried. Everything went like clockwork — entirely different from those occasions when I’d been dashing around in Bertha Cool’s agency car trying to get somewhere in a hurry. Then a tire would go flat, and nothing would work. The car would roll off the jack. The nuts would get cross-threaded, on the bolts, and the rim never seemed to fit right on the wheel.
We didn’t hurry. We had all the time in the world. Occasionally, we’d stop to just soak up the scenery.
We traveled all that day, camped at night on the desert, and got to Reno around noon the following day.
“Okay,” Louie said, “here we are. What’s the orders, skipper?”
The jalopy was covered with desert dust. I needed a shave. Louie had black whiskers sprouting all over his chin. All three of us were burned from the desert sun and wind, but I had never felt so serenely relaxed.
“An auto camp,” I said, “while we get cleaned up, and find out what’s to be done.”
We found an auto camp. The woman let us have a cabin which had two rooms and three beds. We scrubbed under the shower. Louie and I shaved, then I left them in the cabin while I went out to reconnoiter.