"Cigarette?" Artie Chesbro said again. Now what was the matter with the old son of a bitch? He said more loudly: "Cigarette, Henry?"
"Uh, sure." Chesbro grinned wisely; the burgess had just come across Polly in one of her queer moods. He reached over to the glove compartment. "Matches? Here, here's my lighter."
The burgess spun the wheel of the lighter and held the flaming wick to his cigarette for a long second while he took three puffs. Mrs. Chesbro moved over a little. The darkness outside and the momentary brightness inside the car turned the windshield into a mirror; he could see her tortured smile.
The brightness inside almost wrecked them. As the burgess snapped the lighter shut and you could see through the windshield again, Chesbro gasped and tramped on the brake; fast as he was, the car was already nosing into a surging stream that cut across the road.
The engine chugged and died. There was a long moment of silence. How little we know our land, the burgess thought, too tired for panic, filled with resignation. The hills and valleys we know and name, but the little draws in the hills down which the heavens drain into our river, we glance stupidly at them in a dry season and see nothing. But this torrent before us is one of those draws. No doubt we paid just enough attention to it—only where it crossed this road—to bury a culvert that would guide it in time of rain and thought we were through with it for all time. But the rain began and first it soaked into the pasture and woodlot duff until they could hold no more; the rain went on and raced in a sheet across pasture and cropland until it found the draw and gurgled into it and raced down the hillside safely channeled, hit the culvert with a gurgle and poured through and tumbled down the hill on the other side, and still the rain sheeted down and the culvert filled, and when it was gorged to the full the rain still fell, and the water rose above the culvert and blindly poured across the road six inches deep, a foot, a yard, and here we are. Try to get through and blue sparks will snap from the sparkplug terminals to the wet block, the vapor in the cylinders will not fire and Artie Chesbro's pride, his joy, his car, will soon be a coffin for three drowned bodies, costlier than any bronze sarcophagus.
But Chesbro was swearing and tramping on the starter. "Stay in!" he yelled as his wife half-opened the door. "I'll get this son of a bitch started or know the reason why!"
There was a lopsided chugging. One terminal was dry enough; it had been only spray. And then the motor roared. The car backed violently up the hill in the dark. "There was a side road," Chesbro panted. "Headed uphill. Can't turn around on this damn thing, we'd go into the ditch, but I can flip onto the side road when we come to it."
He felt good; this was what he was good at. From high school on he had been a fast, hard driver who delighted in tricky maneuvering; for years now he had been in the habit of passing anything on the road; it made him feel good and he felt good now. He backed the car, roaring, twisted full around in the seat and peering into the dark. He remembered a straightaway and a left curve; as the car backed into the curve he slowed a little but not much. And then they came to the side road. "What did I tell you?" he cried happily. "There's the son of a bitch right where I said it would be!"
He shifted and roared into the right turn up the hill. "Where does this take us, Henry?" he snapped, as from the bridge to the chartroom.
The burgess smiled in the dark. "I don't know, Arthur," he said. "How little we know our land...."