A man and woman crouched before the solid radiator in the light. They were holding something between them.
“Wrong,” thought Luke, “guess they’ve hit a dog. Or maybe a jack rabbit. Probably never seen them that big before.” He stepped over the wire, pushing it down between the rusted barbs, and shielded his eyes.
“He’s been bit,” said Camper, the owner of the car, and glanced at the boy between his knees. The man Camper wore a yellow, large collared shirt with even tails worn outside the flannel trousers. He watched Luke through dark cat-eye glasses and puffed in fast heavy breaths.
His wife loosed her perfume on the air as if she carried a broken phial of it in a hidden pocket of the green silk slacks. She got out of their way.
“You see, I had to stop. There weren’t any roadstands or hotels, not a light anywhere. So I just pulled off the road and stepped out of the light and then the kid has to come out too. For two hundred miles I wouldn’t stop, not with warning signs posted every fifty feet. It’s a hell of a thing when you can’t take a leak without kicking up a pack of rattlers.” His white socks bulged through the braided sandals and he slapped his arms.
The boy looked as if he had been dropped in a bucket of cold water.
Luke pushed his hat on the back of his head, and taking the tin box from his rear pocket, squatted opposite but close to Camper. The woman waited in the car, raising and lowering the aerial, pushing one station button after the next and heard only a squall of electricity on iron ore.
“I can see you ain’t from around here,” said Luke. He squinted into the light, fixed the blade into the little handle and draped the short length of hose, used as a siphon by some of the men in Clare, across his knee.
“Like hell,” answered the driver. “I know where I am. I used to work around here, but the wife doesn’t know it. Let me tell you, I practically built that dam alone. Yes, sir, I remember still, the ‘cheapest earth filled dam in the western hemisphere’ it was supposed to be. And the Slide — I suppose you know about it — was like a whole corner of the world fell in.”
“I recollect it,” said Luke.