Sharp lifeless blades of prairie grass scratched at the undersides of the automobile, crackled to the slow turning of the tires. The armored vehicle with its veils of glass, shrouded in blunt searching beams of light and swinging, dipping its useless aerial in the hot air, prowled forward toward the unknown dried out river, now and then dropping its front bumper into a mound of sand. Camper pressed, released the accelerator with his sandaled foot, watched for signs of a track not wholly lost, saw only the yellow powder, the needles of a still and tangled earth. He felt that the inflated rubber of his car wheels must be crushing colonies of red ants, crazed lizards, bugs caught before they had time to hum and fly. He sat on the edge of the padded leather seat.
“What’s the matter with you? Turn around!”
“Only a minute now, Lou, you’ll see. A real town, I know it.”
“You can’t kid me. You just want a chance to use that tent. I’ll sleep in the car.”
He could not find it. Once he stopped the automobile — all its wide tapering body listed — and climbed out, leaving the door open, its sharp edge jammed in the sand. He looked back to the sound of the heavy engine on weeded soil, to the small light burning over the blue blouse, the green silk slacks of the woman. Then, bent double, he stepped in front of the headlights and peered closely at a few square feet of ground, looking for some trace of a house, a piece of wood once shaped by saw, a brick that had burned under the fire of a kiln; as if he expected to find the town or its remnants in a hole at his feet. The cowboy had spoken of it, he himself remembered it and yet, picking up a handful of grit and dust, perhaps she was right.
“I don’t see it,” he said. The bites itched on his chest and shoulders.
“I could tell from the highway,” his wife answered. “There weren’t any signs.”
Though not stopped by barrier — fence, rock or ravine — the automobile was sucked close to the loose and dibbled earth, slowed by the invisible roots of parasite plants stretched like strings across its path, exhausted of speed and air. Camper felt a harsh and lazy magnetism that, foot by foot, might crack its windows, strip it of paint and draw the stuffing from the seats. He watched for something to steer by.
“You can’t expect to find a town just anywhere,” said his wife.
And at that moment they were attacked for the second time during the night by snakes. They ran over it. Flat and elongated, driven upon in sleep, it wheeled, rattling from fangs to tail, chased them, caught up with the car, slithered beneath it, raced ahead into the light and reared. The snake tottered, seemed to bounce when it became blind, and, as Camper touched the brake, lunged so that it appeared to have shoulders, smashed its flat pear skull against the solid, curved glass of one headlamp, piercing, thrusting to put out the light.