The holes increased rapidly until there was no spot in the road free from them. Our course resembled an earthworm’s. Except for the holes, the road was all its sympathizers claimed for it. We maneuvered two partly washed away bridges, and came to a halt.
Airplanes were soaring above us in every direction. We were passing Ellington Field. But the immediate cause of our halt was two soldiers, who begged a lift to Houston. We were glad to oblige them, but after a hopeless glance at the tonneau piled high with baggage, they decided to ride on the running board. If the doughboy on the left had only been the doughboy on the right running board, this chapter would have been two days shorter. It was Friday, and we had thirteen miles to go, and Friday and thirteen make a bad combination.
Toby chatted with her soldier and I with mine, who was a mechanician at the flying field. It was a disappointment not to have him an aviator, though he admitted a mechanician’s was a far weightier responsibility. Before the war, he had been a professional racer, had come in second in a championship race between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and gave such good reasons why he hadn’t come in first that he seemed to have taken a mean advantage of the champion.
“Sixty-three miles is about as fast as I’ve ever driven,” I said in an off-hand way.
“Sixty-three? That’s not fast. When you get going ninety-five to a hundred, that’s something like driving.”
“This car,” I explained, “won’t make more than fifty. At fifty she vibrates till she rocks from side to side.”
He looked at the wheel hungrily. “Huh! I bet I could bring her up to seventy-five.”
Stung, I put my foot on the gas, and the speedometer needle swung to the right. As we merged with the traffic of Houston, shell-holes were left behind us, and passing cars were taking advantage of a perfect concrete road. A Hudson with a Texas number passed us with a too insistent horn, the driver smiled scornfully and looked back, and his three children leaned out from the back to grin. And they were only going a miserable thirty. The near-champion looked impotently at the steering wheel, and in agonized tones commanded, “Step on it!”
The Hudson showed signs of fight, and lured us through the traffic at a lively pace. My companion on the running board was dying of mortification. I knew how he itched to seize the wheel, and for his sake I redoubled my efforts. In a moment the impudent Hudson children ceased to leer from the back of their car, and were pretending to admire the scenery on the other side. Then suddenly the Hudson lost all interest in the race.
“Turn down the side street,” yelled my passenger, frantically. I tried to turn, wondering, but the carburetor sputtered and died.