Detour Read Online Free PDF Page B

was counting on Sue being able to advance me a little dough—just enough to keep me for a week or so until I found work. According to a friend of mine, musicians never starve in Hollywood. There are plenty of dance bands around, dozens of little cocktail joints where, in a pinch, a fellow could play solo for tips, and then, of course, there are the studios. There are always dubbing jobs to be had and scenes where the hero is supposed to walk off a cliff or out of a second-story window playing a violin. That's where I came in. I'm laughing. Since Sue was not expecting me, and since she was staying with a girl friend, I'd have to bunk some place else. But that didn't worry me. I generally manage to get by.
    About a hundred miles west of Phoenix and seventy east of Blythe dawn began to break. I could see it coming in the rear-view mirror: first a grey strip on the black, then a blue tinge, and then a kind of reddish brown. Ahead of me it was still dark and foggy; behind it was fast becoming clear. That's a mighty lonesome stretch of desert in there. On either side of the road are deep black gullies, some of them twenty and thirty feet down. If you've got any sort of an imagination, driving alone through there is liable to get you. It's dry as a bone in that section during the summer and every now and then the State Department or some motor club leaves a rain-barrel on the shoulder of the road in case a motorist's radiator leaks. In the gloom they look like little hitch-hikers. At that time of day the whole countryside has a ghostly quality, about it. Shadows shift along the ground as your car climbs and descends little hills, leaving portions of the highway light and other parts pitch dark. A couple of times I jammed on the brakes because I imagined something or somebody was crossing the road. They tell me that most of the accidents in those hills take place about dawn or dusk. The gas gauge showed almost empty, but I thought I'd better let Haskell sleep until we hit a service station.
    Waking him then wouldn't have done any good. To tell the truth, the look of the road got me a little panicky. The last station I passed was a good eight miles back, and this stretch didn't even have billboards. I knew Haskell would sure as hell hand me my walking papers if we ran out in the middle of nowhere, so I drove with my fingers crossed.
    It was about that time that the haze turned into rain. A fine drizzle began to cloud the windshield and I had to switch on the wipers. A few miles of this and my clothes felt damp and uncomfortable. I decided that before it started to pour we'd better put up the top.
    I nudged Haskell. “It's beginning to rain, Mr. Haskell.”
    Not a peep out of him.
    I pushed him again, this time harder. Then I shook him a little. “It's beginning to rain, Mr. Haskell. Shall I put up the top?”
    When I couldn't even get a rise out of him I made up my mind to keep going until either we hit a gas station or ran out. I knew it would be practically impossible to get the top up without waking him.
    Since the guy was so dead to the world I thought it wouldn't hurt if I sneaked one of his smokes. I'm a tobacco fiend if ever there was one, and all I'd had that day was one cigar. If Haskell woke up and caught me, it was such a little thing he couldn't very well get sore. I could tell him that I was falling asleep and smoking kept me awake. That settled, I opened the glove-compartment as quietly as possible, found the case and helped myself to a butt. I didn't have a match, but—miracles will never cease—the dashboard lighter worked. While I was doing this the rain really began to beat down hard. The drops hit the leather upholstery of the back and rolled on to the seats. My pants felt sticky. I don't think I took more than four or five puffs on the cigarette before I started to get dizzy. After every drag it got worse. The road commenced to bank and turn and whirl in the windshield. The wipers seemed to be working at twice