Chapter19 A previous appointment
The land grew slowly out of darkness as the sun rose behind the moving bus, Clinton arriving as the last gasp of a city before the great plunge towards Texas. The route, loaded with is own landmarks, like the Ideal Trailer Park, where signs advertised wholesale fireworks with red and white letters and black and white painted rockets like some primitive cave painting, with a walkup window where a clerk might have sat. Then came Pop Hicks Restaurant next door to the Glancy Motor Hotel, then the Del Rancho Hamburger restaurant with its large cowboy sign holding up a large hamburger. Beyond this came wasteland again, windswept hills along one side of the highway, stucco-sided houses propped up in neat folds of land. A bus air conditioner struggled against the heat, steaming the windows, revealing streaks left by the leaning heads of passengers or at other times the nose and finger prints of kids pressing to see the world outside, like secret writing from some ancient tribe ...