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"That was good of you," she said.
Ta
He finished his coffee and his cigarette, and she gave him another cup, and he lit another cigarette. After a time Sam and the doctor came out of the other room, and Ta
"Your friend's got a concussion," the doctor said. "I can't really tell how serious his condition is without getting X rays, and there's no way of getting them here. I wouldn't recommend moving him, though."
Ta
"Maybe a few days, maybe a couple weeks. I've left some medication and told Sam what do do for him. Sam says there's a plague in Boston and you've got to hurry. My advice is that you go on without him. Leave him here with the Potters. He'll be taken care of. He can go up to Albany with them for the Spring Fair and make his way to Boston from there on some commercial carrier. He may be all right."
Ta
"That's what I recommend."
They drank their coffee.
Hell Ta
"Yeah," said Ta
"Probably," said Jerry. "That's a pretty good team." Then, "What do you do, Hell? I mean in real life, when you're not driving?"
"I'm always driving," said Ta
"You going to do more driving after you get to Boston?"
Ta
"I don't know. Probably. Or else work someplace where they take care of cars and bikes."
"You know what I want to be?"
"No. Tell me."
"A pilot. I want to fly."
Ta
"I could fly real low..."
"The terrain is too irregular, and the winds vary in altitude. Hell, there are hills I won't drive on, because I might be swept away. You can tell them by the turbulence, the waves are visible, because of all the crud they carry, and also the fact that there's nothing but bare rock above a certain point."
"I could look out for stuff like that..."
"Yeah, but the winds change. They dip and they rise. There's no predicting when or where, either."
"But I _want_ to fly."
Ta
Jerry's lower lip suddenly protruded, and he kicked at stones as he walked.
"Everybody has something special they want to do when they're young," said Ta
"What did you want to do, if it wasn't driving?"
Ta
"What machine?"
"_The_ machine, the Big Machine. It's hard to explain..."
He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them, and, "I had a teacher," he said, "hack when I was in school, who told us that the world was a big machine, that everything acted on everything else, that everything that happened was a function of all this action and interaction. So I started thinking about it, and I got me a picture of this goddamn big machine, all kinds of gears and pistons and chain belts; all sorts of levers and cams and shafts and pulleys and axles; and I figured it really existed someplace, this machine, I mean, and that according to whether it operated smoothly or not, things would go good or bad in the world. Well, I decided then that it wasn't ru
"Did you ever go looking for it?" Jerry asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't have found it."
"How do you know?"
"Because it isn't there. There is no machine. It was all a comparison. The teacher was just trying to say that life is _like_ a big machine, not that that's what it is. I didn't understand him right, though, and I spent years thinking about the goddamn thing."
"How do you know there's no machine?"
"He explained what he'd meant to me later, when I went to ask him where the thing was. Boy, did I feel stupid!"
"He could have been wrong."
"Not a chance. They're too hip on stuff like that, those old teachers."
"Maybe he was lying."
"No. Now that I'm older, I know what he meant. He was wrong one way, though. It's too screwed up to be like a machine. But I know what he meant."
"Then they're not too hip, the teachers, if they can be wrong even one way."
They resumed walking again. Jerry looked at his ring. Ta
"But what if he was wrong? What if it is there? And if you found it someday? Would you still do it? Would you still want to be the keeper of the machine?"
Ta
"There ain't no machine."
"But if there was?"
"Yeah, I guess so," he said. "I guess I'd still like the job."
"That's good, because I still want to fly, even though you told me I can't. Maybe the winds'll change someday."
Ta