e don't seem to have anything left in a mid-size car, Sir."

The young black woman in the yellow and black Hertz uniform maintained a fixed stare on her computer screen, punching keys. "How about a free upgrade to a Town Car?" She lofted her head, Brock meeting her inquiring gaze with a small collusive smile, nodding agreeably.

His flight from LaGuardia to Indianapolis had been an hour late. Hadleyville, his destination, was 75 miles away, but late arrival at the Wimbledon Lodge Motor Inn was guaranteed on his American Express card. He wouldn't make it there before dark -– it was already 7:30, the sun hovering low over the expanse of gleaming corn tassels that billowed off endlessly from the edge of the airport. Always on business trips he tried to arrive before evening darkness so as to facilitate navigating the complex of upper and lower level ramps and boulevards leading to the interstates.

The routine now was familiar and seldom varying. Only the time of year, the weather and conditions of the roads varied. When he had first started making these trips, how long ago?—almost 35 years before—he had thought of them then as new adventures, being unmarried at the time, before his life had really begun, he sometimes now thought, visiting for the first time different American cities with their different regional nuances. The first time he had visited San Francisco it had seemed to him more like a vacation than a business trip. He had driven directly to the center of the city, putting up at the St. Francis, a hotel with a feel attuned to the spirit of the city, old San Francisco. After checking in he had set out to roam the center city's streets, mounting its steepest hills, achieving their summits to gaze off and marvel at the bay below and sea- coast vista. He had experienced the same sense of adventure and excitement the first time he had visited San Antonio, and New Orleans, and Chicago, and Denver, as different as each of those cities is. Even the little towns he had never heard of before—places with names like Applegrove, West Virginia, Stafford, Texas, Tracy, California, Lithia, Florida,—they all then warranted exploration, if only a brief stroll after dinner before settling down in his motel room for a quick overview of the business in his briefcase in preparation for the next day's appointments.

Leaving the Hertz counter now, Brock managed to find the space where his rental Town Car was parked. The car was still wet on the outside from a washing. Inside it was spanking clean, the bitter odor of crushed cigarette butts not quite masked by some kind of pine camphor spray that made it smell like a public lavatory. After an examination of the dashboard to locate the ignition switch, the headlights, the windshield wiper, the air conditioning/heater controls, and the horn, which he tooted once, he started the engine, and the radio immediately blared. He turned it off. The seatback was in a laid back position. Running his fingers underneath the seat, pushing buttons that brought the seat forward, then up, then down, then back, he couldn't locate a switch or lever to bring the backrest upright. The gate guard, after examining his contract to make sure he wasn't stealing the car, couldn't find the switch or lever, either. Brock reconciled himself to driving in a semi-supine position, his view just managing to make a tangent between his nose and the front hood insignia. He turned into the entry ramp to the interstate while the sun was still hanging low over the horizon.

This was to be a one-night stand, a quick visit the next morning to Hadleyville's only industrial plant, an auto assembly plant located on the two-lane blacktop state highway approaching the town. If all went as expected, it would be an easy appointment, meeting with Plant Engineering, duly noting some mild complaints they had registered about his company's compressor equipment, then reporting back to his own engineering people to see what could be done. He would follow their progress, acting as intermediary between the two groups—vendor and customer. After the plant visit there would be the drive back to Indianapolis before lunch, an early afternoon flight to LaGuardia, and home to Connecticut in time for dinner.

Now, driving along I-67 West, he smiled to himself. This must be Indiana, he mused, gazing out from his semi-supine position over the flat landscape of acre upon acre of ripening corn in August. A farmer on a tractor was leveling whole rows of it. Probably it wasn't sweet corn for the retail market, he decided, but fodder for cattle. There were storage towers far off rising above squat farmhouses, with one or two shade trees in the yards.

The sun was down now, though it was still light, oncoming cars had switched on their headlights. Brock put on his own lights. Traffic was light, except for the heavy rumbling interstate truckers passing at 70 miles an hour. Brock usually kept the speedometer at 65, even though the speed limit here was 65, which meant that you could probably push it up to 70 or even 75 without risk of being stopped by a trooper.

"Hadleyville - exit 21 - 45 miles. Motel Six." A billboard in the middle of a cornfield was getting in its first appeal to salesmen and others visiting the auto plant. Brock was reassured to know that he was, indeed, traveling in the right direction. Still, the intrusion of a billboard in the middle of an otherwise virgin cornfield was something of an offense. Well, some farmer was being paid for it, it would help finance a new TV set.

The billboards seemed to multiply as he continued along the highway, his headlights picking out Gran'ma's Cooking, Norma's Kabins, Daze Inn, E-Z Truck Wash, Weight Station (closed), Draper's RV showroom, Best Western. Best Westerns were everywhere in the world these days, it seemed. Incongruously, they were even in Europe. Best Western owned at least a half dozen hotels in Paris. Brock had stayed in one on a business trip to the French capital just the year before. It had gratified him to see that they had not attempted to inflict American motel styling on their newly acquired property. The hotel was a funky pension with a receptionist whose English was less fluent than Brock's untrustworthy college French. His room in the back of the hotel looked out on a shaded courtyard with a couple of white castiron chairs streaked with rust. It occurred to him now to wonder if the farmer on the tractor had ever been to Paris. Probably the farmer had been no further than Indianapolis, if even to there. If Brock lived in Paris, he sometimes thought, his life would be enriched. or maybe it wouldn't. The French were so dour.

He found himself often these days pondering such matters. At 55, after 27 years of marriage, his son and his daughter finished with college, out on their own, doing well enough, he could feel that there was something in his life to be proud of. Something had been accomplished. Still, alone on these trips, his thoughts turning inward, whatever best that he could summon up for contemplation was never as deeply gratifying as he would have wished it to be. Recollections of early days recurred, of nights stalking the various unfamiliar cities, (the thought of danger to his person then not even vaguely crossing his mind). It had seemed then as if secrets lay about to be uncovered in the darkened streets of a strange city, secrets that might reveal and turn some secret key within himself, adding somehow, vaguely and mysteriously, to the sum knowledge of his own existence. The exhilaration rounding a corner at midnight, cloud cover briefly parting, unveiling an empty street bathed in moonglow, the street's plain wood frame houses silver colored, behind silver hedges, as mysterious as any vast vista of African desert in moonlight. Moments that had augured somehow a great fulfillment in life, all before him, waiting to be discovered.

One hour after entering the interstate, Brock turned off at Exit 45—to Hadleyville. The highway was dark here, with no lamplights along the sides, and very little traffic. Occasionally the lights of a house deep off in a field glimmered faintly.

The dashboard lights of the Town Car glowed steadily, reassuringly, indicating that all systems were functioning smoothly, he wouldn't be stuck on this lonely road. Was it possible that he had sensed a slight missing, a skip, in the thrum of the engine on a couple of occasions? An unsettling thought. Perhaps there hadn't been a skip, it was the automatic accelerator control kicking in after easing up.

At last, over the darkened landscape ahead there appeared dimly a golden glow in the sky, a reflection from the night shift lights of the distant auto plant. As he continued along the dark highway, the brightness in the sky intensified, and before long, all at once, there in the distance was the massive dispersion of buildings that made up the plant, three separate buildings actually, linked by roadways, the complex all ablaze with lights. A slight hum of manufacturing activity was detectable as Brock drove on by the main entrance with its sentry booth. There would be no difficulty in finding the plant tomorrow morning.

A bit further on he crossed the town line, at 9:25, according to the numbers on the Town Car's digital clock. The streets on the outskirts of town were as dark as the state highway. The people seemed to have gone to bed. Or they were watching television in darkened rooms. Or perhaps they were not home, having locked their doors, and gone to work on the night shift at the plant. A few lights coming up announced some of the motels he had seen advertised in the cornfields along the interstate. He slowed down to single out the Wimbledon Lodge. it would be along here somewhere. Ahead there was a blinking yellow traffic light, apparently the center of this tiny satellite town, dedicated to the local plant. On the cross highway Burger King was open. So were a MacDonald's and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. He slowly shook his head. He wondered if there would be a movie house in town. More likely, they would show movies once a week in the local VFW Lodge. He caught sight of the Wimbledon Lodge Motor Inn sign a hundred yards beyond the traffic light.

Brock turned the Town Car into the motel parking lot, locating an empty space between two pick-up trucks parked near the front entrance portico. The automatic transmission bucked noticeably as the gears accommodated from highway to a reduced speed. The car, Brock observed, was due for a servicing.

"Good evening, sir. Can I help you?" The young man behind the reception counter was coatless, in a white ribbed short-sleeved shirt, sensible for an August evening in Indiana. The air in the lobby hung dead, neither too hot nor too cold, but very still and with a slight odor of chlorine. Through a glass wall to the left Brock caught a view of an indoor pool, an overweight lone male in bright multi-colored striped boxer trunks seated at the edge, dangling his legs in the water. Opposite the pool sounds of revelry amid the tinkling of piano music drifted from behind a beaded curtain covering an entrance leading to the motel's bar and restaurant, "The Nineteenth Hole."

Brock surrendered his American Express card, and the clerk ran it through the recording device.

"Dinner still being served?" Brock asked.

The clerk checked his watch. "You can just make it," he said. "The kitchen closes at ten."

Brock nodded. He had picked at the food served on the plane, having eaten primarily the salad and a pudding of some kind.

"Maybe you have a candy bar machine."

"In the hall near your room, sir. Also soda, and an ice maker."

"Maybe that'll be enough," Brock said, glancing again briefly in the direction of the commotion coming from "The Nineteenth Hole".

"Will you be staying with us just one night, sir?" the clerk asked.

"Just the one night," Brock said, smiling.

"Well, enjoy your stay, sir." The clerk pointed to a table against the glass wall on which was located a large coffee urn. "A complimentary continental breakfast is served at six."

"Thankyou," Brock said.

Lugging his cases down a long corridor, musty smelling, Brock found his room, noting with relief before entering that the hall seemed quiet. Inside he dropped his overnight bag and briefcase on one of the two king-size beds, and immediately went to the far wall to roll back the heavy drapes covering the windows. As he had expected, the windows were sealed. At least with the drapes open, the view looking out on the darkened parking lot, one didn't feel entombed. The air conditioner vent hummed in the ceiling. Against the wall at the foot of the bed was a long shelf, functioning as a desk, with dresser drawers on one side, a television set on the opposite side, and an elongated mirror above it. Between the beds, over the night table there hung a framed painting, rendered in pale broad impressionistic strokes imitative of Dufy, a group of tennis players in 19th century costume. The Wimbledon connection presumably.

The next morning, after courtesy coffee and some terrible sticky thing in the shape of a doughnut, Brock signed his credit card slip, leaving the key with a new desk employee, a young fresh-faced girl who asked him if he had en4oyed his stay.

"Very much," Brock replied, smiling. He picked up a free copy of U.S.A. TODAY from the motel counter, and slipped it into a side pocket of his overnight bag. He would read it later while waiting to board his plane at the airport.

Brock's car was still wedged between the two pick-up trucks. He unlocked and opened the front door, taking care not to bang it against the side of the truck, and tossed his cases into the back seat. Slipping in behind the steering wheel, he inserted and twisted the ignition key. The engine turned over, but to Brock's surprise, it did not catch. He tried it again. Again the battery cranked the engine, but the motor did not start.

Dismayed, he was wondering what to do next, when he was taken aback by a man with a somewhat fierce looking bushy beard and a gimme cap tapping on his window, apparently the driver of the pick-up truck parked next to him.

"Got a problem?" the man asked. He was younger than Brock, probably about 35, though it was difficult to be sure behind the dark beard. He was wearing a denim workshirt and his cap had some kind of oil company insignia on the front. He was tall and rangy, probably a local farmer, most likely one of last night's revelers in the motel's bar and restaurant, it occurred to Brock.

"Sure have," Brock said. "Sucker won't start." He wondered if his use of the word sucker sounded condescending. He decided it did not, it had come out pretty naturally.

"Try it again," the man said.

Brock turned the key with the same lack of result. "It got me here all right last night," he said. "Now that I think of it, though, it was skipping, or jerking, a bit."

"Probably the fuel injectors are plugged," the man said.

Brock's ignorance about such matters only dismayed him more.

"Let's see if we can't getcha goin'," the man said. He turned to rummage around in a metal cabinet in the back of the pick-up. He was wearing Levis and heavy motorcycle boots, Brock noted. As Brock got out of the car, he looked up into the cab to see the man's wife, or girl friend, or whoever, sitting in the passenger's seat. She was a pretty girl, younger than her companion, with straw-colored hair tucked into a red and black patterned bandanna. She was smoking a cigarette, and smiled at him.

"Hi," Brock said.

"Bud'Il getcha goin'," she said. "He's a whiz." Even with the window on her side halfway down, the cab of the truck was already filled with cigarette smoke. She turned the radio on, and it blared with what Brock assumed was country and western music.

"I gave you my hear-r-r-r-r-t, and you played me for a fo-o- o-o-l."

Bud was attaching cables to the battery under the hood of the Lincoln, then hooked them to the battery in the truck. "Give it a turn now," he said to Brock. "Kill the radio, hon!" he called to the girl.

Brock got behind the wheel again, and turned the key. There were a couple of uneasy moments, as the engine refused to catch, then suddenly it started. Brock felt his shoulders ease up, thankfully. He raced the engine briefly. Bud was disconnecting the cables, and the girl had her radio going again.

"Fuel injectors," Bud said. He stowed the cables in the back of the truck again, and produced a yellow plastic pint container. "Put this in," he said. Already he was unscrewing the car's gas cap, and getting ready to pour in the liquid. Brock simply stood beside him, and allowed himself to follow the other's lead.

"That stuff expensive?" Brock asked.

"Four ninety-five, or something," Bud replied. He pulled the bottle out of the gas hole, and looked at the price label. "Four ninety-five, that's right."

Brock reached for his wallet. "I'd like to pay you for your trouble," he said. "Why don't I give you fifteen dollars."

"Naw, that's okay," Bud said. "Gimme the five, I've got a nickel. It's no sweat."

"Are you sure?" Brock said, hesitating.

"Glad to help out," said Bud. "Keep the motor running for a little while until the fluid gets through the carburetor. Is this a rental car?"

"Yes, it is," Brock said.

"Well, save the container, and make 'em pay you back. These new cars, they perform well, but they have a lot of problems, too."

"oh, boy, I know," Brock said weakly. He handed over a five dollar bill. "Listen, I'm really grateful to you."

"Have a nice day!" Bud called back, jumping up into the cab of his truck. His girl handed him her cigarette, and began lighting up a new one. The radio was blaring. "I gave you my hear-r-r-r-r-t—" The pick-up started, Bud gave it a bit of gas, and backed out rapidly.

"Thanks!" Brock called, waving.

Bud tooted the horn once, and spun his wheels slightly, leaving the parking lot.

They weren't newlyweds, Brock was thinking, not dressed the way they were, as if they were ready to go to work in the fields nearby. Or maybe this was dress-up in Hadleyville. Anyway, for whatever reason, they had stayed overnight at the Wimbledon Lodge. And thank the Lord for it.

The auto plant was but a short distance away, perhaps five miles out of town. Brock turned into the main entrance, following slowly (10 mph) the smooth road curving around in front of the complex of plants to one side and the manicured lawns and cultivated flower beds opposite, fronting the highway. The buildings were perhaps three stories high, large enough for a beamed crane inside to swing heavy burdens about, but appearing less tall due to their enormous length, their windowless corrugated metal sides extending the distance of a football field. Employee parking lots alongside were filled with neat ranks of perhaps as many as a thousand vehicles.

A flagpole with the American flag luffing lightly stood on the lawn facing the middle of the three plant buildings, close beneath it a parking area indicated by a sign marked "Visitors", which Brock turned into. A stonework and glass reception salient extended outward toward the parking area from the otherwise unrelieved metal exterior of the building. Clutching his briefcase, Brock entered the front glass doors.

The reception lobby was spacious with large tropical looking plants in tubs by the plateglass windows in front, and against the back wall several clusters of couches and easy chairs arranged around magazine tables. To the right of the entrance, a receptionist, an attractive blonde woman of about 45 was seated in a recessed area behind sliding glass, with a half-moon shaped earphone and microphone apparatus fitted over her hairdo. Two salesmen were signing in, Brock taking his place in line behind them. A door in the back wall clicked its lock and opened. A plant manager was escorting an earlier visitor back out to the lobby. The earlier visitor was still unloading sales literature on the manager, and backing away, nodding his head agreeably and chuckling over his own words, as though the meeting had been a half hour of nothing but riotous entertainment.

"Do you have an appointment, sir?" The receptionist maintained her attention on some kind of phone keyboard while speaking to Brock.

"With Mr. Grant. At nine," Brock said. It was just nine now.

"Would you sign in, please."

Using the pen attached by a chain to the registry, Brock signed his name and printed beside it the name of his company.

The receptionist was speaking softly into her curved speaker phone. After another moment she turned to face Brock, for the first time looking at him directly.

"I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Grant is in a meeting." To his surprise, she offered a small sympathetic smile. "If you'd care to take a seat, he'll be with you in about 20 minutes."

"Thankyou," he said. And responding to the apparent note of empathy, he smiled back at her. "Maybe I'll wait outside. It's such a nice day."

"Oh, isn't it beautiful!" she exclaimed. She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the front windows. "Too nice to be working." She made a little grimace at her commission of a possible sin.

Emulating her grimacing expression, Brock replied, "You're right." They both laughed lightly. As he turned away, for a brief moment he found himself wondering what it would be like to lie down beside her nude, to laugh with her some more, to devour her body with his lips, feeling her soften into him, hearing her gasps, perhaps, finally, her shrieks. To have it go on forever. Forever and ever.

He glanced down at his watch. It would be 15 minutes yet before Mr. Grant would come through the locked door in the back wall to conduct him under the fluorescent lights to his office, one of many identical cubby hole spaces inside. The two sales- men had taken possession of a pay phone against the far wall, one of them speaking into the phone while the other fed him figures from a looseleaf binder that he was holding.

Brock stepped outside. It truly was a lovely day, the sky a deep blue, without a cloud. A day to cherish. The lawns in front of the building and the flower beds around the flagpole were immaculately maintained, like a well manicured cemetery. A few salesmen's cars and his own rental Town Car with its pint of injection fuel cleaner in the tank were all parked neatly in front of the building. He strolled over to the flower beds, near the parked cars. There were impatiens, petunias, geraniums arranged around the base of the flagpole in concentric circles of red, white and blue, complementing the colors of the overhead waving flag. Standing there, his eyes wandering about idly, an inscription he hadn't noticed before on the Indiana license plates of the parked cars caught his attention. In small letters, underneath the identification numbers there appeared the imprint motto: "Hoosier Hospitality."

He looked up again at the blue sky, then glanced back at the license plate. Unaccountably, an overwhelming pang of grief suddenly gripped him, his eyes stinging and blurring, a lozenge of pain swelling in his throat. Directing his gaze back to the front of the building, he caught sight of a salesman exiting, heading purposefully toward his car at the far end of the row of cars. Quickly Brock gave a sharp shake of his head. It would be absurd if someone were to notice his momentary discomposure. Who could understand these things? Glancing again just briefly up at the sky, as blue and clear as he remembered the sky being over San Francisco once, he turned and directed his steps back toward the entrance to the building.

© Robert Riche