Parked beside the tent was a 1200-cc Harley-Davidson cycle, black and chrome. Like the sleeping bag and the tent, it had been acquired in Passaic. By that time they had already gone through three cars, two blocked by terrible traffic jams, the third stuck in the mud outside of Nutley when he had tried to swing around a two-truck smashup. The bike was the answer. It could be trundled around accidents, pulling itself along in low gear. When the traffic was seriously piled up it could be ridden along the breakdown lane or the sidewalk, if there was one. Rita didn't like it - riding pillion made her nervous and she clung to Larry desperately - but she had agreed it was the only practical solution. Mankind's final traffic jam had been a dilly. And since they had left Passaic and gotten into the country, they had made great time. By the evening of July 2 they had recrossed into New York State and had pitched their tent on the outskirts of Quarryville, with the hazed and mystic Catskills to the west. They turned east on the afternoon of the third, crossing into Vermont just as dusk fell. And here they were in Bennington.
They had camped on a rise outside of town, and now as Larry stood naked beside the cycle, urinating, he could look down and marvel at the picture postcard New England town below him. Two clean white churches, their steeples rising as if to poke through the blue morning sky; a private school, gray fieldstone buildings shackled with ivy; a mill; a couple of red brick school buildings; plenty of trees dressed in summer green-gowns. The only thing that made the picture subtly wrong was the lack of smoke from the mill and the number of twinkling toy cars parked at weird angles on the main street, which was also the highway they were following. But in the sunny silence (silent, that was, except for an occasional twittering bird), Larry might have echoed the sentiments of the late Irma Fayette, had he known the lady: no great loss.
Except it was the Fourth of July, and he supposed he was still an American.
He cleared his throat, spat, and hummed a little to find his pitch. He drew breath, very much aware of the light morning breeze on his naked chest and bu**ocks, and burst into song.
Oh! say, can you see,
by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed,
at the twilight's last gleaming...
He sang it all the way through, facing Bennington, doing a little burlesque bump and grind at the end, because by now Rita would be standing at the flap of the tent, smiling at him.
He finished with a snappy salute at the building he thought might be the Bennington courthouse, then turned around, thinking the best way to start another year of independence in the good old U.S. of A. would be with a good old all-American f**k.
"Larry Underwood, Boy Patriot, wishes you a very good m - "
But the tent-flap was still closed, and he felt a momentary irritation with her again. He squashed it resolutely. She couldn't be on his wavelength all the time. That's all. When you could recognize that and deal with it, you were on your way to an adult relationship. He had been trying very hard with Rita since that harrowing experience in the tunnel, and he thought he'd been doing pretty well.
You had to put yourself in her place, that was the thing. You had to recognize that she was a lot older, she had been used to having things a certain way for most of her life. It was natural for her to have a harder job adapting to a world that had turned itself upside down. The pills, for instance. He hadn't been overjoyed to discover that she had brought her whole f**king pharmacy along with her in a jelly jar with a screw-on lid. Yellowjackets, Quaaludes, Darvon, and some other stuff that she called "my little pick-me-ups." The little pick-me-ups were reds. Three of those with a shot of tequila and you would jitter and jive all the live-long day. He didn't like it because too many ups and downs and all-arounds added up to one mean monkey on your back. A monkey roughly the size of King Kong. And he didn't like it because, when you got right down to where the cheese binds, it was a kind of slap in the face at him, wasn't it? What did she have to be nervous about? Why should she have trouble dropping off at night? He sure as hell didn't. And wasn't he taking care of her? You were damned tooting he was.
He went back to the tent, then hesitated for a moment. Maybe he ought to let her sleep. Maybe she was worn out. But...
He looked down at Old Sparky, and Old Sparky didn't really want to let her sleep. Singing the old Star-Speckled Banana had turned him right on. So Larry turned back the tent-flap and crawled in.
"Rita?"
And it hit him right away after the fresh morning cleanness of the air outside; he must have been mostly asleep before to have missed it. The smell was not overpoweringly strong because the tent was fairly well ventilated, but it was strong enough: the sweet-sour smell of vomit and sickness.
"Rita?" He felt mounting alarm at the still way she was lying, just that dry fluff of her hair sticking out of the sleeping bag. He crawled toward her on his hands and knees, the smell of vomit stronger now, making his stomach knot. "Rita, you all right? Wake up, Rita!"
No movement.