“Are you the owner of this car?" A cop has something you don't have, something you gave him earlier. "No, I'm just delivering it to Oklahoma City for a lady. ""Do you have plates for this car?" A cop needn't be vicious, but he can be so, safely."Just those stickers.""Do you have the registration?" Presidents and premiers can annihilate millions, but only a cop can explain away your solitary murder.”

“He awoke on the desert gliding at seventyfive, to see a single great headlight topping a rise not far off and bearing toward him. Vaguely he remembered being under the eye of the law most of the night, pursued by cops in white cars like their uniforms, so he slowed her to an unreasonable speed and crept on with two restless wheels in the sand. Ahead of him the light veered off to the right, out of disappointment or what, and it appeared to rise quickly into the air. He soon saw why: it was the moon being chased by the sun.”

“ ... family men, Claude.""Then why aren't they home with their families?""You haven't been listening to me, Claude. It takes lots of honey to raise a family these days..." No, it isn't even that, these teddy bears don't like honey as much as they think they do. They think they're supposed to like it, the way they're supposed to like women and children. They think they're supposed to act like real grizzlies, but they don't feel it. You can't blame them, they just don't have it inside them. What they have, what they love most, is their memories: how the Coach used to shout niceworkpal whenever they caught the big ball or somehow hit the little one, how Dad used to wink when they caught one of his jokes, how when they repeated them he almost died laughing, so they told them and told them - if they told one really well he might do it. They memorized all the conversations verbatim, that about the pussies and the coons, the homers and the balls, the cams and the bearings. They're still memorizing. You can see them almost anytime you're out driving, there in the slow car just ahead, the young man at the wheel, the old man talking, the young man leaning a little to the right in order to hear better, the old man pointing out the properties, the young man looking and listening earnestly, straining to catch the old man's last word, the last joke verbatim, the last bit of know-how about the deals and the properties and the honey. When he thinks he's learned all he can from the old man, he'll shove him out of the car. You watch, next time you're out driving. "...these are the cream, Claude." These are the all-American fairies.”

“Do you ever just want to take your car out onto the highway and gun the engine as fastas you can and then close your eyes and see what happens?”

“Beside him Mr. Harris folded his morning newspaper and held it out to Claude. "Seen this yet?""No.""Don't read it," Mr. Harris said, folding the paper once more and sliding it under his rear. "It will only upset you, son.""It's a wicked paper... " Claude agreed, but Mr. Harris was overspeaking him."It's the big black words that do it. The little grey ones don't matter very much, they're just fill-ins they take everyday from the wires. They concentrate their poison in the big black words, where it will radiate.Of course if you read the little stories too you've got sure proof that every word they wrote above, themselves, was a fat black lie, but by then you've absorbed a thousand greyer ones, and where and how to check on those? This way the mind deteriorates. The best way you can save yourself is not to read it, son.""No, I... ""That's right, if you're not careful," Mr. Harris went on, blue-eyed, red-faced, "you find yourself pretty soon hating everyone but God, the Babe, and a few dead senators. That's no fun. Men aren't so bad as that.""No.""That's right, you begin to worry about anyone who opens his mouth except to say ho it looks like rain, let's bowl. Otherwise you wonder what the hell he's trying to prove, or undermine. If he asks what time it is, you wonder what terrible thing is scheduled to happen, where it will happen, when. You can't even stand to be asked how you feel today - he's probably looking at the bumps on you, they may have grown more noticeable overnight. Soon you feel you should apologize for standing there where he can watch you dying in front of him, he'd rather for you to carry your head around in a little plaid bag, like your bowling ball. There's no joy in that. Men aren't so very bad."Mr. Harris paused to remove his Panama hat. Water seeped from his knobby forehead, which he mopped with a damp handkerchief. "I've offended you, son," he said."Not at all, I entirely agree with you."Mr. Harris replaced his hat, folded his handkerchief."I shouldn't shoot off this way," he said. "I read too much.""No, no. You're right... ”

“They looked so familiar that for a moment Claude feared he had doubled back to Mrs. Merritt's city, until a sudden wave of water blinded his wipers and drove him along with everyone else to the curb, where the crackling radio reported an old man had just now been swept from his backyard by a cloudburst, the latest in a series deluging Tulsa. Clinging there to the side of the hill, no hand brake, Claude rode out the storm, stuffing blankets into the cracks under the doors, watching overhead drips as best he could with the babyseat. When the car next in front crept away from the curb, Claude followed as far as a gas station. There he wondered aloud what lay ahead, but the attendant couldn't say, having swum to work just five minutes ago. Now as Claude pulled away the rain suddenly ceased, it seemed from exhaustion, and for the next hundred miles he spun his dial to catch the latest reports: that old man was still missing, he had last been seen floating downhill toward the river, he had been found, he was dead, he was dying, he was still missing... Claude turned off the radio, for he was beyond range of Tulsa, and Joplin had not heard the news yet. He raced in silence toward the night which he knew already had begun not far ahead.”

“They were mostly French, a few Arabs, and despite their uniforms they didn't look very important any more. Later I learned that if you watch men die, especially if you've known them at all, they still look important afterward no matter what you have to do with them, but I was inexperienced then.”