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great trick of transforming my little pile of coins to a bigger pile of coins? The whole thing was beginning to seem not worth doing. I had gone past it to something else, beyond effort and beyond goals. I did mean this, as an idea.
    Ron was indignant when he heard me. “I guess the rest of us fools are hustling our butts off for nothing,” he said. “I guess I’m a fool, right?”
    â€œI don’t think I said that.”
    â€œYou think everyone’s a fool,” Ron said.
    â€œI don’t, but what if I did?” I said. “Who gives a shit what I think?”
    Ron gave me an oily smile. And then he took his cigarette and held it against Sandy’s couch to burn a large, scorching hole. “No big deal,” he said, as Sandy screamed. “What fool would worry about this furniture?”
    I was wrenching the cigarette away from him, but he kept trying to burn me with it, and he got me a few times. I went into a kind of frenzy, a zone I had never been in before—I kept hearing Sandy yelling, and I had the idea that I had to protect her. I socked him in the mouth and we danced around and held each other, trying to get outof each other’s grip, and he tried to hold the cigarette against my eye. I kept shouting, “What is it, Ron? What is it?” I was weeping from squinting that hard. Horacio and DelMar came in from the yard when they heard me bellowing, and they got him off me. I had a burn in the corner of my lid but I was okay.
    They dragged Ron out of the house and I watched them throw him in his car. He yelled, “Fuckheads,” and he drove off. Sandy was sobbing and I had to keep telling her he wasn’t coming back, as if I knew. The whole thing made me nauseous and wild. Hadn’t everything been fine? Which part was the false part?
    The next day I got a very weird phone call from Freddie Trips. Ron had been arrested that night—cops came to his house with a search warrant. Freddie said, “I hope you’re satisfied, but that wasn’t your best idea.”
    â€œNot
my
idea,” I said.
    â€œRight,” he said.
    When I went to the bar that night, I had trouble striking up anything like a conversation. Oh, a few people—women mostly—chattered at me, but a lot of the others just looked at their shoes. They were sure I had turned Ron in, and I had only Sandy, giggling behind me, to back me up.
    I didn’t want to stick around to settle this. I had beenreally happy there, I will say that, but all that idiot joy had made me lax. I was mad at the place for letting me get so stupid. At home my mother used to pull down the corner of an eye, meaning
watch out
, when she talked about certain people. I had been born knowing more than I knew now.
    When I told Sandy I was thinking more about going back east, she said, “I understand,” which really gave me the willies. I did my buying in a hurry, after all that planning, and I did a lot of tricky things to the car to make it a giant container. Sandy made me a good-bye dinner the night before—she was always nice to me—and a few people showed up to wish me luck.
    When I got up in the morning someone had scrawled
Adios, Asshole
on the car’s windshield in magic marker. I didn’t know who had written it and it wasn’t a cheering thing to see before taking off in a vehicle stuffed to the gills with illegal plant life.
    O N THE HIGHWAY I noticed I didn’t like seeing vultures in the sky ahead of me or hearing any rustling in the backseat. I also couldn’t stand noticing any vehicle too close behind me or any highway patrol car waiting by the side of the road.
    In a motel in Oklahoma, a clerk made me show him mydriver’s license for ID, a practice I had never heard of. I had a funny feeling. I ate my supper in a diner and then at midnight I put my luggage back in the car and I took off. I downed some speed to keep me up and I drove all night. I thought