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deposited it there, and stepped down the hall to look in on the baby. Further down the hall there was Matt, Jr., aged eleven, and Warren, aged nine, but they were getting a little too big to get mushy about at night. But you never quite get used to the sight of your own babies, I guess; they always seem like a cross between a practical joke and a miracle from heaven. Our youngest, Betsy, sound asleep, had wispy blonde baby-hair and a square, pretty little face that was lengthening out now as she got her first teeth. She was not quite two. Her head still looked too big for her body, and her feet looked too small for anything human. I heard a sound behind me as I covered her up, and turned to face Beth.
    I said, “Shouldn’t she have a sleeper on?” When you’ve nothing whatever to say to your wife as man to woman, you can always fall back on acting like a parent.
    “There aren’t any; she wet the last pair,” Beth said. “Mrs. Garcia washed it out, but it isn’t dry yet.”
    I said, “I think I’ll throw my gear into the truck and take off. I can be halfway to San Antonio by morning.”
    She hesitated. “Should you? After all those Martinis?”
    This wasn’t, I suspected, exactly what she wanted to say, but it was what came out.
    “I’ll take it easy. If I get sleepy, I can always pull off the road and take a nap in back.” It wasn’t precisely what I wanted to say, either, but we seemed to have lost the knack of accurate communication.
    We looked at each other for a moment. She was wearing something filmy and pale blue with a negligee of the same stuff, and she looked like an angel, but the moment was past, and I could work up no real interest in nylon angels, not even when I kissed her lightly on the lips.
    “So long,” I said. “I’ll call you tomorrow night if I can, but don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. I may be camping out.”
    “Matt...” she said, and then, quickly, “never mind. Just drive carefully. And send some cards to the boys; they love to get mail from you.”
    Crossing the rear patio in the glare of the lights, I unlocked and pushed wide the big gates that open into the alley that runs alongside our property. In Santa Fe, you’re apt to find alleys anywhere. Before we bought the place, the studio was rented as a separate apartment, and the tenant, who didn’t have garage privileges, parked his car in the alley. I carried the suitcase into the garage and threw it into the bed of the pickup, which is covered by a metal canopy with small windows at front and sides and a door facing aft. Upon the door, for all following drivers to see, my oldest son had pasted a sticker reading: DON’T LAUGY, IT’S PAID FOR .
    I opened the garage doors, drove out into the alley, closed up the garage, returned to the truck, and backed it in through the big gate and up to the studio door. Leaving the motor running to warm it up thoroughly, I went into the studio, which is an L-shaped building at the rear corner of the lot, with thick adobe walls like the main home. One wing of the L serves me as a kind of sitting and reading room, with a studio couch that becomes a bed in emergencies. Around the corner are my files and typewriter. The little cubicle next to the bathroom, which used to be the apartment kitchen, is now my darkroom.
    I changed into jeans, a wool shirt, wool socks, and a pair of the light-colored, low-heeled, pull-on boots with the rough side of the leather showing that are sometimes known locally as fruit-boots, being the preferred footgear of a few gentlemen whose virility is subject to question. The appellation is doubtless unfair to a lot of very masculine engineers, not to mention, I hope, one writer-photographer. Dressed, I hauled my bedroll out to the truck, and then loaded the camera cases, as well as the little tripod for the Leicas and the big tripod for the 5x7 view camera. This last I probably wouldn’t use once in three thousand miles, but it sometimes came in handy, and