Who knows how long he trudged forward on this road, absorbed by these feelings a hot country can engender in a stranger? Perhaps an hour or two, or more. And then he reached the bridge, the bridge that was the top of the chain of islands that ended in Key Bonita.

Perhaps two hundred yards long, built on pilings without a superstructure, the bridge was an overseas continuation of the swamp road. Clinton walked out to the center of this bridge. He wanted to have the feeling of being over the water, away from the swamps. Then he sat on the concrete railing and lighted a cigarette. Before he had smoked even half of it, a motorcycle roared past him, the first vehicle of any kind that he had seen since nightfall. The motorcycle did not slow down for him; it continued in the direction of Key Bonita. But Clinton knew it would come back and give him a lift. He did not know how he knew, but he was certain.

He put out his cigarette, picked up his duffel bag, and waited. Then he heard the slow return of the motorcycle. As it passed him this second time, at low speed, its driver studied Clinton’s appearance, stopped ten yards from him, and turned around.

The rider was in his twenties, dark, solidly built. Like Clinton, he wore Levis, a T-shirt. He removed his goggles. His voice was deep, husky. “You want a ride?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come here.”

Clinton walked quickly to his side.

“Where you goin’?” the man said.

“Key Bonita.”

“You live there?”

“No, but my brother does. He’s waiting there for me. His name is Berry-berry Williams.”

“Berry-berry?” The stranger’s interest quickened.

“You know him?”

No answer. The man said, “How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You got a knife?”

“Yeah. You want to use it?”

“Let’s see it.”

Clinton reached into his pocket and withdrew his key ring from which depended the small knife given him by the Red Cross Shoes salesman. “It’s just a little one,” he said, “for cutting string. You know, and fingernails.”

The man took the knife, glanced at it quickly, then handed it back with a derisive little laugh. He strapped the duffel bag to a bar under the seat. Clinton put his notebook in his trousers, under the belt.

“Hop on,” the man said. Clinton got on. “You ever ride a buddy seat before? Keep your feet on those bars. And hang onto me, around my belly. We’re gonna travel.”

At the first island, there was a sharp increase in speed. The hot and heavy night was transformed by an endless rush of wind in Clinton’s face, against his legs. Even the landscape changed: the mangroves on the left became an insignificant strip of black, and on the right lay the Gulf of Mexico. With his chest against the back of the cyclist, and his arms encircling him, the motorcycle itself seemed to come to life and breathe as it roared forward from island to island and bridge to bridge. These last miles of his journey to meet Berry-berry had taken on the proportions of a myth. Out of the swamp-hell had come this wild animal of the night, and on its back he now raced across a world so transformed that the change seemed to have been worked by magic. Each mile had in it not only its own swift beauty, this heaven of speed, but the knowledge, as well, that it drew him closer and closer to the true beginning of his life. If anything marred his pleasure, it was his desire to get all these experiences into his notebook; but even that diminished as he began to hope that, having passed, on this very night, some invisible threshold into the life of his dreams, the need for a record might have fallen away and his friendship with the notebook terminated. It was still there, though. He could feel it under his belt, the imitation-leather binding pressed against his belly, the only part of him that continued to perspire.