Frightened, the trumpet-player ran back to his own car and took out a tyre-iron from under the seat. He took it to the Cadillac’s door, and tried to prise it open, but the lock was too strong for him. He stood panting beside the car, unsure what to do, and he was still there when an air force truck came past. He flagged it down, and it crunched to a halt a little way down the road.

‘There’s something wrong!’ he shouted out. ‘It looks like they’re dead in there! I can’t open the door!’

A tall young airman in a peaked cap and fatigues jumped down from the truck and walked over to take a look for himself. Then, without a word, he loosened a shovel from the truck’s side panel, swung it back, and smashed the Cadillac’s side window.

The children in the back appeared to be dead. They were curled up like fumigated baby mice, their eyes closed, and their faces white. The broken glass lay on them like splinters of ice. In the front, the driver was alive, but barely conscious. His wife was face-down on the seat.

‘Doctor…’ whispered the driver. ‘For God’s sake… doctor…’

The young airman loped back to his truck, and unclipped his radio microphone. The trumpet-player heard him saying, ‘… whole family, that’s right… no, I can’t see what’s wrong with them… just about a mile or two outside of Floyd… you know the road?’

A white-painted fighter-bomber thundered above them as it came in from a dawn exercise. The trumpet-player shielded his eyes against the sun, and then turned away, his hands on his hips in a gesture of helpless resignation. The driver of the Cadillac had closed his eyes now, and was lying back breathing harshly through his mouth. The trumpet-player didn’t know whether he ought to take the man’s spectacles off or not.

The young airman came back and said, ‘They’re sending an ambulance from the base. They said not to touch them, in case they have something contagious.’

The trumpet-player nodded. He was glad he had decided against taking off the spectacles. ‘The kids, too,’ he said, indicating the back seat of the car. ‘Whatever it was, it really must have hit ’em hard.’

The airman said, ‘Suffocation, maybe. They could have had a leak in their muffler. When that carbon monoxide gets into the car, boy, you don’t even realise what’s happening to you. A friend of mine killed himself that way. You know, with the rubber hose.’

The trumpet-player held his hand over his mouth. There was no sound out here except for the whining of the wind in the Cadillac’s antennae, and the laboured breathing of the driver. There were a few brief rumbles of jet engines from the air force base, but they died away as quickly as summer thunder.

‘Some place to die, huh?’"said the airman.