“I’m going to make a short trip, need it for shaving stuff and so on.” Skip knew from experience that a hitchhiker with any sort of luggage had a better chance of getting a ride than one without. The one without had a look of foot-loose mischief from which most drivers shied away. A bag, even a small one, implied possessions and a destination.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, not too far,” Skip said vaguely, unzipping the bag and glancing into it.

“You’re giving up your classes?” Skip’s uncle went to his bed across the room and sat down lightly on its edge. For the first time Skip noted the steadily attentive manner; it made him uneasy. “I don’t think that would be the wise thing to do. Learning is money, Skip. It enables you to rise above the common herd. Look at me, grammar grade education, prison record; all I can get is the kind of slavery I do here. Work that nobody else would take.” His prying eyes were full of questions.

“Education isn’t the only thing,” Skip muttered.

“Well, what else is there?”

“A break.”

“You’re getting a break somehow? This trip is a break?”

Skip felt that his uncle’s persistence was drawing from him things he would have preferred not to divulge. He saw where that moment of incaution in the kitchen, that desire to hint and boast, had led. He looked at his uncle. “I can’t talk about it.”

“I think you’d better.”

“Huh?”

“I think you’d better explain. I’m real curious about this trip and whatever else you’re planning. And then, too, I might be able to give you some advice.”

Skip thought about it while he took a soiled shirt off a hook and dusted out the interior of the bag. His uncle had not been a successful thief, though he had once had the reputation of moving with a big-time mob. Long prison sentences had sapped his body, curdled his manner into silent submission, slowed his walk to a shuffle. “Ah, there’s nothing you could tell me.”

“Maybe not. Maybe so. Who’s in this with you?”

“Who’s in what?”

“This break you’re talking about.”

They were circling verbally. Skip wished he had made up a story for Uncle Willy, something like being invited to stay with Eddie for a couple of days. “Oh, a guy I know.”

“Eddie Barrett?”

“Yeah.” Skip threw the dirty shirt into a hamper in the bathroom, came out, began to look around for something to stick into the bag. There was no need to pack yet, but he didn’t want to have to sit down and face Uncle Willy and parry his questions.