We stood alone in the parking lot, my client and I, and then I told him I wasn’t going yet, and he climbed in my passenger seat to wait. His head touched the ceiling of my car. I offered to get him lunch and he shook his head like a great, sulky child. So I left him there and walked the length of the mall twice, eating my sandwich. When I returned, he hadn’t moved: jacket in his lap, eyes on his knees, he waited for his ride.

Before we were out of Billings he said the only thing to do was get a machine gun and kill everyone. I stopped the car. I said I wouldn’t have him talking like that, and told him to get out. No one knew where I was, and Sawyer weighed twice what I did, but I wasn’t afraid, I was only tired of him. He promised not to do it again.

At the first sign for the turnoff to Red Lodge, outside Laurel, Sawyer said, “I wish my wife would roll over on the highway.”

I stopped the car on the shoulder and said, “I swear, I’ll leave you in Laurel.”

Twenty miles on he began a low, keening rant about his negligent boss, about his negligent wife, about how no one understood how miserable he was. I told him if he opened his mouth for the rest of the drive I would let him out wherever we were. He didn’t bridle. He didn’t say anything at all. I found a country station to fill the silence, and Sawyer began to weep. He sobbed in the passenger seat all the way home, without saying a word.

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