He loaded the bag on the station wagon’s passenger seat, got behind the wheel, stalled a couple of times, finally fired the engine. Backing away from the house with excruciating slowness, he took a long time to complete a three-way turn. Battling with the wheel—manual steering. A small man, face intent, hands planted at 10 o’clock–2 o’clock, just the way they teach you in Driver’s Ed. Sitting so low his head was barely visible above the door.

Crouching low, I waited until he drove past. The old Chevy’s tired suspension wasn’t up to the semipaved road, and it creaked and whined as it bounced by. Bert stared straight ahead, didn’t notice me or the Seville. I waited till he’d passed from view, then jumped in my own chariot. Power steering gave me an edge, and I caught up in time to spot the wagon lurching east on 33.

I sat at the intersection as the Chevy diminished to a dust mote on the horizon. The empty road made following too risky. I was still wondering what to do when a pickup truck loaded with bags of fertilizer came to a rolling stop behind me. Two Hispanic men in cowboy hats—farmworkers. I motioned them around and they passed me and turned left. Interposing themselves between Bert and me.

I set out behind the truck, lagging a good ways behind.

A few miles later, at the 33–150 intersection, the truck kept going south and Bert managed a torturous, overcautious right onto 150. I stayed with him but increased my distance, barely able to keep the wagon in sight.

He drove another couple of miles, past private campgrounds and a trailer park and signs announced the impending arrival of Lake Casitas. The public reservoir doubled as a recreational facility. For all I knew the paper bag was filled with bread crumbs, and Bert was planning to feed the ducks.

But he veered off the road well before the lake, swinging north at a corner that housed a single-pump filling station and a one-room bait shop and grocery.

Another unmarked trail, this one dotted thinly with unpainted cabins, set well back from the road. A hand-painted sign at one of the first properties advertised homemade berry cobbler and firewood; after that, no messages. The underbrush grew thick here, nurtured by a shade-canopy of ancient oaks and pittosporum and sycamores so twisted they seemed to writhe. Bert bounced along for another two miles, oblivious to my presence, before slowing, and turning left.

Keeping my eye on the spot where he’d disappeared, I pulled over and waited for two minutes, then followed.