One more thing to do before he hit the road for real. He checked the Corvair’s oil. He was pleased to find it had plenty. The oil on the dipstick even looked clear and clean. So this might work. “It might,” he muttered.

He got back on the San Bernardino Freeway, heading east.

A lunch stop in San Bernardino. A stop for gas and a long leak in Blythe: he’d had more coffee with lunch. Over the Colorado. Jerry knew he was in Arizona by the saguaros on the far side of the river. He was careful to keep to the double nickel from then on. Arizona cops had an evil reputation for ticketing cars with out-of-state plates doing anything even slightly illegal. He took no chances.

By the time he got to Phoenix, night was falling. He laughed at himself for thinking of it that way. He’d never cared for the Glen Campbell song.

He spotted a neon sign on a tall pole so you could see the big red letters from the interstate: MOTEL. That worked for him. He exited and made for it on whatever this cross street was. The clerk gave him a room key and change from the twenty he passed across the counter.

Half a block farther down the street was a Denny’s that also sported a tall sign. He ate dinner there. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t terrible. It was food. He figured he’d have breakfast there tomorrow, too.

The room was, well, a room. The walls were thin; he could hear the TV next door through one of them. He hated that, and turned on his room’s TV in self-defense. He took off his shoes, but fell asleep in the rest of his clothes.

Next thing he knew, it was 5:07 a.m., Phoenix clock radio standard time. His watch said it was an hour earlier. He changed it; he was on mountain time now, not Pacific. Then he tried to sleep some more, tried and failed. He turned off the television and hopped in the shower to help get himself all the way awake. Then, being without shaving cream, he shaved with lather from the bar of motel soap. Life with a beard was much easier.

He checked out before six. As he walked out of the lobby, he grabbed a road map of Arizona from a case full of brochures for tourist attractions. He took it into the Denny’s with him and studied it while he ate bacon and eggs.

The I-10 went south to Tucson and then southeast. The I-17 went north to Flagstaff, where it met the eastbound I-40, which would take him to Albuquerque. Flagstaff was up in the mountains. It might be snowy. He didn’t want to drive in snow if he could help it. The I-10 it would be. He’d go as long as he could.