He was quiet for a mile or two. Then he nodded.
“I got scared,” he said.
She glanced at him. “Of what?”
“I liked it the way it was. I didn’t want it to change.”
“Into what?”
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“Something smaller, I guess. It was a huge, huge thing. You’ve got no idea. It stretched all around the world. They were going to make it smaller. I’d have gotten promotion, so I would have been higher up in a smaller organization.” I I “What’s wrong with that? Big fish in a small pond, right?”
“I didn’t want to be a big fish,” he said. “I liked being a small fish.” “You weren’t a small fish,” she said. “A major isn’t small.” He nodded. “OK, I liked being a medium-sized fish. It was comfortable. Kind of anonymous.”
She shook her head. “That’s not enough reason to quit.” . He looked up at the stars. They were stationary in the sky, a billion miles
” above him.
*
t “A big fish in a small pond has no place to swim,” he said. “I’d have been in
, one place, years at a time. Some big desk someplace, then five years on, another
bigger desk some other place. Guy like me, no political skills, no social graces, I’d have made full colonel and no farther. I’d have served out my time stuck there. Could have been fifteen or twenty years.” “But?”
“But I wanted to keep moving. All my life, I’ve been moving, literally. I was scared to stop. I didn’t know what being stuck somewhere would feel like, but my guess was I’d hate it.” “And?”
He shrugged. “And now I am stuck someplace.” “And?” she said again.
He shrugged again and said nothing. It was warm in the car. Warm, and , 4 comfortable.
‘* “Say the words, Readier,” she said. “Get it out. You’re stuck someplace,
and?”
a”And nothing.”
“Bullshit, nothing. And?” He took a deep breath. “And I’m having a problem with it.” The car went quiet. She nodded, like she understood. “Jodie doesn’t want to keep moving around, I guess.”
“Well, would jyow?” i*r a “I don’t know.”
‘ He nodded. “Problem is, she does know. She and I grew up the same, always
moving, base to base to base, all around the world, a month here, six months
L
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there. So she lives the life she lives because she went out there and created it for herself, because it’s exactly what she wants. She knows it’s exactly what she wants because she knows exactly what the alternative is.”
“She could move around a little. She’s a lawyer. She could change jobs, time to time.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way. It’s about career. She’ll make partner sometime real soon, the way she’s going, and then she’ll probably work at the same firm her whole life. And anyway, I’m not talking about a couple of years here, three years there, buy a house, sell a house. I’m talking about if I wake up in Oregon tomorrow and I feel like going to Oklahoma or Texas or somewhere, I just go. With no idea about where I’m going the next day.”
“A wanderer.”
“It’s important to me.”
“How important, though?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly.”
“How are you going to find out?”
“Problem is, I am finding out.”
“So what are you going to do?”
He was quiet for another mile.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You might get used to it.”
“I might,” he said. “But I might not. It feels awful deep in my blood. Like right now, middle of the night, heading down the road someplace I’ve never been, I feel real good. I just can’t explain how good I feel.”
She smiled. “Maybe it’s the company.”
He smiled back. “Maybe it is.”
“So will you tell me something else?”
“Like what?”
“Why are we wrong about this guy’s motive?”
He shook his head. “Wait until we see what we find in Portland.”
“What are we going to find in Portland?”
“My guess is a carton full of paint cans, with absolutely no clue as to where they came from or who sent them there.”