“Whatta you tell a kid like that, Myrt? How do you get through to him?” His face registered utter bafflement. His wife’s crying had slowed to a trickle. She was dabbing at her eyes with one of his old handkerchiefs.
“I don’t know either, dear. I still don’t understand why he had to drive down there. Why couldn’t he have taken the Trans, Frank? Why?”
“Oh, you know why. What would his friends have said? ‘Here’s Bobby Merwin, too scared to drive his own rod,’ and that sort of crud.” His sarcasm was getting edgier. “Still felt he had to prove himself a man, the idiot! He’d already soloed on the freeways—why did he feel the need to try a cross-county expedition? But damn it, if he had to display his guts, why couldn’t he have done so in the big car? Not even a professionally customized VW can mount much stuff.
“And on top of everything else, you’d think he’d have had the sense to shy of! that kind of an argument? He had Driver’s Training! Who ever heard of a VW disputing position with a Cad—a Marauder, no less! Where were his ‘friends,’ huh? I warned him about the light stretches between here and Diego, where flow is light, help is more than a hornblast away and some psycho can surprise you from behind an on-ramp!”
He paused to catch his breath, walked back to the
40
Why Johnny Can’t Speed
lamp stand, and picked up the letter. Familiar with the contents, he glanced at it only briefly this time. He offered it to his wife but she declined, so he returned it to the stand.
“You know what I have to do now, I suppose?”