The top was down; it would be obvious there was nobody with me. Then, just as he was passing, for a fraction of a second he caught a glimpse of somebody bent over or crouched down in the seat beside me, hiding from the lights. So he blew his stack completely.

But nobody could be that crazy. He’d be taking a chance of crashing himself—which he did. A man would have to be absolutely berserk to do a thing like that. Well, how did I know he wasn’t? I didn’t even know him, to say nothing of having any idea of what was sloshing around in his mind as he came up behind me. Maybe he thought I was somebody else. Maybe he didn’t care if he did kill himself along with her. Maybe— There were a dozen possibilities.

But still it was moonshine—unless you had more to go on than that. Purvis had, or he’d never have started digging into it. I had to talk to him again. But what good would that do? He wouldn’t give you the time of day; he was too cagey. Yes, but he didn’t have to tell me anything; I could find out a lot by watching the direction his questions took. That had worked pretty well so far. I could call him and tell him I’d just remembered some goofy thing that might have a bearing on it, and get him started again. Then I stopped. I couldn’t call him tonight; I didn’t even know his first name, and there were probably dozens of Purvises in the Houston telephone directory.

I threw some clothes on and went out to get a cup of coffee. When I came back it was hours before I got to sleep. It wasn’t the coffee, however; coffee never bothers me that way. I was thinking of Mrs. Cannon again, and of a hundred thousand dollars, and a lot of things were growing clearer in my mind as I tossed and turned on the sweaty sheet. I was finished, wasn’t I? Football was the only thing I knew or was any good at, and they’d taken that away from me. What was left? Coaching? High school character-building? Getting shoved around by Monday-morning quarterbacks for peanuts? The hell with that. Selling? Nuts. I liked violence and rough body contact and money and excitement and then money again, and I hated failure in the way you can hate it only if you grew up with it. I’d seen enough ineffectual futility by the time I was twelve to last me the rest of my life, and I was a pro making them put it on the line when I was a junior in high school. I was big and fast and I was good—and I knew it. They called me a cold-blooded savage and Whore Harlan and What’s-in-it-for-me Harlan, but they paid me. Not openly, and not the school itself, but I got it. In college I got more.