Smallwood grins a big happy grin at the back seat, and I think for a moment about a hundred dollar whore, the kindness she might bring, like the pharmacy sending over an expensive prescription to get you through a rough night. A trip to the hot springs. Something wordless to patch the tissue of innocent words that holds life in its most positive attitude. Too much serious talk and self-explanation and you’re a goner.

What Herb needs, of course, and can’t have, is to strap on a set of pads and beat the daylights out of somebody and quit worrying about theories of art. He is a man without a sport, when a sport is exactly what he needs. With better luck we might’ve summoned up a vi vider memory of his playing days, seen the game films. Herb could get back within himself, shake off alienation and dreary doubt, and play through pain—be the inspiration he was put on earth to be.

I tell Mr. Smallwood no thanks, and he chuckles in a mirthful-derisive way. Then for a while we wind back toward town without speaking, taking the Lodge this time since the snow is off and the traffic gone north, leaving the expressway gray and wintry.

Across from Tiger Stadium, Mr. Smallwood stops at a liquor store owned, he says, by his brother-in-law, a little Fort Knox of steel mesh and heavy bullet-proof glass. Across the avenue the big stadium hulks up white and lifeless. A message on its marquee says simply, “Sorry Folks. Have a Good One.”

Mr. Smallwood ambles across and buys another pint bottle of schnapps, which I insist on paying for, and he and I treat ourselves to a warm elevation of spirits on the short trip down to the Pontchartrain. He says he is a Tiger fan and that he believes it’s time for a dynasty. He also tells me that his parents moved up from Magnolia, Arkansas, in the Forties, and that for a while he attended Wayne State before he got married and went to work at Dodge Main. He quit that last year, he says, a jump ahead of the lay-offs, and bought his taxi. And he is happy to name his own hours now and to go home every day at noon for lunch with his wife and to rest an hour before getting back onto the street for the afternoon rush. Someday he hopes to retire to Arkansas. He doesn’t ask me about myself, either too courteous or too engaged in his own interesting life of work and discretionary time. His is a nice life, a life that would be easy to envy if you didn’t have one just as good. I calculate him to be not much older than I am.

At the hotel Mr. Smallwood leans across the seat to where he can see me out on the windy pavement putting money back in my wallet. For an instant I think he means to shake my hand, but that is not on his mind at all. I have already paid him our agreed fare, and the schnapps bottle is on the floor beside his considerable leg. My gift to him.

“There’s a good chop house down on Larned,” he says in a tour guide’s voice and with a grin that makes me wonder if he isn’t making fun of me. “Steaks big as this.” He holds two big chunky fingers two full inches apart. “You can walk from here.