Rain accumulated in fat drops on the boughs and came down to thump the Stutz’s roof. The dullness of rainy early evening became almost the blackness of night inside these tunnels.
The flat-faced man switched on the lights, and increased our speed.
He sat rigidly erect at the wheel. I sat behind him. Above his military collar, among the hairs that were clipped short on the nape of his neck, globules of moisture made tiny shining points. The moisture could have been rain. It could have been sweat.
We were in the middle of one of the tunnels.
The flat-faced man’s head jerked to the left, and he screamed:
“A‑a‑a‑a‑a‑a!”
It was a long, quivering, high-pitched bleat, thin with terror.
I jumped up, bending forward to see what was the matter with him.
The car swerved and plunged ahead, throwing me back on the seat again.
Through the side window I caught a one-eyed glimpse of something dark lying in the road.
I twisted around to try the back window, less rain-bleared.
I saw a black man lying on his back in the road, near the left edge. His body was arched, as if its weight rested on his heels and the back of his head. A knife handle that couldn’t have been less than six inches long stood straight up in the air from the left side of his chest.
By the time I had seen this much we had taken a curve and were out of the tunnel.
“Stop,” I called to the flat-faced man.