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Show •103 "I don't think it entered the minds of the Tucson police that anybody would be crazy enough to drive something like that out of town, let alone across the country." "You didn't just up and leave, though, did you? What about your wife?" He wanted to be reassured that I'd done the right thing, but I couldn't find a way. By his lights I'd behaved badly- I could see it on his face. "I made up my mind after I had a funny thing happen to me," I said. "You could call it a spiritual experience." All day long I'd been working high above the street on a balky motel sign. Late in the afternoon the wind came up; the boom swung one way and the sign on its tall metal pole swayed to a different rhythm. I hung on with my toes hooked around the ladder and one arm deep inside the metal can fishing about for loose high-tension leads, hoping no spiders had made it their home. Sixty feet below me Tucson went about its ordinary business. From this high up the people on the ground looked no smarter than dung beetles, each pushing in front of him his growing ball of worldly excrement, in the end only to bury it. And himself. Because they saw the truth so dimly I had only contempt for them. The motion made me dizzy; I had skipped breakfast and hadn't found time for lunch, so hunger added to the disorientation. It seemed to me that I was fixed in the sky |