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Show •25 tires, and one afternoon a blowout had landed me on my head in one of the fields now unrolling past the window. Driving and sex were the most important things in the world to me when I was sixteen; I'd waited so long for one, and was still looking forward to the other. I remembered driving along, wrapped up in the feel of the old car, every quiver of the steering-wheel in my hands a purer pleasure than any I've known since, thinking at last, at last! "Don't look so sad," Morgan said. "Who's sad?" "You are. Are you a bit jealous because your brother's a success?" "No. Are you a success, Jacob?" "I wouldn't call it that." He had a big squarish face, very different from mine, which is narrow. He looked down, embarrassed. "You see," I told Morgan. "Anyway if I haven't gotten anywhere in life it's because I haven't wanted to. It's not that difficult to be what you call a success." There was a brief time in Tucson when I thought I wanted to be a consequential man. But it ended with my stealing Wayne Thorneberry's yellow truck and driving it all the way to New York. Jacob looked forlorn and I wanted to hug him and tell him not to take the world so seriously; at the same time, seeing that he wasn't entirely pleased with his life |
