A Wasted Hour Read online

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  KELLEY ALWAYS thumbed a ride back to college, but never told her parents. She knew they wouldn’t approve.

  Her father would drive her to the station on the first day of term, when she would hang around on the platform until she was certain he was on his way back home. She would then walk the couple of miles to the freeway.

  There were two good reasons why Kelley preferred to thumb a ride back to Stanford rather than take a bus or train. Twelve round trips a year meant she could save over a hundred dollars, which her father could ill afford after being laid off by the water company. In any case he and Ma had already made quite enough sacrifices to ensure she could attend college, without causing them any further expense.

  But Kelley’s second reason for preferring to thumb rides was that when she graduated she wanted to be a writer, and during the past three years she’d met some fascinating people on the short journey from Salinas to Palo Alto, who were often willing to share their experiences with a stranger they were unlikely to meet again.

  One fellow had worked as a messenger on Wall Street during the Depression, while another had won the Silver Star at Monte Cassino, but her favourite was the man who’d spent a day fishing with President Roosevelt.

  Kelley also had golden rules about who she wouldn’t accept a ride from. Truck drivers were top of the list as they only ever had one thing on their mind. The next were vehicles with two or three young men on board. In fact she avoided most drivers under the age of sixty, especially those behind the wheel of a sports car.

  The first car to slow down had two young fellows in it, and if that wasn’t warning enough, the empty beer cans on the back seat certainly were. They looked disappointed when she firmly shook her head, and after a few raucous catcalls continued on their way.

  The next vehicle to pull over was a truck, but she didn’t even look up at the driver, just continued walking. He eventually drove off, honking his horn in disgust.

  The third was a pick-up truck, with a couple in the front who looked promising, until she saw a German shepherd lounging across the back seat that looked as if he hadn’t been fed in a while. Kelley politely told them she was allergic to dogs – well, except for Daisy, her cocker spaniel back home, whom she adored.

  And then she spotted a pre-war Studebaker slowly ambling along towards her. Kelley faced the oncoming car, smiled, and raised her thumb. The car slowed, and pulled off the road. She walked quickly up to the passenger door to see an elderly gentleman leaning across and winding down the window.

  ‘Where are you headed, young lady?’ he asked.

  ‘Stanford, sir,’ she replied.

  ‘I’ll be driving past the front gates, so jump in.’

  Kelley didn’t hesitate, because he met all of her most stringent requirements: over sixty, wearing a wedding ring, well-spoken and polite. When she got in, Kelley sank back into the leather seat, her only worry being whether either the car or the old man would make it.

  While he looked to his left and concentrated on getting back onto the road, she took a closer look at him. He had mousey grey hair, a sallow, lined complexion, like well-worn leather, and the only thing she didn’t like was the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He wore an open-neck checked shirt, and a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows.

  Her supervisor had told her on numerous occasions that if she wanted to be a writer she would have to get some experience of life, especially other people’s lives, and although her driver didn’t look an obvious candidate to expand her horizons, there was only one way she was going to find out.

  ‘Thanks for stopping,’ she said. ‘My name’s Kelley.’

  ‘John,’ he replied, taking one hand off the wheel to shake hands with her. The rough hands of a farm labourer, was her first thought. ‘What are you majoring in, Kelley?’ he asked.

  ‘Modern American literature.’

  ‘There hasn’t been much of that lately,’ he suggested. ‘But then times are a changin’. When I was at Stanford, there were no women on the campus, even at night.’

  Kelley was surprised that John had been to Stanford. ‘What degree did you take, sir?’

  ‘John,’ he insisted. ‘It’s bad enough being old, without being reminded of the fact by a young woman.’ She laughed. ‘I studied English literature, like you. Mark Twain, Herman Melville, James Thurber, Longfellow, but I’m afraid I flunked out. Never took my degree, which I still bitterly regret.’

  Kelley gave him another look and wondered if the car would ever move out of third gear. She was just about to ask why he flunked out, when he said, ‘And who are now considered to be the modern giants of American literature, dare I ask?’

  ‘Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bellow and Faulkner,’ she replied.

  ‘Do you have a favourite?’ he asked, his eyes never leaving the road ahead.

  ‘Yes I do. I read The Grapes of Wrath when I was twelve years old, and I consider it to be one of the great novels of the twentieth century. “And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Although my favourite will always be Of Mice and Men.’

  ‘“Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella,”’ said Kelley, ‘“Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella.”’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be flunking your exams,’ said John with a chuckle, which gave Kelley the opportunity to begin her interrogation.

  ‘So what did you do after you left Stanford?’

  ‘My father wanted me to work on his farm back in Monterey, which I managed for a couple of years, but it just wasn’t me, so I rebelled and got a job as a tour guide at Lake Tahoe.’

  ‘That must have been fun.’

  ‘Sure was. Lots of dames, but the pay was lousy. So my friend Ed and I decided to travel up and down the California coast collecting biological specimens, but that didn’t turn out to be very lucrative either.’

  ‘Did you try and look for something more permanent after that?’ asked Kelley.

  ‘No, can’t pretend I did. Well, at least not until war broke out, when I got a job as a war correspondent on the Herald Tribune.’

  ‘Wow, that must have been exciting,’ said Kelley. ‘Right there among the action, and then reporting everything you’d seen to the folks back home.’

  ‘That was the problem. I got too close to the action and ended up with a whole barrel of shot gun up my backside, and had to be shipped back to the States. So I lost my job at the Trib, along with my first wife.’

  ‘Your first wife?’

  ‘Did I forget to mention Carol?’ he said. ‘She lasted thirteen years before she was replaced by Gwyn, who only managed five. But to do her justice, which is quite difficult, she gave me two great sons.’

  ‘So what happened once you’d fully recovered from your