Chapter 7
	I slept the sleep of the dead and awoke at dawn the next day feeling refreshed.  I put the kitty litter box back in the car, let Lady roam loose around the car which she now felt was home.  I cleaned up all traces of Lady's visit and loaded her and the bass into the wagon and proceeded down the road to a breakfast inn.  I fed Lady and had breakfast.  We headed west down the brand new interstate highway, so new that the center median and the road sides had not yet been planted with grass.  All you could see dividing the four-lane highway and along either side was red clay mud.  It was rather desolate.
	I crossed the Iowa border early in the morning.  The road was clear with almost no traffic.  It had been sunny, but suddenly it started pouring down rain.  I turned on the wipers; they worked fine.  The car was tooling along, running smoothly, and I began to feel a slowly growing elation.  I was escaping.  Everything would be okay.  Cruising along at about 70, I glanced at my rear view mirror.  There was a cloud of black smoke behind me.  I checked out the roadside for signs of a fire, nothing there.  The engine was purring along not making any strange noises, running smoothly.  I looked again and the cloud was still there, even blacker and bigger.  It seemed to be coming from the rear of my car.  I couldn't believe it.  Now fascinated by this strange occurrence, I started to slow down, finally pulling over on the far right lane.  The shoulder was nothing but red mud.  The highway was empty.
	I got out on the driver's side and walked to the back of the car where the smoke seemed to be coming from.  Looking down at the rear wheels I saw tiny little tongues of flame coming out of the tire around the wheel rim.  Remembering the fire extinguisher (that came with the car) I opened the tailgate and got it out.  Shaking it as hard as I could I trained on the rear wheel and pulled the trigger.  The foam shot out and poof, the wheel exploded in flames, as though I had thrown gas on it.  I was dumbfounded.  How could this be?  What was happening here?  The black smoke plume became huge and billowed up into the rainy gray sky like a World War I airplane crash.  I stared in disbelief, momentarily immobilized.  The whole tire was now completely engulfed in flames--flames that leaped up high over the roof of the station wagon.  Before long the other rear tire was burning fiercely, growing quickly in intensity, until it duplicated its mate.  The car was near but not under a viaduct crossing over the interstate.  I realized that I better get my stuff out of there or I would soon lose it.
	I got Lady out first; her, her litter box, and cat food.  I stashed her under the bridge and went back for the rest.  Next my bass, then the paintings and drawings from New York, and finally my clothes.  I had a small 35 mm film canister, with a little pot in it (for the trip), in my pocket.  I laid out my paintings on the cement buttress of the bridge, then my bass and clothes.  It was cold under the bridge but relatively dry.  By now the whole rear end of the car was on fire.  It was getting hotter and harder to unload.  It looked like the gas tank could explode any minute.  Still in the car was my movie camera, my films, and my interior painting of the oval mirror reflection of my loft.  I abandoned them to the fire for fear of being blown up.
	At the spot the road was in a trough, lower than the landscape.  All that was visible was the roadside bank of red mud.  I stepped off the tarmac and sunk up to my ankle in the mud.  It almost sucked my boot off my foot.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to climb out up the bank.  I didn't know what to do.  I took refuge under the bridge and watched my car burn.  The fire was raging but it took longer than I thought it would for the gas tank to explode.  I was bedeviled by the thought that I might have had enough time to get everything out of the car.  I watched the flames grow higher and finally the gas tank exploded with an undramatic pop.  A couple of cars sped past, a long interval between them.  I stuck out my hand looking for some kind of help.  Neither even slowed down.
	Then a police car came by.  He asked me if that was my car.  I told him yes.  He asked was I trying to leave the scene of an accident.  I said "No, I'm just trying to get a little help."  I went on "I'm havin' a real bad day, don't make it worse, give me a little help."  I reached him.  He was really a great guy.  We took the next off ramp and drove to a farmhouse near the overpass.  It was a traditional family farm, complete with barn, fields, feed, and cattle.  The state trooper introduced me to the farmer, a sturdy middle-aged man in overalls.  He agreed to store my stuff and let Lady stay.  He got into his pickup with bed cover and followed us back to the fire scene.  I loaded all my stuff in the pickup bed, and we followed him back to his farm, Lady in my lap.  We unloaded my paintings, bass, and other stuff and left them and Lady neatly stored in a dry, safe spot in the barn, shook hands, thanked the farmer profusely, and promised to be back to pick up my stuff and my cat as soon as I could get new wheels.
	The kindly cop drove me into town and dropped me off at the bus station.  On the way there he lit up a cigarette.  I quit smoking for Mary, now for more than a year.  She told me I smelled like an ashtray.  When the cop lit up I couldn't resist and bummed a smoke off him.  When we got to the bus station, I thanked him, got out of the patrol car, and the first thing I did was buy a pack of cigs.  I was hooked again.  I bought a ticket to San Jose, where my folks lived, called them, told them what had happened to me, and informed them I was on my way on a Greyhound bus and would call them when I arrived.  Thank God for the kindness of strangers.