It is prison for the insane. (He pronounced it with a hiss: Priss’n. Then he shook his head, unhappy.) Not prison. It is— He knotted his face and paused then cracked open when he found it, smiling and sighing, Asylum. Asylum, he repeated, delighted with the word. The passenger looked back through the rear window. The building seemed to glow in the morning light. The driver held a compass made of cast-off sounds and letters. The passenger is seeking a hut a possible place of shelter some remembered form of asylum. That evening he takes a ball- peen hammer smashes the headlights then climbs in and drives a blind car through blind curves on a road above the sea: airplanes come in low over the water: the flickering illumination wipes the road clean. The car has become a song where he knows the melody but not the words. It could be a reel about a lamb in a meadow. It could be a dirge about the loss of a child.
