The wounded zombie wearing my face, kept alert only by the night air roaring through the hole in the car, steered us back to the campsite. I stared at the tent, which waited patiently for us precisely where we had left it. I had been prepared for it to have vanished at the exact moment the window glass had shattered on a flickering street. And here it was, completely undisturbed. What if I had emptied the back seat into the tent? Would the tent have been spirited away instead? I dismissed these thoughts, falling eventually into a painful slumber.

The next morning, I considered my beloved bike, locked in place to a massive tree whose roots sipped leisurely from the stream rippling past. I didn't even consider trying to open the U-lock linking the front wheel to the frame. There would be no more bicycling on this journey, even if I had wanted to. I looked closely at the chain encircling the tree, and a grim pragmatism seized me. I pulled some object that remained from the trunk. A hammer, perhaps. Hoping that the tubes of the bike frame were stronger than the links of the chain, I began to twist the handle up in the links. After two rotations all the slack was gone. I didn't care what happened next, except that I refused to suffer uncertainty for even a moment longer. I put my body weight through my arms down onto the wooden handle. Almost immediately the sound made by a whip, or perhaps the echo of a hunting rifle, rang through the campsite and the hammer turned freely in my hands. I frowned. The hammer must have slipped and I'd need to try again, I thought. But the chain was already sliding onto the forest floor.

The car was packed, which took less time than it used to, and we were pulling away from the campsite with my bike stowed on the trunk rack. I wanted to clarify the state of things: 'We don't have insurance.'

"And who knows what they'll want to charge us for this window. We'd better get the car back right away."

He meant-- shudder-- Michigan. I didn't want to drive any further than I had to with the window like it was.

'Do we want to try getting it fixed down here?'

"First, they'll try to screw us since we're not from around here. Second, we'll have to pay the rental on each day it takes them to fix it."

Even I couldn't argue with that.

At a gas-station later that afternoon , the sky was an unpredictable color, hollow flat gray. I said, "It's going to be cold, and maybe wet. We'd better try sealing up that window."

"With what?"

'Good question.'

As I paid for the gas I grabbed a box of black garbage bags and a roll of silver duct tape and placed them on the counter. While Jim was inside, I taped a layer of black plastic to the inside of the passenger door, thinking that later the tape marks wouldn't show as much on the roof liner as on the paint.

"Don't you want to tape it from the outside?" Jim asked, returning with his hands full of green caffeinated liquid.

In fact, I wasn't at all sure the wind wouldn't immediately push the bag in through the window and tear the tape loose. But I told him, 'Let's just try it and see what happens. It's not like we don't have more tape.'

But serendipity and physics were on my side. The bag bulged out the empty window frame instead, flapping and rattling at first, but as the car nosed down onto the freeway, the speed of the air curving around the car pulled the bag taut and silent.

Within a few minutes a soft insistent rain began to pelt the car, sliding off the black plastic into our slipstream.

I suddenly relaxed. I had guessed right. For a change.

'It takes more than that to kill a duck.'

Jim took a long swig of green bubbles and shrugged.