"It'll only take a couple of minutes."
He turned indifferent. "Suit yourself. I was thinking we might get some
fishing in." He let it hang there and I almost changed my mind. You
know how it is with fishing. If there's any daylight at all, you want
to at least trail a hook in the water before hitting the sack.
* * * * *
The asphalt changed to loose gravel and I ground my teeth every time
I thought of what the gravel and the dust were doing to the finish of
the car. It took ten minutes to make those three miles. Then the gravel
thinned out and we came to the end of the road in a small clearing
rimmed with pine trees and other scrub timber.
Fred was surly. "Here we are--now what the hell was it that you wanted
to see?"
I got out and stretched, then put my hands on my hips and looked around
the clearing. It almost looked like Fred was right. There wasn't a damn
thing to be seen. Brush and trees and knee-high grass and the two inch
mosquitoes that only seem to come out at dusk. Then I saw what looked
like a piece of paper by one of the trees. I ran over and picked it up.
It was paper and yet not paper--it looked more like a fusion of paper
and plastic with an odd kind of printing on it. I couldn't shake the
idea that it was a scrap of some foreign paper. Then I looked around
and saw where the grass was trampled and where a rough path led back
through the woods.