4.
 The ride into California was even wilder than his passage across the plains. Visibility was nearly zero. If the sun had appeared, it wasn't making much of itself. Big rigs jackknifed on frozen asphalt, sliding into each other like pins at a bowling alley while snow devils whirled across the road surface. It was hard work, and tiring, to drive like this. He was afraid sometimes to ask himself why he did it, because he was afraid the answer might be to live to ask the same question the next day. Cars went off the road right and left as Tom drove through the high mountain passes. Here and there, he saw twirling red lights. He spotted Zonie highway patrolmen standing in clusters, probably debating about when and where to start closing the freeways. The radio, too, was saying you could get snowed in for weeks at a time.
But the road started downhill and the snow turned into fierce rain, with wind gusts that shook the big freeway signs as if they were made of paper. Gradually, the black clouds tangling tightly wedged between mountain shoulders gave way to lighter and lighter colors, thinner rain, streaks of sunshine. For a long time, Tom drove through the light drizzle. The land lay lower, alternating in stretches of forest and desert. The road wound ever downward, and pretty soon Tom had the car window open. He drove through one small town after another. Here and there, a palm tree reared out of the mist, slanting into a wall of drizzle. A rainbow shimmered in the sky.
Violence swept up the road, hitting Tom while he was still hypnotized by the rainbow. The huge rig bore down on him in a wake of fine mud. He realized he must have been dozing off. Too late. He swerved. In slow motion, he saw himself losing control. Felt himself turn the wrong way, crosswise in the middle of the road. He managed to grab the steering wheel with both hands, just as the car spun out on sand, skidded off the road onto a sandy lot, and smashed sideways against a tree.
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