Shannon sat back again against the wooden bench (he had moved forward some), saw that truck again go by for the third time, and now a few more cars, they didn't sound like the trains he was used to, while drinking in the cornfields of Minnesota. All the cars were hitting the slush purposely so it would reach him on the bench. The windshield wipers were on most of the cars that passed. They seemed to be going as much in one direction as the other, driving slower as first light was breaking.
As morning broke, the cars now looked like a long train, and the snow storm had started, he thought of how he was an expert at hitching a ride all the way to Erie, a first time experience really, but he felt like Jack Kerouac.
The long string of cars passed Shannon as if on parade, or a funeral: who were in those cars: old ladies going to take their children to school, middle-aged men going to work, young ladies on their way to college classrooms, fathers, mothers and grandparents. Who exactly were they. Were they pure American stock, Europeans, the old warn out stock like him. Shannon wondered.
The last car he saw was a police car with a red light on-flashing, he watched it racing down the street, and disappearing into heavier traffic. The snowflakes were getting bigger, wider, fatter, thicker, and the wind was picking up. The rat quivered inside his coat pocket. Perhaps if he found a job he might even be able to go to work this afternoon or evening. The rat quivered again, it was no longer as feeble as it was previously. Shannon put his hand into his pocket onto it, to settle it down a little, the rat was calmed. Shannon walked further down the sidewalk.
After all he did not need to stay in Erie; there were other places he could go. He remembered a critic once said, "The world is my city," if he could not find a job here, he could head on to New York, or even Washington D.C., or down South, perhaps to New Orleans. He remembered when he was a boy running around the backyard barefoot, his feet would get numb, just like they were getting now, but as a boy it was from running on the rocks and rough terrain, now they were getting frozen from the ice-slush, and winter chill. His mother loved to have a bright lit up Christmas tree each year, once he'd plug in the electric end of the cord, into the socket, her eyes would light up with the tree.
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