Aldo passed the strangely shaped chevycap back to Tim, together with what remained of the crackerbox, then cradled his own rounded and familiar chevycap in his arms, delighting in the feel of it.

  “In all this jam, there’s none like Ma’am,

  For playin’ nor for singin’.

  She’d drove the land, her an’ her band,

  And set the big rooms ringin’.

  Her face you’d see on your TV,

  ’Most any day you played it,

  She’d like to gone, with me, her son,

  But this here jam’s delayed it.

  Now here we stay, an’ pray each day,

  That them that tried to get her,

  Will try ag’in, helped by the win’,

  Or best in stormin’ weather.

  “It’s not a very good song,” Aldo apologized when he had finished, “an’ that’s all the farther I ever got with it, an’ now she’s drove out.”

  Tim looked at him quizzically.

  “Dead, it means.”

  “I understand. You loved her very much, didn’t you?”

  “Sure I did. It’s not no disgrace for a man to love his ma, is it?”

  “I’m certain it isn’t.” Tim’s fingers touched the strings of his chevycap. “I still think about mine at times. Not as often as I should, I’m afraid.”

  “You talked ’bout folksingers.”

  Tim nodded.

  “That’s what I am, Ma’am said. But Ma’am was Country-an’-Western. She’s real big, or was, an’ when the jam hit, a whole lot of offroaders come here tryin’ to get her out, only they dropped gas on them.”

  “’Now here we stay, an’ pray each day, that them that tried to get her, will try again, helped by the wind, or best in storming weather,’” Tim quoted.

  “That’s it. She always said if it’d been rainin’ hard or the wind blowin’, they’d have got her out. Then she’d of hired somebody to stay with her car an’ move it when the jam broke. Back in them times, they thought it was goin’ to. The airmen an’ so on, they still talk like that.”

  “But you don’t believe it. After seeing the condition many of these cars are in, neither do I.”

  “Thing is…” Unconsciously, Aldo let his voice drop. “Now there’s a chopper comin’ around takin’ people out.” He cleared his throat. “That’s what some say. I ain’t sayin’ it’s true, and I don’t believe it myself. This gal that I know, Mar’s her name, she went off lookin’ for it.”

  “But not you. You didn’t go.”

  Aldo hesitated, biting his lip. At last he said. “Nope, I didn’t. Chopper must of brought you, Tim. Was that the same one?”

  “I have no way of knowing.”

  “I guess not. Mar’, she wanted us to. Wanted us to go off lookin’ for it together, like. I said she’d get herself killed. I said, you wait here, an’ I’ll go look, if you’re so certain sure of this new chopper that didn’t nobody saw.”

  Tim pointed. “What’s that up there, Aldo?”

  “I don’t see nothin’. I said I’ll go, Mar’. You stay here safe. Only she thought I wouldn’t look, not hard. Just go up a ways an’ come on back. She waited till I was asleep. I doubt—”

  Something had seized Aldo by the throat, choking him. “I doubt she got far, but I hope she did.”

  Tim did not reply, studying a dot that Aldo could see now as well as he.

  “Only I’m not lookin’ for her. She’s got to learn, I guess.” He sighed. “I’m going this other way, and maybe—That’s a yeller chopper, ain’t it?”

  “Yellow with blue or black lettering on the side,” Tim confirmed. “I can’t quite make the lettering out.”

  “Looking for somebody, a lady I met said.” Aldo stood straight again, peering into the sun’s glare. “Askin’ after them, I reckon. I never did see one so little as that.”

  “Four persons,” Tim told him. “Three passengers, and no cargo to speak of. I’ve ridden in similar helicopters.”

  “There’s a pull-off over there!” Now it was Aldo’s turn to point. “It’s fixin’ to set down there sure. Come on, Tim!” He ran, and arrived in time to watch the yellow chopper land.

  A slender gal in tight-fitting blue clothing of a design Aldo had never seen before stepped from the chopper, followed by a sulky-looking man with a black box on his shoulder. The black box ended with a headlight, and when he and the gal had gotten out from under the chopper blade, he aimed that part at Aldo and the other freewayers who had gathered at the sound of the chopper.

  The gal said something Aldo could not hear, then shouted back toward the chopper, “Phil, you’re going to have to turn that thing off.” She held something in her hand that brought tears to Aldo’s eyes; he pushed through the crowd to look at it.

  “Hello!” the gal said, and this time her voice was as loud as the choppermen’s, when they talked down from their choppers. “I’m from WWBB. Many of you listen to our radio affiliate on your car radios, I know, and they used to get calls from you on your cell phones.”

  The crowd stirred.

  “I’m from the television station. You older folks must remember television.”

  As loudly as he could, Aldo said, “I got a TV in the back of our car. Still works, too.”

  “Wonderful! You haven’t forgotten us.”

  Tim rejoined Aldo, and Aldo confided, “Ma’am had a thing like what she’s talkin’ into, only there wasn’t nowhere to plug it in. I put it in her one hand and her plug-in chevycap in the other when I laid her in the bag. Her gee-tar’s what she called that plug-in chevycap.”

  “So if there’s anyone here like that, I hope that he or she will step forward,” the gal was saying. “Any of you that exemplify the burgeoning culture of the traffic jam.”

  No one moved.

  “In compliance with our agreement with the Department of Transportation, we will have to bring you back here when your engagement is finished.” She gave heavy emphasis to the final words. “Meanwhile—and it may be for quite a while—you’ll be treated royally. The Consort-Hilton’s a wonderful hotel, and you’ll get new clothes and wonderful meals. You’ll earn a great deal of money, also, and be able to buy things to take back with you, for yourself and your friends.”

  A voice from the crowd called, “There’s somebody back at the chowchopper that signs real good!”

  “That’s you,” Aldo told Tim happily, but Tim did not appear to hear him.

  The gal was approaching them. “What’s that you’ve got? Our other crew discovered a girl last night who had something like that.”

  It was a moment before Aldo realized she was addressing him. He held up his chevycap for her to see. “Was her name Mar’?”

  “Marta? No, I don’t think so. Mary something.” The gal turned to the man holding the black box. “Do you remember her last name, Don?”

  The man holding the black box shook his head.

  “Do you play that?” the gal asked Aldo. “And sing?”

  Shyly Aldo nodded.

  “Then you’ve got to play and sing for us.” Smiling, the gal caught his arm. “Don’s camera will let the brass back in our building see and hear you.”

  “Tim’s better,” Aldo told her.

  “Fine, we’ll hear Tim by and by. But right now we want to hear you. Sing something about the traffic jam.”

  Aldo’s fingers brushed his strings, trying to find which one Tim had tightened; the whole chevycap sounded better than it had, he decided, though he could not be sure which had changed. “You want me to commence?”

  “Any time that you’re ready,” the gal told him. “Don’t be nervous.”

  He grinned at her. “Playin’ an’ singin’s the only time I ain’t never.

  “Choppergal, choppergal, dressed so fine,

  Got a gal already, an’ that gal’s mine.

  Your chopper’s still hummin’, chopper wind’s a-blowin’,

  Got to grab a seat in back, ’fore you get a-goin’.

  “Yeller sun risin’, climbin’ up the sky,

  Sure to be a hot one, me-oh-my!

  Yeller chopper hummin’, take me with you,

  Got to kiss my Mar’ again, ’fore the day’s through.

  “Yeller chopper hummin’, take me out this jam,

  Goodbye, Cadillac! So long, Ma’am!

  Sure to make you proud, Ma’am, sure to marry Mar’.

  Goin’ to be what you were, goin’ to be a star.

  “Yeller sun risin’—”

  The gal motioned him to silence as the crowd applauded. “That’s enough, I think. That was…?”

  “Aldo Berry,” Aldo said. The crowd clapped again.

  “And you, sir. What’s your name?”

  Two men were pushing Tim forward. “Tim Benson,” he said.

  “Will you play for us, Tim? We’d like to hear you.”

  Tim shook his head; Aldo said, “Go ’head, Tim.” Then to the gal, “He’s so fine! Wait till you hear.”

  Tim got his strangely shaped chevycap positioned, one hand on the tailpipe, the other on the strings.

  “My gentle harp, once more I waken

  The sweetness of thy slumbering strain,

  In tears our last farewell was taken,

  And now in tears we meet again…”

  It seemed to Aldo a very long time before the listeners, including the gal, began to clap. After a moment he joined them, and was still clapping some minutes afterward, when the others had stopped.

  “That was—was just so wonderful, Tim,” the gal said, “but won’t you play something about this mess? This traffic jam that’s kept so many of you here so long? That’s what they want to hear at our building.”

  Tim looked at her, then at Aldo, and at last back to her. “I’d like to go with you. That’s been my dream, to sing folk music and be a star, as Aldo said.” He spoke so softly that even Aldo, standing beside him, could scarcely hear the words. “But I don’t know any. Only one, actually.”

  “Then sing that.”

  “It’s Aldo’s. May I, Aldo?”

  “Sure thing. You go ’head, Tim.” Aldo tried to smile, and discovered to his own surprise that the smile was real.

  It was his tune, the tune he had found three years ago, long before Ma’am pined. Yet it was changed, the way that people were supposed to change up in Heaven, no longer half serious and half funny, but as lonesome and lovely as a bird overhead—a swift and solitary bird that flew over the jam, looked down at the cars, and was gone.

  “In all this jam, there’s none like Ma’am,

  For playing or for singing…”

  It was over before it had begun, or so it seemed, and the cheers of the crowd were still echoing from the cars and trucks of the jam and the concrete sides of the bleak buildings beyond the safety wall when the chopper lifted, bearing Tim away.

  Waving, Aldo withdrew into the cramped files of stationary vehicles, knowing that no one had so much as noticed that he had left. “Goin’ to that Spaghetti Bowl anyhow,” he said under his breath, “and I best be movin’, be somewheres else when the chowchopper comes back.”

  · · · ·

  All through the long, hot afternoon he threaded his way between motionless automobiles, as he had been doing all his life, until at last, with evening closing in, he realized that there were fewer than a dozen separating him from a towering orange semi. Studying it, he could not be certain that it was the one the slatternly woman had pointed out that morning; but he would not go much farther that day, and there seemed to be no harm in looking, in trying to see the Spaghetti Bowl today before the last light faded.

  From the front bumper, he was able to scramble up onto the hood without much trouble; but the high cab was surmounted by a varashield nearly as tall as itself, which was bound to prove difficult. Standing at one side of the hood with his left foot where the vanished windshield should have been, clinging to the mirror mount, he found a secure purchase for his right foot on the top of the door and swung himself out.

  The melody of the song he called “In All This Jam” played itself in his mind. He hummed it under his breath when he had scrambled onto the rusting top of the cab—not his tune, but the melody as Tim had played it, powerful and haunting.

  Aldo got to his feet (very much crowded and obstructed by the varashield), and put one hand on top of it and the other on the top of the huge semitrailer. How had Tim made it to sound like that? Aldo sought to fathom Tim’s technique as he swung himself up, catching his heel on the top of the semitrailer and rolling over onto it.

  The light was fading fast, but the haze that had obscured the jam that morning had dissipated. Peering downjam, his eyes traced its dwindling ribbon back toward the loftiest buildings, until it was visible largely as a streak of night among the brightly lit office towers.

  Below him an engine started, coughed, and died.

  Somebody tryin’ to charge up, he told himself, so he can listen to that radio.

  A cool breeze caressed his sweating cheek, very welcome after the afternoon’s heat. Briefly he wondered whether the people down on the roadway could feel it. If they did, there had to be hundreds of hundreds as grateful as he was, which was nice to think about. He tried to picture them, the thread of freewayers strung over a thousand miles.

  The office towers, he noticed, were rendered visible only by their lights now, outlined against a sky much darker than that above his head. A jagged spark divided it as he watched; he held his breath, counting to thirteen before the rumble of the thunder reached him.

  His chevycap was on the roadway, safely hidden, he hoped, behind the right front wheel. He looked down, but there was no one groping there. He would have to get it and find somebody with a not-too-crowded car who would let him inside before the rain came, let him sleep inside in return for his songs.

  “Better than’s on them radios,” Aldo muttered under his breath, and knew that he spoke the truth—and that the new song, still small and weak, was already scratching at the doors of his mind. Tim was on the little yellow songchopper, that was certain sure, because just by the scratchings Aldo could tell that it was not just a new song but a new kind of a song, not like any he had ever heard or sung. Tired though he was, he felt himself standing taller from the thrill of it.

  Still a long way off, but nearer—much nearer—than it had been the first time, lightning split the sullen sky beyond the city. For a fraction of a second Aldo saw, as though in a dream, nightmare lanes of cars and vans and trucks looped and swirled like the yarn of a raveled sweater, trucks and vans and cars hanging in the air, an impossible creation that appeared to mount up and up without limit.

  He leaped from the top of the semitrailer then, hitting the concrete with the first big drops, his feet together, rolling as he fell.

  Half a minute more and he was up again, with his chevycap in his hand and his hair streaming, his chevycap singing of wind and rain and lightning, and of a fury that had scarcely begun.

  “Big storm a-risin’, a-risin’, a-risin’,

  Big storm a-risin’, the risin’ of the free!

  Clear to the h’rizon, the h’rizon, the h’rizon,

  We’re the freewayers, an’ we’ll be free!”

  Rhythmically, compellingly, Aldo’s chevycap snarled like an angry cat, a fighting tomcat driven to the last extremity and furious for war.

  “Blood on the roadway, blood on the wall,

  Blood on our irons, our knives an’ all,

  Waitin’ since the jam began, s’posed to be a day,

  S’posed to be a month, a year.

  Someone’s got to pay!”

  As he began the chorus again, he heard a new voice that sounded as loud and as angry as the thunder singing with his.

  Before the chorus was over, a third voice, and a fourth, had joined theirs.

  One-Two-Three for Me

  One of the Youngers was rapping on a stick of firewood with another one, moving it up and down and listening to how the noise changed; and Jak—big, tough, blond Jak—yelled, “Don’t do that!,” sounding mad.

  That was how it started, and this is the story he told. It was hard to get it out of him, but if I told you about all that it would take until morning. What finally did it was Dik getting sticks, too, and tapping one with the other like the younger, and then I did it, and Jak told us to make us stop.

  · · · ·

  It was four years ago (he said) and I was hard for this one girl. I can’t even remember her name, but back then I thought the worlds turned around and around just for her. You know how it is.

  On spring walk we went back to the old one, back to Earth. There’s people digging there all the time, looking for stuff that might explain how people got to be the way they are. Or they think it will. Anyway, they say they do.

  I used to think it too, ’cause the machines said so. If you know how an animal acted when there weren’t any people, you can understand—maybe—why it acts the way it does now, so how’d people act before they got to be people? Only I don’t believe it anymore. Now I think you ought to let dead stuff alone.

  But we were really loud for it then, this girl and me were, telling each other things we’d uploaded and pretending they were our own ideas ’cause we’d changed a couple of words. You know how you do.

  We set down and each of us got a bot, and our bots told us we could dig anyplace we wanted and they’d show us whatever they found and let us touch it if we wouldn’t hurt it and be real tappy. They had suggestions, too—you know how they do. Places where somebody else found something a hundred years ago. Places where everybody else had dug already. We said no, show us the map.

  They did, and there was a big hill on it where some city’d been. I forget the name. We said let’s go there, and the bots said nobody goes there ’cause it’s too recent, only about eight hundred years. Nobody digs there.

  That settled it, we made them take us there and they were right, there wasn’t anybody else for a long, long way, just dry grass and the wind blowing dead bushes around. Jo An and me—that was her name, I remember now—thought it was swell. We had the bots set up our jifhuts and started digging, each of us picking a place for our bot. Mine was a couple hundred meters from hers. My bot found some buttons and bones, and those big pins they used to use to fasten wood. I kept the best buttons and threw the rest away.