The bearded man jumps out of the car. He looks as though he might attempt to run down the hill towards them and the rest of the highway. But they are far off, inching their way past the bottle store and towards the explosion. The bearded man gets back into the car and rolls down his window. Now the rain splashes off of him and onto the drifter. The drifter thinks about telling him to close his window if he wants to sit here in the Brazilian’s car, but then decides that it isn’t worth the confrontation. Instead, he leans back and shuts his eyes for a moment. He thinks about how this would have never happen at home. How he would still be dry, the roads clear, businesses open, people drinking at the bars.

Then he really does dive down the hill, into the mud, towards the rest of the road; but after a couple of steps he’s already buried up to his waist and can barely move.

Then the bearded man yells something in another language and jumps out of the car, jolting it. The drifter opens his eyes. The bearded man shouts into the wind, “It disappeared.”

“I can’t see anything,” the drifter tells himself, leaning out over the now empty passenger seat towards the window. Then he must say something else and the bearded man jumps all over him.

“I saw it. It dropped.” The bearded man peers long and hard in the direction of the winding road. “There’s a sinkhole. I can just make-out the edges of it. Can you see it? I didn’t notice it until… God!” he yells. Then he really does dive down the hill, into the mud, towards the rest of the road; but after a couple of steps he’s already buried up to his waist and can barely move. He climbs out, paces at the side of the car, looks hard down the highway, then climbs back into the car caked with mud. The drifter wonders what the Brazilian is going to say.

The bearded man looks crushed and the drifter repeats, “I can’t see anything.”

The bearded man swears at him in the other language and adds, in English, “There’s a sinkhole over there. I bloody well saw it. The car fell right in.”

Later the drifter would wonder what they had talked about, if they had talked at all. He would try to remember what he had talked about with the bearded man…

The drifter can’t think of a response to either defend himself or comfort the bearded man.

There is a sinkhole: ten feet deep, fifteen feet wide. The drifter will see it on the news a couple of days later. It will take months to repair. A detour to the bottle store will need to be created.

In the storm the two girls probably didn’t see the opening until they were inside it. The girls turned the engine off, but the headlights continued to glare blindly into the wall of earth; the radio stayed tuned to the local station that only played knock-offs of real songs. The bottom of the hole was full of water and mud. They tried to climb out at one point, or at least one of them did, and left a thong sandal stuck deep into the mud. Then they crawled back into the car and listened to more knock-offs. Later the drifter would wonder what they had talked about, if they had talked at all. He would try to remember what he had talked about with the bearded man, if they had talked, or if once the bearded man had seen the sinkhole he was too obsessed to consider anything else.

Just then the second tank blows and scares them both. It has a tremendous boom that the drifter doesn’t remember from the first one. It shakes the highway. For a while the drifter thinks the continent might cave in and swallow itself. He tries to imagine what may be going on back at the hostel. Everyone is probably sobering up and becoming belligerent, picking fights, wondering where he is, cursing his name and assuming that he’s run out with all of their spare change and never coming back. The bastards are probably divvying up his things. He doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, but he knows that he should have been back by now. Maybe he really won’t go back. His head is starting to ache and he wants something to drink. He sucks the rain out of his shirt. It tastes like salt and feet. He wonders if he can abandon the bearded man after the third tank blows. But there is no way that he can get to the bottle store anyway, and he can’t return to the hostel empty handed. He decides to wait. It will all be over soon.