The Illustrated Man

Hernando, a farmer somewhere south of the border, waits for the rain to stop so he can continue plowing. Nearby, the concrete river of a highway often brings American travelers: “Over the years there had not been an hour” (56) when a tourist had not pulled up asking to take a picture of Hernando working, often requesting he put on his hat and pose.

At his hut, Hernando and his wife discuss how something big must have happened today. The road is empty. Hernando walks back to the field in a pair of shoes he had made with a tire salvaged from a car crash nearby.

Suddenly, hundreds of cars begin streaming down the highway, heading north “like a funeral cortege” (57). The last car stops in front of Hernando’s field; the radiator needs water. Its young inhabitants don’t care that their clothing is soaked with rain: “none complained, and this was unusual. Always before they complained; of rain, of heat, of time, of cold, of distance” (58). Instead, they are frightened and impatient, so Hernando hurries to bring them water in a hubcap, another “gift from the highway” (58).

When he comments on the unusual traffic, the young people start crying.