PAUL CHRISTENSEN

Everyone around here is sluggish. The young woman who checks my purchases off the conveyor belt dabs her eyes and stifles a yawn. She keeps shaking herself awake as the manager looks on behind me. A car in front of me slowly drifts to the rumble strip and pulls back, with a face gazing at me through the rear view mirror. I stay back a few paces more than I usually do. I watch an old man fall asleep on the back of his pickup truck. He sits in a director's chair and cradles a l

I'm getting in the car and cranking the motor. It's always suspenseful whether the engine will turn over and purr or produce some anemic little clicking noise, as if it were imitating a cricket to amuse itself. The car and I have had words, to be sure. I may have kicked the tires now and then, and made faces directly into the grill to let it know I wasn't happy. But this Mazda 5, a slightly smaller version of an SUV, has a will, a formidable attitude of resistance that origi