He said it the way you would say it to a child who had told you the dog ate the cake. He said it as if he had said it many times, and was tired of saying it, and found it a little bit funny that anyone still tried.
Alton did not say anything. There was a thing he had been told by his own father in 1981, at the kitchen table in a rented house in Macon, after a sheriff's deputy had stopped the two of them on the Gray Highway and made them both stand in a ditch in the rain for forty minutes while he searched their car for nothing: When it's happening, it's not the time. You get home. Then you decide what to do. He had told it to Quincy at sixteen, at the same kind of kitchen table, and made him say it back. He said it to himself now. It's not the time. He kept his hands still.
"Every vehicle that comes off that lot," the officer said, "the guy just bought it. You know how many times I heard that this year? You got a license on you?"
"In my wallet. Back right pocket. I'm going to reach for it."
"Go slow."
He went slow. He took the wallet out with two fingers and opened it and took the license out and held it out, and the officer took it and looked at it, at the photo and then at Alton's face, and held it in his left hand.
"Alton Cole," the officer said. "You live on Tanyard?"
"Yes, sir. Forty-one sixteen."
"Long way to walk from here."
"I wasn't planning on walking."
The officer let that go by. "Insurance?"