she turned in on the other side of the yard from the cottonwood and her long headlights searched the driveway to its end -- empty she steered the pontiac between the vacant house on the right and a six foot tall wall of unpainted cinder block on the left , and parked in front of a barricade of welded two-and-seven-eighths inch drill tubing that brought the driveway to an end and ended its being used as a shortcut across the vacant lot beyond .