Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“These people don’t know how to drive,” one of the coffee drinkers said. “I don’t know where they get their licenses.”

“Through the mails,” the beer drinker said. “Out of the Monkey Ward catalog.”

“So I tapped the horn,” Waldron said. “Just a tap, you know? And the guy was driving, he taps back.”

“Honks his horn.”

“Right. And slows down. Sixty-two, sixty, fifty-eight, he’s dying out there in front of me. So I wait, and I flip the brights on and off to signal him, and then I go around him and wait until I’m plenty far ahead of him before I move back in.”

“And he passes you again,” said the other coffee drinker, speaking for the first time.

“How’d you know?”

“He cut in sharp again?”

Waldron nodded. “I guess I was expecting it once he moved out to pass me. I eased up on the gas, and when he cut in I had to touch the brake, but it wasn’t close, and this time I didn’t bother hitting the horn.”

“I’da used the horn,” the beer drinker said. “I’da stood up on the horn.”

“Then he slowed down again,” the second coffee drinker said. “Am I right?”

“What are these guys, friends of yours?”

“They slow down again?”

“To a crawl. And then I did use the horn, and the girl turned around and gave me the finger.” He drank the rest of the coffee. “And I got angry,” he said. “I pulled out. I put the pedal on the floor and I moved out in front of them — and this time they’re not gonna let me pass, you know, they’re gonna pace me, fast when I speed up, slow when I lay off. And they’re looking up at me, and they’re laughing, and she’s leaning across his lap and she’s got her blouse or the front of her dress, whatever it is, she’s got it pushed down, you know, like I’ve never seen it before and my eyeballs are gonna go out on stalks—”

“Like in a cartoon.”

“Right. And I thought, You idiots, because all I had to do, you know, was turn the wheel. Because where are they gonna go? The shoulder? They won’t have time to get there. I’ll run right over them, I’ll smear ’em like a bug on the windshield. Splat, and they’re gone.”

“I like that,” Lundy said.

Waldron took a breath. “I almost did it,” he said.

“How much is almost?”

“I could feel it in my hands,” he said. He held them out in front of him, shaped to grip a steering wheel. “I could feel the thought going into my hands, to turn that wheel and flatten them. I could see it all happening. I had the picture in my mind, and I was seeing myself driving away from them, just driving off, and they’re wrecked and burning.”

Lundy whistled.

“And I had the thought, That’s murder! And the thought like registered, but I was still going to do it, the hell with it. My hands” — he flexed his fingers — “my hands were ready to move on the wheel, and then it was gone.”

“The Toyota was gone?”

“The thought was gone. I hit the brake and I got behind them and a rest area came up and I took it, fast. I pulled in and cut the engine and had a smoke. I was all alone there. It was empty and I was thinking that maybe they’d come back and pull into the rest area, too, and if they did I was gonna take him on with a tire iron. There’s one I keep in the front seat with me and I actually got it down from the rig and walked around with it in one hand, smoking a cigarette and swinging the tire iron just so I’ll be ready.”

“You see ’em again?”

“No. They were just a couple of kids clowning around, probably working themselves up. Now they’ll get into the backseat and have themselves a workout.”

“I don’t envy them,” Lundy said. “Not in the backseat of an effing Toyota.”

“What they don’t know,” said Waldron, “is how close they came to being dead.”

They were all looking up at him. The second coffee drinker, a dark-haired man with deep-set brown eyes, smiled. “You really think it was close?”

“I told you, I almost—”

“So how close is almost? You thought about it and then you didn’t do it.”

“I thought about making it with Jane Fonda,” Lundy said, “but then I didn’t do it.”

“I was going to do it,” Waldron said.

“And then you didn’t.”

“And then I didn’t.” He shook a cigarette out of his pack and picked up Lundy’s Zippo and lit it. “I don’t know where the anger came from. I was angry enough to kill. Why? Because the girl shot me a bone? Because she waggled her—?”

“Because you were afraid,” the first coffee drinker suggested.

“Afraid of what? I got eighteen wheels under me, I’m hauling building materials, how’m I afraid of a Toyota? It’s not my ass if I hit them.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. “But you’re right,” he said. “I was scared I’d hit them and kill them, and that turned into anger, and I almost did kill them.”

“Maybe you should have,” someone said. Waldron was still looking at his cigarette, not noticing who was speaking. “Whole road’s full of amateurs and people thinking they’re funny. Maybe you got to teach ’em a lesson.”

“Swat ’em,” someone else said. “Like you said, bug on the windshield.”

“ ‘I’m just a bug on the windshield of life,’ ” Lundy sang in a tuneless falsetto whine. “Now who was it sang that or did I just make it up?” Dolly Parton, the beer drinker suggested. “Now wouldn’t I just love to be a bug on her windshield?” Lundy said.

Waldron picked up his bag and went to look for his room.

Eight, ten weekslater, he was eating eggs and scrapple in a diner on Route 1 outside of Bordentown, New Jersey. The diner was called the Super Chief and was designed to look like a diesel locomotive and painted with aluminum paint. Waldron was reading a paper someone else had left in the booth. He almost missed the story, but then he saw it.

A camper had plunged through a guardrail and off an embankment on a branch of the Interstate near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The driver, an instructor at Ozark Community College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had survived with massive chest and leg injuries. His wife and infant son had died in the crash.

According to the driver, an eighteen-wheeler had come up “out of nowhere” and shoved the little RV off the road. “It’s like he was a snowplow,” he said, “and he was clearing us out of the way.”

Like a bug on a windshield, thought Waldron.

He read the story again, closed the paper. His hand was shaking as he picked up his cup of coffee. He put the cup down, took a few deep breaths, then picked up the cup again without trembling.

He pictured them in the truckers’ room at the Rodeway, Lundy rocking back in his chair with his feet up, built-up shoe and all. The beer drinker, the two coffee drinkers. Had he even heard their names? He couldn’t remember, nor could he keep their images in focus in his memory. But he could hear their voices. And he could hear his own, suggesting an act not unlike the one he had just read about.

My God, had he given someone an idea?

He sipped his coffee, left the rest of his food untouched on the plate. Scrapple was a favorite of his and you could only find it in and around Philadelphia, and they did it right here, fried it crisp and served it with maple syrup, but he was letting the grease congeal around it now. That one coffee drinker, the one with the deep-set eyes, was he the one who’d spoken the words, but he remembered the anger in them, and something else, too, something like a blood lust.

Of course, the teacher could have dreamed the part about the eighteen-wheeler. Could have gone to sleep at the wheel and made up a story to keep him from seeing he’d driven off the road and killed his own family. Pin it on the Phantom Trucker and keep the blame off your own self.