James Chase: There’s a Hippie on the Highway

‘Take a look at that lot!’ the truck driver said, and he spat out of the window of the cab. ‘I’d rather give a ride to a leper than to those freaks!’

Harry Mitchell rested his broad back against the throbbing leather of the cab’s seat. His eyes shifted from one side of the broad highway to the other, surveying the groups of hippies waiting with their bags, cardboard containers and guitars as the big truck roared towards them.

‘Scum!’ the truck driver said ‘The future people!’ he snorted. ‘That’s a laugh! Stinking junkies who’d cut their mother’s throats for a fix!’ The truck approached three girls in hipsters and shirts. They waved to the driver, making obscene gestures, ‘Little whores!’ Again he spat out of the window. ‘Am I glad I never had kids! My old lady wanted them, but I said no. My generation was bad enough, but this lot...’

Harry Mitchell took a crumpled pack of Camels from his shirt pocket and offered it When the two men lit up, the truck driver said, ‘I bet you’re wondering why I gave you a ride.’ He looked sharply at Harry before swivelling his eyes back to the road. ‘I’ll tell you. You’re just out of the army. I can spot a guy who’s done service... done service like me. I was in the Korea box-up. When did you get back?’

Harry squinted at the black ribbon of tarmac rushing towards him.

‘Ten days,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ The truck driver nodded. ‘I can smell the army on you still. Takes time to wear off. How did you get on?’

Harry shrugged.

‘Like the rest of them.’

‘Glad to be back?’

‘Oh, I guess.’

‘Yeah.’ The truck driver nodded understandingly. ‘Not sure, huh? Damn funny thing... the army. Kind of gets you, doesn’t it? When you’re in, you curse it like hell. When you’re out, you miss it... you get kind of lonely. I know. It happened to me when I got out.’ He sucked smoke into his lungs and let the smoke roll out of his widely spaced nostrils. ‘Was it as rough as these newspaper finks make it out to be?’

Harry moved restlessly.

‘It was the boredom that was rough.’ He paused, his mind going back to the steamy heat of the rice fields, the jungle and the frightening ambushes. He decided he didn’t want to think about it. It was over for him. He had done his three years. It was now dirty water under the bridge.

The truck driver sensed that this big, blond man was as bored with war as he had been himself when he had come home. It was disappointing as he would have liked to have exchanged stories and to have heard the true facts about the fighting, but if this guy didn’t want to talk about it, there was no point pushing it.

The truck driver whose name was Sam Bentz had gone into a Quick-Snack bar outside Dayton Beach for a beer and a sandwich. He was heading for Orangeville to pick up a load of fruit to deliver to a northern market. It was a run he did twice a week: a run he had grown to hate because of the scum who infested the highway as they headed down to the sun and the sea and almost threw themselves under his wheels for a ride.

At the bar, drinking a Coke and eating a three-decker sandwich was the big, blond man with pale, alert blue eyes, a nose that was slightly out of true as if someone in the past had pushed it to the left with a heavy fist: a man of around thirty years of age. By the way he held himself and by his leanness and his air of confidence, Bentz knew he was just out of the army.

They got talking, and it was Bentz who had offered the ride when Harry Mitchell had said he was heading south. Bentz couldn’t remember when he had last offered a ride to anyone, but he liked the look of this guy, wanted to talk to him and was glad when he accepted.

Well, Bentz thought, if the army is out, it doesn’t mean we have nothing to talk about.

‘Are you heading for Miami?’ he asked. ‘I can’t take you that far. My stop is Orangeville that’s a hundred and ten miles this side of Miami.’

‘I’m heading for Paradise City,’ Harry said. ‘You know it?’

‘Never been there, but I’ve heard enough about it. Maybe you would feel more at home in Miami. It’s a more democratic city. Paradise City is strictly for the rich. The cops there don’t take to folk like us. Maybe you have a job waiting for you there?’

‘No but I guess I’ll find one. I’m told when the season starts there’s plenty of casual work to be had,’ Harry said. ‘I’m not fussy what I do. I want some sun and sea air.’ He grinned. ‘You’d think I would have had plenty of that in Vietnam but I want the sun I can lie in and enjoy.’

‘Take my tip,’ Bentz said, his heavy face suddenly serious. ‘When I drop you off at Orangeville, move by the back roads, keep off the highway. You don’t want to get mixed up with the scum. Sure, you can look after yourself. We all think we can, but no one guy, no matter how good he is, can take on eight or nine scum... they all move in packs.’ He glanced down at the new rucksack wedged between Harry’s feet. ‘They see that and they’ll want it. That strap watch of yours would tempt them too, and believe me, when the scum want anything, they have it.’

‘I’ll watch it,’ Harry said a little impatiently. He spoke with the confidence of a man who knows how to look after himself.

Bentz put a heavy hand on Harry’s knee.

‘A loner like you would be like a lame lion to a pack of jackals. This highway ain’t safe. The one thing that really eats me is the thought of having a breakdown. I’ve seen lots of action in my time and have had a lot of fights, but it scares me silly to think of being stuck on this highway with a dead engine. Those young bastards would be all over me and what I’ve got on this cab like white ants, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.’

His expression and his tone of voice made Harry look sharply at him.

‘Is it that bad?’ he asked, impressed in spite of his confidence.

‘Yeah. This time of year is sheer poison when they are on the road in packs,’ Bentz said, shaking his head. ‘A buddy of mine got a broken axle and got stuck twenty miles out of Orangeville. He was carrying a load of oranges the way I do. The Cops found him with a broken leg, three busted ribs, his face kicked to a pulp and half a ton of fruit spoilt. They had taken his clothes and what money he had and they had even stripped parts of the engine out. My buddy spent ten weeks in hospital. When he came out, he quit trucking. His nerves were shot to hell. He has now some piddling job in a garage. I’m telling you: this highway is poison, so keep off it.’ He jerked his head. ‘Look, here’s another bunch of them.’ He increased his speed.

Five youths with hair to their shoulders, some of them with straggly, dirty beards, wearing hipsters and loose dirty cotton coats were waving at the approaching truck.

When they saw the truck wasn’t going to stop, one of them, younger than the rest, jumped off the grass verge onto the highway. For a heart stopping moment, Harry thought the fender of the truck was going to catch the boy, but Bentz swerved the truck expertly. Both men had a glimpse of a white, thin savage face, glittering eyes with enormous pupils and a fuzz of hair on the receding chin, then it was gone. Yells followed them, and a lump of rock banged down on the cab roof and bounced off onto the highway.

‘See what I mean? That little animal was hopped to the eyeballs... didn’t know what he was doing.’ Bentz spat out of the window. ‘If there had been another truck coming the other way, I’d have hit it.’

‘Don’t the police patrol this route?’

‘So what? This is a free country ain’t it? Nothing illegal in walking is there?’ Bentz grimaced. ‘They have only to wait for the cops to pass and they are back in business.’