C. Box: The Highway

Silence.

“I’m not kidding,” Gracie said, holding up her phone to show her sister she was serious. “We can’t take the chance this car will blow up. Then what would we do?”

“You can’t keep threatening me with that every time you want your way. It’s childish.”

“ I’m being childish?

“Yes. Stop it with the ‘I’m calling Mom’ crap.”

“Then take the exit so we can get your car looked at.”

“Who is going to pay for a mechanic? Did you think of that?”

“You have a credit card,” Gracie said.

“Why should I use my money?”

“ Because it’s your car! ”

Danielle rolled her eyes theatrically once again, but flinched when Gracie touched the button on her phone that lit it up in anticipation of placing a call.

“Don’t,” Danielle said.

Gracie pressed the speed dial for home. The rapid sound of the connection being made could be heard through the speaker.

“Okay!” Danielle yelled, “I’m turning in.”

Gracie killed the call before it could be answered.

Danielle shook her head and tapped the brakes. “You’re such a baby. See, I’m turning in.”

* * *

Danielle eased to the right and slowed to turn on to the exit to the truck stop. Gracie lowered her phone to her lap and breathed a sigh of relief. Then, out of nowhere, a massive toothy semi-truck grille and front bumper filled her window just a few feet away. Gracie screamed. The powerful bass roar of the diesel engine from the truck right next to them vibrated through the floorboards of the little car.

The truck tire was so close she could see beads of water on the chrome of the fender. Danielle jerked the wheel to the left and for an instant the inside of the car exploded in light from a single full-sized truck headlight. Somehow, they avoided getting hit. Although the near miss hadn’t been Danielle’s fault, the truck driver hit his horn and the sound was earsplitting.

“Jesus Christ!” Danielle gasped. “What happened?”

Gracie was practically on top of the center console, and would have scrambled even further if the seat belts wouldn’t have restrained her. Her heart whumped in her chest.

“That big truck,” Gracie said, barely able to speak, “He came out of there and didn’t even slow down. He nearly ran us over.”

Now the big black truck was in the right-hand lane pulling away from them, a line of amber running lights strobing through the interior inside their car.

Gracie was shaken, and eased back into her seat. The truck pulled away.

“He nearly killed us!” Gracie said. “And we missed the exit because he was in the way.”

“ Asshole! ” Danielle screamed at the taillights of the big rig. “You’re an asshole!”

Gracie regained her ability to breathe in and out. She looked into the side mirror to make sure there wasn’t another oncoming truck bearing down on them but the highway behind them was clear.

Danielle suddenly accelerated.

“What are you doing?” Gracie said.

“I’m going to pass that asshole,” Danielle said through gritted teeth.

6:02 P.M., Tuesday, November 20

The Lizard King saw a flash of red just outside the driver’s side window and glanced over to see the little Ford Focus careen into the passing lane where he’d accidentally forced it. The car had been in the turning lane but he’d been so consumed with his situation he hadn’t seen it coming. And because of the darkness and his high vantage point, he couldn’t see the driver.

“Watch where you’re going,” he said aloud. To himself as well as to the driver of the Ford.

He dismissed the other car while he took out part of his frustration on his empty passenger seat, hitting it over and over with his fist as he drove, stopping only to shift into higher gear as his rig picked up speed.

He pushed his truck hard. It felt good to drive fast; eighty thousand pounds hurtling down the highway like a bullet shot from a gun. The lights of the truck stop receded in his mirrors.

Still, though, his nerve endings were sparking like live wires. The humiliation back at the truck stop hadn’t stopped his needs, but prolonged them. The pressure built inside him. He had a vision while he drove of his skull exploding like a melon on his shoulders, spattering the inside of the cab with brain matter.

The next several miles of the highway was a long straight 5 percent grade. He’d driven the stretch a hundred times. The grade slowed his truck down to the speed limit and he grabbed a lower gear. The long hill was known to truckers as a “dragon fly”-dragging up one side and flying down the other.

Then, in the driver’s side mirror, he saw the headlights. He recognized the little red Ford coming up behind him as the one he nearly hit, but he didn’t even look back except to note in his rearview mirror that there were two people in car. They weren’t big people. Probably still pissed about being cut off. He didn’t care. He wanted to leave them behind. He wanted to leave everything that happened at the truck stop behind.

Because the Peterbilt was slowing down climbing the mountain pass, the little red car was catching up. In fact, it was right behind him, so close he could see two faces painted red by the glow of his taillights. Young people; girls. Two young girls.

Two young girls on a desolate stretch of interstate highway in the dark.

* * *

He shook his head and bared his teeth as the Ford eased into the passing lane. It was a stupid move to try and go around him, he thought. He glanced over as he drove, wondering if he’d see them closer at all or simply the top of their car as it passed him. Over the years, he’d seen all kinds of scenes in cars when he looked down through the windows; kids driving with their legs folded Indian-style while yapping on their cell phones, couples humping in the backseat, reprobates smoking crack, men masturbating with their pants gathered around their thighs, women performing blow jobs on the driver.

Now, he wondered, were there other passengers in the backseat? Men, husbands or boyfriends? Maybe children?

For the Lizard King, passenger cars and trucks on the highway and the people who drove them existed in a kind of low-level subspecies; an annoyance and a hazard. They existed in a world far below him both literally and figuratively; amateurs in the world of professional drivers. They existed because he let them exist, because he could so easily crush them, drive them off the road, or run them down. The drivers of these little cars didn’t realize they were on borrowed time and that in any conflict with an eighteen-wheeler, they’d lose.

The angle was just right and he could see both the driver and the passenger through their windshield in his side mirror. Two unaccompanied girls. No one in the backseat. Colorado plates that read PLNTDNL, whatever the hell that meant. So they were hundreds of miles from home with the entire huge state of Wyoming between their home and him. The driver was older than the passenger. She was a looker. Oval face, big pouty mouth.

The passenger was younger and his amber running lights reflected in her glasses. She didn’t look old enough to have a driver’s license.

The girls had no idea how far they were over their heads, he thought. How typical …

They were of that “self-esteem” generation he despised. Unlike him, they’d grown up stupid with every adult they knew praising them, telling them how wonderful and special they were, making sure they never lost a contest or a competition, teaching them nothing but contempt for men who kept the nation running by working long hours with their hands and dripping sweat … like him. And he’d known someone like that, in fact a few of them. They belonged to a generation of know-nothings with heightened self-esteem and no respect for working men like him who’d done it the hard way, and were still doing it the hard way.…