Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

She sped up to about seventy-five.

“There’s the road, right there, after that rock,” says Mort.

She sped up to eighty-five.

“What the hell’re you doing?” Mort says. “I said to pull over.” And his face got real mean looking, like it does when he’s trying to scare some sucker into backing down without a fight.

“I know your kind,” she says, her voice all shaky. “You’ll get me off there and take my money and my car and you’ll rape me and kill me.”

“No we won’t,” I says.

“I’ll kill you right here,” says Mort, really getting upset, I could tell because his ears was getting red.

“Go ahead,” she says. “At the speed I’m going if you kill me we’d smash up before you had a chance to get the car under control. Besides, I don’t think you know how to drive.”

Course we both did, we’d been driving a tractor since we was eight. But I sure didn’t want to crash at ninety miles an hour, and tell you the truth, I didn’t like it how her hands was shaking taking those turns.

“You’ll run out of gas pretty soon,” says Mort.

“I get fifty miles to the gallon,” she says, and her gas gauge was up above half. “I’ll get to Las Vegas first.”

“Slow down,” I says, because she wasn’t keeping in the lanes too good.

She sped up to a hundred and I needed to go to the bathroom.

“Please,” I says, “this isn’t safe.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “At this speed we’re bound to pass a highway patrolman and he’ll pull us over and I’ll tell him what you were trying to do.”

She was right. We was over a barrel, like they say, and Mort knew it too.

“Jeez,” he says, “I could cut you up into little pieces.”

He always says that when he’s mad but doesn’t want to fight.

She just shook harder and took a turn a little sharper and the car screeched a lot going around the turn. The wind had come up now cause we was driving into the storm, and I thought we’d get blown off the road in a minute.

“Hey, please Mort, let’s quit, OK?” I says.

Mort clicked his tongue and then he says, “Man, you got a chicken for a brother nothing goes right.” Then he put the knife back into the sheath. I didn’t even mind him calling me a chicken, just so the car slowed down.

But she didn’t slow down and the car was up around 105, probably as fast as it could go with a headwind.

“Hey, I put the knife away, slow down,” says Mort, and suddenly I figured out he was as scared as I was. In the old man’s Plymouth you never got much above 65, and we always went 55 if the old lady was in the car.

“If I slow down you’ll just pull the knife out and kill me,” she says.

“Mort’ll throw it out the window,” I says. “That way he can’t pull it out again. And then you can just let us out anywhere along here, we’ll walk.”

Mort glares at me again, but then we took another turn that slammed us over against the doors and Mort rolled down his window and threw out his knife. That knife cost him, too, and I knew he felt bad throwing it like that, even though I knew we’d hunt for it for a month before he’d ever give up finding it.

“OK, the knife’s gone, now pull over and let us out,” Mort says, and now his voice is shaky.

“Uh-uh,” says the girl, and then she says, “How do I know you don’t have something else hidden in your clothes.”

“Cause I said so,” says Mort.

“I’m supposed to believe you?” says the girl.

“I never told a lie in my life,” says Mort, though I figure that was about his ten millionth lie this year.

“You just go around pulling knives on people.”

“Hey, look,” says Mort, “we’re sorry.”

“Yeah, we’re sorry,” I says.

“Shutup, Runt,” he says.

“I’ll just wait until the highway patrol stops us,” she says.

And I noticed that her voice wasn’t shaky anymore.

“Please,” I says. “We’ll never do it again. We just wanted the money so I could get a ten-speed bike. We wasn’t gonna kill anybody.”

“Sure,” she says, and a gust of wind tossed us from the lefthand lane into the righthand lane, and I sure was glad we wasn’t driving in the righthand lane in the first place. “You’ve got a knife hidden somewhere else.”

“Honest, I don’t,” he says.

“Prove it,” she says.

“How?” he says.

“Take off your clothes and throw them out the window,” she says.

“The hell I will,” says Mort.

“That’s the only way I’ll know I’m safe,” she says. “But I’d rather wait till we pass a highway patrolman anyway.”

“We’ll be dead before that,” I says, because right then the dust storm hit, and you couldn’t see thirty feet ahead. And this was the windingest part of I-15.

“Take off your clothes and throw them out the window,” she says, and believe me, I just whipped off my shirt and my pants and my shoes and my socks and tossed them right out, even though when I opened the window the car filled up with dust. And after a minute Mort gritted his teeth and did the same. And there we sat in our jockey shorts, 5 for three dollars through the catalog.

“OK,” Mort says, “now let us out.”

“I said take off all your clothes,” she says, and I looked at her and figured out she wasn’t scared any more at all, she was just getting even for how we got her scared before. But it didn’t make no difference nohow, like the old man says, cause I’d have drunk straight 10/40 motor oil just to get out of that car in that dust storm. So I took off my shorts and tossed ’em out the window and then I leaned forward and kind of covered myself with my arms, which I folded in my lap like a little kid in Sunday School.

But Mort didn’t make a move to take off his shorts, and by then I was so scared I started yelling at him to take off his damn shorts and then I started to cry and so he did it and threw them out the window. But he leaned forward just like I did, and covered himself, and he turned red, and just looked at the floor, and I sure as hell knew right then that he hadn’t ever seen Darcia Kleinsmidt with all her clothes off or he wouldn’t be blushing like a bad sunburn right now.

And I stopped crying right then and for the first time in my life I felt sorry for old Mort and felt like I oughta help him. So I says, “OK, lady, you had your joke, now stop this car and let us get the hell out and get our clothes and go home.” I was madder’n hell and I glared her down as mean as I ever did the old lady when she made me help with the dishes, and she kind of looked sick and slowed down the car and stopped. It felt so good not to be going a hundred miles an hour that we just sat there for a second before she said, “Get the hell out of my car!” and then Mort and I opened the doors, even if it meant using one of our hands that was covering ourself, and we got out into the dust storm and she took off fast and there we were, stark naked on the freeway in a dust storm about fifteen miles from home and a mile from the nearest clothes.

And then, of course, the dust storm stopped and it started to rain like crazy and Mort says, “Damn damn damn damn damn,” and I says, “I wanta find my clothes.”

So we walked along the freeway until we saw a car coming and then we dove down off into the dirt and brush beside the road so they wouldn’t see us without any clothes on, only the dirt was mud from the rain and we was covered with it. “Damn damn damn,” says Mort, and I says, “Come on, Mort,” and he says, “You and your damn ten-speed bike.” We walked on to where we threw our underwear out the window only the wind had blown it away and we couldn’t see it anywheres and we was soaking wet.