Geoff Dyer - The Search

It grew warm; he wound down the window, propped his arm on the door.

Early afternoon, the road forked. No sign. Walker stopped the car and got out. Both options were identical. The surrounding silence was immense and empty. He crouched down and tried to decipher the criss-crossed traces of tyre patterns. Kicked by a breeze, a faded coke tin rattled across the ground. Standing up again he could see the residue of marks curving off to the left. He returned to the car and moved off, adding tracks of his own, leaving them.

He had driven for sixty featureless miles when he passed a sign warning of road works. As he drew closer he saw that the work was being done by a chain-gang. Rifles, guards, the sullen rhythm of picks and spades. The real purpose of a chain-gang, Walker saw now, was to serve as a warning to any potential felon who happened to drive past. Pairs of eyes turned towards him as he slowed and stopped. Nothing else changing, only the tension spreading like sweat. As soon as he opened the door a guard cocked his rifle and aimed it straight at Walker’s face. The sound of shovels and picks died away until a guard gestured to the men to keep working. The air was brittle with hate and fear. The guards wore aviator shades. Walker’s reflection ricocheted from one pair to another. He raised his hands high. The glasses of the guard nearest him showed the horizon. Desert and sky, no room for anything between them, not cruelty even or punishment.

‘I wanted to. .’ Surprised at the dryness of his mouth, he cleared his throat and began again. ‘I just wanted to know what the next town up the road is.’

The gang had stopped working again and this time the guards did nothing about it. All eyes were turned on Walker. He heard gum being chewed. Sweat dripped and sizzled on the parched ground. The sun throbbed in his eyes.

‘The next town,’ he repeated.

‘Next town is Sweetwater,’ said the guard nearest him.

‘Also, I wanted to know if a blue Olds had passed this way in the last couple of days.’

‘Back in the car,’ the guard said, knowing his power was diminished by words.

‘I just —’

‘Back in the car.’

Walker nodded and turned around, hands still raised. As he made his way to the car one of the prisoners caught his eye and nodded, yes.

Sweetwater was a dismal town. Walker stayed there only long enough to discover that Carver was heading for Eagle City. He was numb from driving but had to keep going, had to keep Carver in range or run the risk of losing track of him for good. It was a long haul and by the outskirts of Attica, a vast sprawling city, barely a hundred miles from Sweetwater, both Walker and the car were coming apart under the strain. Second gear was only intermittently available; fourth had given up completely so he whined along in third, keeping to sixty despite the roar of complaints from the engine. Walker was exhausted. He missed the turn-off for the Attica orbital and was being sucked into the city. One highway fed into another until he found himself on a six-lane freeway that curved and arched, dipped over other larger freeways. The volume of traffic, the speed and the size of the roads, all filled him with a surge of indifferent excitement: just keeping up with the flow of traffic made you feel like you were racing ahead. Cars slipped back and forth between lanes, moving over all six lanes in the space of half a mile and then making their way back. The road signs — bright blue, huge white letters inscribed on an idl sky — showed no destinations, only the names of other smaller or larger freeways which in turn led to other freeways. To Walker, frazzled by tiredness, caught up in this relentless flow, the idea of houses began to seem quaint, ridiculous. He passed over another coil of roads and felt as if he and the other drivers were electrons in a huge laboratory model, flying particles of energy. Arrival or departure meant nothing, all that mattered was to keep hurtling along with everyone else. Even the idea of pulling off for gas contradicted the fundamental principle at work here: keep moving.

The freeway had now increased to eight lanes which were splitting in two like a long grey zipper coming undone. Walker kept his foot planted to the floor and pulled away to the left, the car shaking and buffeting around him. Soon the freeway fed into another even faster one. Cars swerved and slalomed across the road. Ten lanes of traffic howled and roared along.

Initially Walker had intended keeping to the left, but two and then three lanes of traffic had somehow squeezed between him and the hard shoulder and now he was engulfed in a white-water torrent of cars. He caught glimpses of other drivers, ashen and pale as if they had surrendered themselves to an activity over which they had no control. Nose to tail at sixty miles an hour. Walker’s engine was screaming and rattling; he was sure he could smell burning. He tried fourth gear, thought for a moment he had it and then realized he was freewheeling. Tried to slip the stick back into third but third had locked like a gate. Feeling the first surges of panic he allowed the gearstick to float into the free space of neutral and then tried to ease it as gently as possible into fourth, hoping to take the gearbox by surprise. When that failed he grabbed the stick with his left hand and wrenched it hard. A shriek from the gearbox. He was losing speed. Cars were flashing lights in his mirror. He tried fourth, third again, second — nothing. As he slowed he saw angry faces in the cars lashing by his window. To stop here was a crime. It went against the fundamental reason for being on the road, contravened something so basic as to horrify and frighten those who witnessed it.

As a last attempt he switched the engine off, waited a few seconds, switched on again and tried second gear — nothing. Fourth — nothing. He was down to twenty miles an hour, three lanes from the left, four from the right, cars rushing by on either side. Only now that he was coming to a halt did he fully appreciate the speed of traffic all around. Cars were flashing blurs of metal. He flicked on the hazard lights but nothing happened: it was as if the car had experienced a massive coronary and died instantaneously. He tightened the seat belt as the car drifted to a halt. Cars were swerving to avoid him, bearing down and then indicating frantically and pulling out into another lane. He saw a truck moving towards him, heard the squeal of brakes, saw it filling the rear window. Braced himself for the impact, raised his legs clear of the steering wheel and at the last second the truck veered, screeching to the left. It was like being a coconut in a shy. All he could do was wait for the smash of impact. Huge seconds passed. Already thirty cars had zoomed by and narrowly missed. Swerving clear, a car clipped his trunk and nudged the Ford around so that it was now at a slight angle to the flow and presented a bigger target. A van grazed the back bumper and tugged Walker round until he was at right angles to the traffic. A third car ploughed into the front left fender. A rending sound of metal, a drizzle of glass and then still another crash as something thundered into the back. A blur of movement. The seat belt bit into him as the car, entangled with another, was shunted forward. He looked up and saw that the Ford had been completely turned around and was now facing into the oncoming traffic.

He flicked open his seat belt and clambered into the back. There was another crunch and the whole of the front seat was a jagged concertina of metal. The car had caved in around him as if it were being scrapped. Another vehicle piled into the one that had hit him, and then another until Walker was protected from the impact by the buffer of vehicles joining the pile-up. Oil began spurting from a ruptured pipe. The smell of petrol.