John Updike - Terrorist

Ahmad descends the flight of four thick-planked steps and stands on the same level with the truck. A badge on the driver's door says Ford Triton E-350 Super Duty. Charlie opens that door and says, "Here you go, Madman. Climb in."

The cab holds a leathery warm reek of male bodies and stale cigarette smoke and cold coffee and the meat of Italian sandwiches eaten on the move. Ahmad is surprised, after the hours studying the booklets for the CDL with all their talk of double-clutching and downshifting on perilous slopes, by the lack of a stick shift on the floor. "How do we shift gears?"

"We don't," Charlie tells him, his face creasing sourly, but his voice neutral enough. "It's automatic. Just like in your friendly family car."

His mother's embarrassing Subaru. His new friend senses an embarrassment, and says reassuringly, "Gears give you one more thing to worry about. One kid we took on, a couple of drivers ago, stripped the gears shifting into reverse going downhill."

"But on steep hills, shouldn't you shift down? Instead of riding the brake and wearing out the pads."

"Go ahead; you can shift down on the steering stalk. But this part of Jersey isn't that big into hills. It's not like we're West Virginia."

Charlie knows the states; he is a man of the world. He walks around the cab and in one easy swoop, his arms stretching like a monkey's, ascends into the passenger's seat. To Ahmad it feels that someone has jumped into bed with him. Charlie pulls a half-red pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt-a coarse tough cloth like denim, but a military green instead of blue-and adroitly snaps it so that several tan-tipped cigarettes pop out an inch. He asks Ahmad, "A smoke steady your nerves?"

"Thanks, sir, no. I don't smoke."

"Really? That's smart. You'll live forever, Madman. You can cut the 'sir.' 'Charlie' will do. O.K.: let's see you drive this heap."

"Right now?"

Charlie snorts, making an explosion of smoke in the corner of Ahmad's vision. "You'd rather next week? What'd you come here for? Don't look so anxious. It's a piece of cake. Morons do it, all the time; believe me. This isn't rocket science."

It is eight-thirty in the morning-too early, Ahmad feels, for an initiation. But if the Prophet entrusted his body to the fearsome horse Buraq, Ahmad can ascend to the high black seat, cracked and stained and split by previous occupants, and steer this towering orange box on wheels. The engine, when the key turns it over into combustion, has a deep pitch, as if the fuel is a thicker, lumpier substance than gasoline. "It takes diesel?" Ahmad asks.

Charlie exhales more sputtery smoke: it keeps coming from deep in his lungs. "You kidding, kid? You ever driven diesel? Stinks up the place, and takes forever for the engine to warm up. You can't just get in and put the pedal to the metal. One thing to keep in mind, though: there's no rear-view mirror over the dash. Don't panic when out of habit you look and there's nothing there. Use your side mirrors. Another thing, remember everything takes longer-takes longer to stop, and longer to get going. At stoplights, you're not winning any dig-out races; don't try. She's like an old lady: don't push her, but don't underestimate her either. Take your eye off the road for a second, and she can kill. But don't let me scare you. O.K., let's give it a try. Let's go. Wait: make sure you put it in reverse. We've had more than one collision with the platform. That same driver I mentioned before. You know what I've learned over the years? There's nothing so stupid people won't go ahead and do it. Back up, do a three-point, head straight out of the lot, that's Thirteenth Street, and go right on Reagan. You can't go left; there's a cement divider, but, like I say, there's nothing so stupid people won't do it, so I mention it."

Charlie is still talking as Ahmad eases the truck back, backs it a tidy half-circle, and in forward gear heads out of the lot. He discovers that, this high off the ground, he floats, looking down upon the tops of cars. As he heads out onto the boulevard, he takes the corner too short and drags the back tires up over the curb, but hardly feels it. He has been transposed to another scale, to another plane. Charlie is busy stubbing out his cigarette in the dashboard ashtray and doesn't mention the bump.

After a few blocks, Ahmad's eyes acquire the habit of darting left to the long-side mirror, and then through the passenger window to the right-hand mirror. The orange, chrome-edged reflections of Excellency's own sides tJiat he glimpses no longer alarm him but become parts of him, like the shoulders and arms that figure in his peripheral awareness as he walks down the street. In his dreams since childhood he would sometimes be flying down hallways or skimming sidewalks a few feet off the ground, and sometimes would awake with an erection or, more shamefully still, a large wet spot on the inside of his pajama fly. He had consulted the Qur'an for sexual advice in vain. It talked of uncleanness but only in regard to women, their menstruation, their suckling of infants. In the second sura, he found the mysterious words, Your wives are your field: go in, therefore, to your field as ye will; but do first some act for your souls' good: and fear ye God, and know that ye must meet Him. In the verse before that, he read that women are a pollution. Separate yourselves therefore from women and approach them not, until they be cleansed. But when they are cleansed, go in unto them as God hath ordained for you. Verily God loveth those who turn to Him, and loveth those who seek to be clean. Ahmad feels clean in the truck, cut off from the base world, its streets full of dog filth and blowing shreds of plastic and paper; he feels clean and free, flying his orange box kite behind him in the side mirrors.

"Don't pass on the right," Charlie suddenly admonishes him, in a voice sharp with alarm. Ahmad slows, not having realized he was overtaking cars to his left, in the lane next to the traffic divider, a solid, sullied string of Jersey barriers.

"Why are they called Jersey barriers?" he asks. "In Maryland, what are they called?"

"Don't change the subject, Madman. Driving a truck, you can't sit there and daydream. You got life and death in your hands, not to mention repairs that'll jack up the insurance premiums if you goof. No hot-dogging and farting around with cell phones like people do in cars. You're bigger; you got to be better."

"Really?" Ahmad makes an attempt to tease the older man, his Lebanese-American brother, out of his grimly serious mood. "Shouldn't cars get out of my way?"

Charlie doesn't see that Ahmad is teasing. He keeps his eyes on the road, through the windshield, and says, "Don't be stupid, kid: they can't. It's like animals. You don't hold rats and rabbits to the same standard as lions and elephants. You don't hold Iraq to the same standard as the U.S. Bigger, you better be better."

This political note strikes Ahmad as strange, slighdy out of tune. But he is in bed with Charlie, and submissively settles himself for the ride.

"Jesus," says Jack Levy. "This is what life is all about. I'd forgotten, and never expected anybody to remind me." Thus guardedly, in tbese circumstances, without naming her, he pays tribute of a sort to his wife, who long ago had had her turn at showing him what life was all about.

Teresa Mulloy, naked beside him, agrees, "It is," but then adds, in self-protection, "but it doesn't last." Her face, with its round shape and slightly protuberant eyes, is flushed so that her freckles blend in, pale brown on pink.

"What does?" Jack asks. She doesn't really want him to agree with such a careless shrug. Her rosy flush becomes the high color that follows the sting of a rebuke, a facing of her defenselessness in this dead-end adventure, another married boyfriend. He will never leave his fat Beth, and would she want him to in any case? He is twenty-three years older than she, and she needs a man to last her the rest of her life.