Mr. Monk on the Road (24 page)

“There should be a law against something that filthy on the road,” Monk said, looking over Ambrose’s shoulder at the reflection in the passenger-side mirror.

The truck honked again. And again.

“What does he want?” Ambrose said.

“I think he wants us to go faster,” I said. “Or let him pass.”

I glanced again in the mirror.

The truck looked like it had emerged from one of those ravines, clawing its way up through the arid desert and the rusted wreckage, to get back onto the Bloody 66 again, to belch and roar and chew the asphalt and whatever roadkill it could get.

What did that make us?

I was letting my imagination run away with me, and I needed to focus on the road.

It’s just a truck
, I told myself.

“Is it legal to pass on this road?” Ambrose asked.

“Not here. There’s a solid yellow line dividing the lanes on both sides,” Monk replied. “If the line is broken up, like dashes, that means you can pass.”

The truck was tailgating us now, the unseen driver leaning on his horn so it made one long, furious shriek, like an Indian war cry.

“I think you should let him pass,” Ambrose said.

“It’s illegal,” Monk said.

“There’s no one here,” Ambrose said. “What difference does it make?”

“The law is the law, whether there’s anyone around to enforce it or not,” Monk said. “You have to self-police or civilization crumbles and the world descends into anarchy.”

I didn’t see any traffic ahead of us, so I steered the motor home to the right, lowered my window, and waved the truck forward.

“What are you doing?” Monk asked.

“Letting him pass.”

“Didn’t you hear a word I just said?”

“Nope,” I lied.

The truck moved into the left lane and charged up beside us, still honking, the engine roaring. I turned to look at the driver, and at the same instant, he swerved at us.

I yanked the wheel hard to the right and the motor home scraped against the rocky face of the mountain, sheering off the passenger-side mirror.

“See?” Monk said. “Anarchy.”

“That was fast,” Ambrose said.

“The son of a bitch did it on purpose,” I said.

“Of course he did,” Monk said, “because you told him it was all right.”

“I did not!”

“You did the moment you waved him forward,” Monk said. “You declared that civilization doesn’t exist on this road.”

The tanker portion of the truck was passing us now. Whatever was in that tank, it was deadly. I could see the faded word “FLAMMABLE” beneath the layer of muck and I was pretty sure I also saw a skull and crossbones.

“Get his license plate,” Monk said. “We’ll have him cited by the police for reckless driving.”

That’s when the truck cut in front of us. I slammed on the brakes, barely avoiding being sideswiped by his enormous, jagged bumper. The truck disappeared over the crest of the hill as we skidded to a stop.

“Bastard!” I yelled, punching the dash with my fist. Ambrose and Monk looked at me. “Well, he is. Did you get his license plate number?”

“His plate was covered with mud,” Monk said. “I couldn’t even see what state it was from.”

“He must be in a big hurry to get wherever he’s going,” Ambrose said.

“He’s a bastard,” I said.

“The bastard certainly isn’t a very responsible driver,” Ambrose said. The profanity didn’t roll easily off his tongue, but he seemed to like the sensation anyway.

I pressed on the gas, but with our momentum lost, it was a grind getting our motor home moving up the hill again. It took us a few minutes to reach the crest and the ruins of a gas station and trading post that was once made of stacked stone. The faded sign and the vintage pumps were still there, and some piles of rock, but that was it.

The truck was gone. That was a relief. I’d half expected him to be waiting for us to continue whatever game he was playing, like the truck in
Duel
, the classic TV movie that started Steven Spielberg’s career. In that one, the truck was like a shark and poor Dennis Weaver in his tiny Dodge Dart was the chum.

I’d been afraid that our trip would mirror
Race with the Devil
when it was really
Duel
I should have been worried about.

I took a moment to catch my breath, and then we started downhill, the road twisting in one tight curve after another. I was going slowly, trying not to ride the brakes, rolling at an easy clip that almost made the curves fun.

Until I came out of a tight turn and was headed right into the back of the truck, which was parked in the center of the lane directly in front of us.

I screamed, stomped on the brakes, and wrenched the wheel to the left all at once. The rear of the motor home fishtailed to the right, and we came to a screeching, rubber-peeling stop just inches from the edge of the cliff, sending over a small avalanche of loose rocks into the dry brush below.

The motor home rocked slightly from side to side and settled, blocking both lanes of the roadway. I looked past Ambrose out the passenger window and saw the truck speeding away down the hill.

Ambrose looked at me, his face white with terror. “The bastard.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

M
onk got out and directed me as I backed up so the rear of the RV wouldn’t scrape against the rocks. He got back inside and I drove slowly, and warily, around the curves until we finally spilled out of the Black Mountains and onto the open road.

We didn’t see any sign of the truck.

It was long gone.

Monk wanted to go into Kingman and file a report with the local sheriff, but I didn’t see the point.

What information did we have to give them?

Even if we
could
track down the driver, what evidence did we have against him that would prove any of our accusations?

All we could do was push on and try to put the experience behind us.

Monk reluctantly agreed with me. We wouldn’t let some truck driver’s road rage, or the superficial damage to the motor home, ruin our trip.

We didn’t spend any time in Kingman except to gas up and get some cold drinks. The same could be said for most of the people who showed up there.

The city didn’t offer natural beauty, historical interest, or even kitsch appeal. It had always been a place that existed to serve the needs of travelers who found themselves stuck midway between where they’d been and where they wanted to go. Back in the 1800s, it was a way station for the railroad and, long before that, a watering hole for weary Indians loping across the dry Hualapai Valley. It was also the gateway to what remained of the original Route 66 before it was consumed again by I-40 east of Seligman.

When the interstate bypassed Route 66, it left the roadside towns that had once thrived on the cross-country traffic to waste away, becoming space-age ghost towns.

And that’s exactly what I wanted to see, the ruins of those diners, motels, and gas stations. There was something eerily beautiful about them, at least in the pictures that I’d seen in books, and a glimpse into a not-so-distant, desperately hopeful, and ridiculously enthusiastic past.

I thought Ambrose might be intrigued by it, too. And he was. Monk, on the other hand, found it all very frustrating. He saw the deserted, decrepit buildings, the rusting gas pumps, the broken windows, the faded signs, and the weed-choked parking lots of Hackberry, Valentine, Truxton, and Peach Springs as “messes” that somebody needed to clean up.

Time would do that. It already was in its slow, inexorable way. It wouldn’t be long until the desert reclaimed it all and left the scraps for archaeologists to find someday.

In fact, it felt like we were driving through a postapocalyptic wasteland, looking at what was left of humankind after some horrible event in the 1960s had wiped out everyone but us.

But it wasn’t just us.

He was there, too.

At first he was just a speck in my side-view mirror. But then I saw the belch of smoke and I knew.

The theme from
Jaws
played in my head, the two-note progression and the deep, driving horn that signaled the inexorable approach of evil.

I pressed on the gas pedal. The motor home surged forward. Monk and Ambrose noticed the sudden acceleration.

“What is it?” Monk asked.

I glanced at my mirror. The truck was closing in fast.

Monk scrambled up behind my seat and looked in the mirror.

“It’s him,” he said.

“You better sit down and buckle up, Mr. Monk. We could be in for more trouble.”

“What does the bastard want from us?” Ambrose asked.

“This could just be his idea of fun,” I said.

“We should call the police,” Monk said as he buckled up on the couch.

“Out here? In the middle of nowhere?” I said. “Even if we could get a signal, which I doubt, what could they do for us? How quickly could they get out here? We’re on our own.”

I was pushing eighty miles per hour, but the truck was still closing in even faster, narrowing the distance between us. When he was close enough for us to see the glint of sunlight off his grill, he leaned on the horn for a good, long roar.

And then he rammed us.

The RV jerked forward, and I floored it. The speedometer inched up to ninety.

The truck rammed us again. I swerved, nearly losing control of the motor home. And that’s when he hit us again.

I struggled to control the vehicle.

Monk unbuckled his seat belt.

“What are you doing?” I said, risking a glance over my shoulder. “Sit down.”

But Monk wasn’t listening. He was making his way to the galley.

I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off the road, so I shouted orders to Ambrose.

“Tell me what Mr. Monk is doing,” I said.

The truck rammed us again.

“He’s falling,” Ambrose said.

I swerved, the RV weaving as I struggled to regain control of the car and stay on the road.

“He’s crawling to the galley,” Ambrose said.

I could see a long curve coming, the ruins of an old diner alongside it. If the truck rammed us at the right moment, he could flip us and send us rolling into the building.

“He’s pulling himself up and taking the fire extinguisher off the wall,” Ambrose said.

I was holding our speed at a hundred miles per hour. I could see in the side-view mirror that the truck was tailgating us, closing the distance between us again as we neared the curve.

He was going to ram us again.

“Adrian is staggering to the bedroom,” Ambrose said. “He’s bouncing off the walls.”

We closed in on the curve. The big rig surged forward, I heard the hiss of the fire extinguisher, and I braced myself for an impact that didn’t come. I looked in the mirror and saw the blast of white foam covering the truck’s grill.

The big rig weaved wildly, whipping from one side of the roadway to the other, as the driver fought for control. I let my foot off the gas and pumped the brakes, slowing us down as we hit the long curve.

I held the steering wheel tight and took the turn as wide as I could and then veered into the lane for oncoming traffic as I came out of it. Luckily, there was no one coming in our direction.

And there was no one following us, either.

When we came out of the curve, I looked in the mirror again and saw the nasty big rig far behind us, receding in the background.

Monk emerged from the aft stateroom, replaced the fire extinguisher in its wall mount, and then sat down at the dinette to catch his breath.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I opened the back window, waited until he got real close, and sprayed his grill with the fire extinguisher.”

Ambrose smiled. “In other words, Adrian smothered the bastard’s engine by clogging the air intake.”

“That will teach him to mess with us,” I said.

“With me,” Monk said.

“With you,” I agreed.

“And my security deposit,” he added.

With the truck disabled, Monk thought we had a chance to have the driver apprehended. So when we rolled into Seligman, which was still relatively bustling thanks to being within sight of the I-40, I stopped outside the Snow Cap Drive-In and called 911 on my cell while Monk went out to inspect the damage to the RV.

I told the operator what had happened to us, and roughly where on the road we’d crippled the truck. She said they’d send a deputy to take a look and asked us to wait at the hamburger stand to fill out a report. It might be some time, she said.

Having another encounter with a law enforcement officer made me nervous. With Monk’s luck, the cop would either mention an unsolved murder that he was working on or he’d be called to a homicide scene while we were talking with him and he’d invite us along. But we didn’t have much choice. Even if the truck was gone, we needed to file a police report if we had any hope of my insurance covering a portion of the damage.

“You want to come out and stretch your legs with me?” I asked Ambrose.

“I can stretch them just fine in here,” he said.

I opened the door and faced the Snow Cap.

The hamburger stand looked the same today as it had fifty years ago when the owner built the place out of scrap wood he collected while working on the railroad. The raw, ramshackle, improvised style of the building gave the diner its quirky charm.

A billboard ran across the entire front edge of the flat roofline and offered malts, creamy root beers, shakes, burgers, tacos, and “dead chicken” in big letters to catch the eye of passing motorists. Colorful drawings of the offerings adorned the white walls around the picture windows and neon-rimmed illustrations of soft-serve ice-cream cones were mounted like turrets on each corner of the roof.