The Highway (7 page)

*   *   *

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.

8.

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

T
HE
L
IZARD
K
ING
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.…

*   *   *

When the little car was about ten feet from catching his rear bumper, he grinned and jerked the wheel hard to the left, cutting it off.

The headlights vanished from both of his mirrors.

He had the same thought he had earlier when the lot lizard approached his truck: they had no idea what kind of hell they were getting themselves into.

9.

6:09
P.M.
, Tuesday, November 20

T
HE DOUBLE REAR
WHEELS
of the trailer sprayed a mist on the windshield that blinded Gracie, and Danielle gasped as the huge truck suddenly swerved into their lane. The truck was so close Gracie could see its underbelly; long metal shafts, glistening hoses, swinging suspended tire chains, elbows of steel.

Gracie felt the Ford slowing down. She couldn’t see anything ahead now except glowing red taillights undulating through the moisture on the windshield. For all she knew, Danielle was in the process of driving under the rear end of the truck trailer.

“Turn on the windshield wipers!” she screamed at her sister.

“I am!”

“Slow down!”

“What do you think we’re doing?”

And Gracie realized it was true: the taillights filling the windshield were pulling away. Danielle had the wipers on high now, and the glass cleared. The big truck was a quarter mile in front of them, far enough now that the double sets of tires didn’t spray them.

“He did that on purpose!” Danielle seethed.

“I think he did,” Gracie agreed, completely unnerved by the thought.

Just before the huge truck had swung over to cut them off she’d caught a glimpse of the driver’s face in his mirror. He was fat and doughy with a square head and light-colored wavy hair and eyes set too close together. But she hadn’t seen him well enough to identify him if asked.

“He did that on purpose,” Danielle said again, this time in awe. “He could have killed us.”

“
Again,
” Gracie said.

“What an asshole.”

Gracie nodded.

“Is it possible he didn’t know we were back there? Maybe he was texting or talking on his phone or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“What an
asshole
.”

The grade of the road got steeper as they sped back up to the speed limit.

As it did, the big truck slowed. It was still in the passing lane.

“I’m going to try it again,” Danielle said, stomping on the gas.

“Danielle, don’t!”

“What,” her sister said, “you want to follow this jerk all the way to Helena? I want to get rid of him once and for all, the asshole.”

And with that they once again closed the gap between the Ford and the truck.

*   *   *

Gracie sat back deep in her seat and tried to say a prayer for them. She was unpracticed and couldn’t concentrate. They’d caught up with the rear wheels of the tractor itself and were nearly parallel to the door of the cab. The Ford wouldn’t go any faster up the grade, but neither could the truck. Gracie knew that if the truck driver swerved again into their lane he’d force the Ford off the road. She could only hope—and pray—that Danielle would shoot around him before he could change lanes again.

She looked over and watched the progress. Danielle stared straight ahead, leaning over the wheel, a look of crazy determination on her face. Through her window she watched their progress. One set of wheels by, then another. Amber running lights coursing through Danielle’s window as if being pulled through. Then the tires of the cab of the truck and the door. There was frontier-type lettering on the door but it was too high for Gracie to read in full. A name in script she couldn’t make out and the words,
Livingston, Montana.
She turned to look ahead and focused on the road, on the white stripe on the left side of the left lane, keeping a steady eye on it so the mist being thrown from underneath the tires of the truck wouldn’t further blind her. She didn’t know how well Danielle could see the road. They were nearly past.

Gracie jumped when cold wet wind howled through the inside of the little car.

“What are you doing?” she yelled at her sister.

In Gracie’s peripheral vision she could see Danielle leaning out her window with her left arm extended. The door of the truck just hung there, not receding, not pulling ahead.

“Loser!” Danielle screamed through the open window, raising her middle finger outside, “Fucking loser asshole!”

“Stop it!” Gracie yelled. “Get back in the car and go!”

“Loser! Asshole!”

“Danielle!”

With a satisfied smirk, her sister brought her arm back into the car and floored it. The massive headlights receded in the rearview mirror as they approached the summit of the long climb. Danielle reached over and hit the button and the driver’s window whirred back up.

“Ha!” Danielle said. “I told him.”

“Could he see you?”

“I think so,” she said. “I saw him lean over and look at me. I could just see the top of his forehead. He had the forehead of a loser.”

“You’re crazy,” Gracie said, meaning it. “Why did you have to yell at him? Why didn’t you just pass him and leave things alone?”

“And let him get away with it?” Danielle said. “No fucking way. He’s lucky we didn’t call 911 on his ass.”

Gracie sat still until she could breathe again. “Please stop talking like a truck driver,” she said.

10.

6:12
P.M.
, Tuesday, November 20

T
HE
L
IZARD
K
ING
HAD BEEN
preoccupied by the body in the back. When he’d swerved earlier that damned body had been thrown out of the bunk in his sleeper. It had landed with a thump behind him, and he was looking at it on the floor—he could make out its blank dark eyes through several layers of plastic—when the Ford made its move. By the time he looked up, the car was parallel to the cab. And when he stretched and looked over …

They were right
there,
the two young snotty girls in the little red Ford. Right below his passenger window. They were too far along now to easily force them off the road because he could no longer use the trailer as a bludgeon. When the car didn’t advance, he was curious and strained up in his seat to get a look at them.

That’s when he saw the contorted face of the looker thrust out of her open window. She was screaming at him but he could make out the words:
Fucking loser asshole
.

Loser.

It was like a hard slap in the face.

And because of the steep grade and his load holding him back, the Ford pulled away. He couldn’t push his rig any harder to catch up on the hill.

He bellowed in rage as the car passed him and gained distance before it summited the long haul and vanished down the other side.

*   *   *

As he topped the hill, he looked out ahead of him. He could see for miles. In the distance, maybe a mile away, were the two tiny red taillights of the Ford. There were no other cars on the interstate in either direction for as far as he could see.

Less than ten miles ahead was the roadblock set up by the Montana Highway Patrol. He’d no doubt catch up with them there. He envisioned a scenario where he pulled them out of their car and tore them apart with his hands.