“You go away!” Jake yelled out his own half-open window. “Go away and leave me alone! I’m not bothering you fellas.” A soft pounding had started inside his chest. It was a warning, a throbbing internal siren, a signal flashing at the railroad crossing. Not dangerous, it said. Not yet, but slow down, be cautious, take it easy. Which was the one thing he couldn’t do right now.
“Look, old man,” said the one leaning out the pickup’s window, “there’s just some people who want to talk to you, okay? We don’t even know who they are. Pull over and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
“Go away!” Jake shouted, rolling up his window all the way. The man who’d been yelling at him gave up, pulled back inside the pickup’s cab. He glanced meaningfully at the driver.
Royrader considered the road ahead. Four lanes, an occasional car going the other way, otherwise still mostly deserted. He checked the speedometer. They were doing seventy-five. Either the old man’s car couldn’t make any more speed or else he didn’t dare risk losing control of it. It was fast enough, though. At this rate they’d run into traffic within the next few minutes.
“Hang on,” he warned his friends.
“What are you gonna do?” Archer wanted to know.
Royrader glared at him. “Run him off the road, what d’you think? We can’t just keep running parallel with him.”
“He might roll that old car,” Snyder observed.
“Tough. We’ve got to do something.” He turned the wheel to the right. The front end of the pickup leaned into the Galaxie. Rubber from the big front tires squealed against blue steel, sending paint flying.
They’re going to do it, Jake thought wildly as he felt the Galaxie being pushed toward the shoulder. They’re going to do it! The pickup carried twice the weight of his old Ford. The shoulder was all sand, scrub and sagebrush spotted with ocotillo and jumping cactus. He’d be okay if he didn’t turn over, but that would be the end. They’d drag him out of the car and take him off to wherever they’d been ordered to. Jake knew where that would land him eventually; in Huddy’s clutches, strapped to a doctor’s bench. Little pieces of metal, poking him, prodding him, tiny wires running into his head, no, no!
Why didn’t I go to college? he wondered. I had the chance. Maybe I’d know more about myself now, about what I am, about how to protect myself, even if Amanda insists nobody else knows anything about what it is that I do. Too late for that now. Fifty years too late. Bottle caps and dirt and mystified children.
He’d never tried anything else, never tried to make anything else slipt. It was no more than a game, a trick to make kids laugh. That’s all it was, all he ever wanted it to be. But this fellow Huddy thought differently. Mandy had done her best to warn him about the possibility. Too late now. Too late. He didn’t know what to do next.
“Tell me what to do, Mandy!” he thought wildly. “Tell me what to do!”
But Amanda couldn’t help him. She wasn’t talking to him now and she was the one who had to make the long reach out, make the connection. The phone always rang at his end.
Truck. Gotta stop the truck. But he didn’t want to hurt anybody. Even during the war he’d been spared that necessity. As a welder he’d worked out the duration in Los Angeles, building Liberty ships.
The pickup rammed into him again. For a second or two the tires on the right side of the Galaxie kicked up sand. The Ford slid crazily, its back end gyrating like a go-go dancer. Then it was back on the pavement and the pickup moved toward it yet again.
The steering wheel… what about the steering wheel? That was kind of like a bottle cap, wasn’t it? No, not really, and they’d lose all control and they’d crash and it would be all his fault. He didn’t want to hurt anybody, not even a little. What was familiar, what could he do for sure, what was just like a bottle cap? The big right front wheel slid toward the hood of the Ford and then he knew.
It was funny when he tried it. It was as if an old friend had been there all the time. A real good, close, intimate friend, the kind you can call every five years and ask, how are ya doin’ and not worry about making small talk or not having written. He’d never tried to make use of his friend before because he’d never had reason to. But he did now, for his own sake.
Really it wasn’t any different from making the bottle caps slipt, though it made him feel funny inside. Not in his heart, which always felt funny and was beginning to slam against his ribs with agonizing force now. Somewhere else. Inside his head, and it made his head hurt a little bit too. It always hurt a little bit whenever he made things slipt, but this time it hurt more than usual.
But it was just like the bottle caps.
“Jesus Christ!” Archer threw his hands up to protect his face. A low moan came out of Synder as he clutched reflexively at the sill of the window. Royrader fought to bring the suddenly berserk wheel under control. The air around him was full of sparks, chewed-up pavement, and dust. The cab was filled with the odor of something burning and a terrific screeching that drowned out their panicky curses.
Somehow Royrader managed to keep them level until the pickup finally ground to a halt.
“Christ,” Archer was murmuring over and over, “Jesus H. Christ.”
“It’s alright,” Royrader told him. He was holding the wheel so tightly his fingers were white up to the knuckles. It kept the rest of him from shaking. “It’s alright now, we’ve stopped. We’re okay.”
Ahead of them the thin outline of the old Ford had already vanished into the distance. “What the hell happened?” Synder asked shakily.
“I don’t know.” Royrader ran the rapid sequence of events back through his mind, did not stumble across an explanation. “I don’t know. I just lost control, that’s all. She just went crazy on me.” He yanked on the door handle, pushed outward. The door didn’t move. Holding the handle down he rammed his shoulder against the door, enjoying the pain that shot up his arm. The door gave, opened with a creak.
He half stepped, half stumbled out of the cab onto the pavement. Other cars slowed as they came up behind the pickup. Their passengers gaped at the accident, but no one stopped to help. That suited Royrader just fine. He wasn’t much in the mood to answer questions just then. Already he was debating how he was going to explain their failure to Lasenby. Worse than that was the image of hundred-dollar bills floating away like parakeets on the desert air.
Slowly he made his way around to the back of the pickup. One of the rear tires was visible off to the right, just rolling to a stop far out in the brush. It bumped up against a saguaro, tumbled over, and worked itself to a halt like a coin tossed on a table.
Royrader’s companions were slow to regain control of themselves. Eventually Synder and Archer both worked their way out of the cab. The last of the dust and dirt was beginning to settle around them.
“I thought you had this truck in top shape,” Archer said accusingly as he inspected the undercarriage.
“First time I’ve ever had any trouble with it.” Royrader spoke absently. He was absorbed in an inspection of the rear axle. “Never anything like this, for sure.”
“Hell.” Synder was staring down the highway in the direction the Ford had taken. “Nobody’s ever had any trouble like this.” He turned his attention to his superior and drinking buddy. “You get the feeling, Ed, maybe there was something about this little job Lasenby didn’t tell us?”
“I don’t know.” Royrader didn’t know what to think. He was confused and angry and not a little frightened. “I just don’t know what to think. Come on, let’s pick everything up and try and put this heap back together.”
They started back down the highway, leaving the pickup sitting motionless on its fenders and axles. All four of the big off-road tires had slipped their axles simultaneously. That didn’t make much sense to Royrader. The pickup was his baby, his companion on many a fishing and hunting expedition. He’d taken it across wild creeks and lava-bedded ravines and never lost a wheel. Now he’d lost all four at the same time. He still didn’t know how he’d managed to keep the truck from rolling. In fact, if all four wheels hadn’t fallen off at precisely the same instant, that’s exactly what would have happened.
It took the three men most of the rest of the day to track down the four wheels and roll them back to the truck. It took the rest of the evening to locate all thirty-two lug nuts. They were scattered on the shoulder and across the highway. Fortunately every one of them appeared to be undamaged, save for minor abrasions of the chrome and a few corners.
Snyder inspected them one by one as Royrader and Archer worked to jack up the rear of the truck. Snyder could understand losing one lug nut, or maybe two, or even having a whole wheel come off what with the way they were banging up against the old man’s car. But thirty-two nuts off thirty-two screws, at the same time? That was worse than crazy; it was fucking scary.
Suddenly the loss of the thousand dollars he’d been promised didn’t seem so devastating. Suddenly all he wanted was to go to Willy’s Bar and get drunk and get ready to go back to work tomorrow morning. Suddenly he didn’t want to see that frightened old man ever again.
“Tell Mr. Huddy here what happened one more time,” Lasenby instructed Royrader.
“Look, Frank,” the driver of the pickup said to his boss, “I’ve already told you what happened.” He glanced once at his two buddies seated behind him, for moral support. “We had this old guy. We had him. But he refused to pull over, refused to stop. You said do what was necessary to bring him in. So we started to edge him onto the shoulder, real gentle like, and all of a sudden the bottom drops out of my truck. All four wheels coming off at the same time like that. Man, I never heard of anything like that happening to anyone, even in an off-road race. You want answers? Me and the guys would like a few ourselves.”
Huddy sat behind and to the left of the plant manager’s desk. He had his legs crossed and his fingers steepled as he listened intently to the story. It took an effort to contain both his disappointment and his excitement.
