by Stephen King
Now, whipping up the turnpike at seventy, still forty miles away from the Westgate tollbooths, he saw a figure standing in the breakdown land just past exit 16, muffled up in a CPO coat and wearing a black knitted watchcap. The figure was holding up a sign that said (amazingly, in all this snow): LAS VEGAS. And underneath that, defiantly: or BUST!
He slammed on the power brake and felt the seat belt strain a groove in his middle with the swift deceleration, a little exhilarated by the Richard Petty sound of his own squealing tires. He pulled over about twenty yards beyond the figure. It tucked its sign under its arm and ran toward him. Something about the way the figure was running told him the hitchhiker was a girl.
The passenger door opened and she got in.
"Hey, thanks."
"Sure. " He glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled out, accelerating back to seventy. The road unrolled in front of him again. "A long way to Vegas."
"It sure is." She smiled at him, the stock smile for people that told her it was a long way to Vegas, and pulled off her gloves. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
"No, go ahead."
She pulled out a box of Marlboros. "Like one?"
"No, thanks."
She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, took a box of kitchen matches from her CPO pocket, lit her smoke, took a huge drag and chuffed it out, fogging part of the windshield, put Marlboros and matches away, loosened the dark blue scarf around her neck and said: "I appreciate the ride. It's cold out there."
"Were you waiting long?"
"About an hour. The last guy was drunk. Man, I was glad to get out."
He nodded. "I'll take you to the end of the turnpike."
"End?" She looked at him. "You're going all the way to Chicago?"
"What? Oh, no." He named his city.
"But the turnpike goes through there." She pulled a Sunoco road map, dog-eared from much thumbing, from her other coat pocket. "The map says so. "
"Unfold it and look again."
She did so.
"What color is the part of the turnpike we're on now?"
"Green. "
"What color is the part going through the city?"
"Dotted green. It's . . . oh, Christ! It's under construction!"
"That's right. The world-famous 784 extension. Girl, you'll never get to Las Vegas if you don't read the key to your map."
She bent over it, her nose almost touching the paper. Her skin was clear, perhaps normally milky, but now the cold had brought a bloom to her cheeks and forehead. The tip of her nose was red, and a small drop of water hung beside her left nostril. Her hair was clipped short, and not very well. A home job. A pretty chestnut color. Too bad to cut it, worse to cut it badly. What was that Christmas story by O. Henry? "The Gift of the Magi." Who did you buy a watch chain for, little wanderer?
"The solid green picks up at a place called Landy," she said. "How far is that from where this part ends?"
"About thirty miles."
"Oh Christ. "
She puzzled over the map some more. Exit 15 flashed by.
"What's the bypass road?" she asked finally. "It just looks like a snarl to me. "
"Route 7's best," he said. "It's at the last exit, the one they call Westgate." He hesitated. "But you'd do better to just hang it up for the night. There's a Holiday Inn. We won't get there until almost dark, and you don't want to try hitching up Route 7 after dark."
"Why not?" she asked, looking over at him. Her eyes were green and disconcerting; an eye color you read about occasionally but rarely see.
"It's a city bypass road," he said, taking charge of the passing lane and roaring past a whole line of vehicles doing fifty. Several of them honked at him angrily. "Four lanes with a little bitty concrete divider between them. Two lanes west toward Landy, two lanes east into the city. Lots of shopping centers and hamburger stands and bowling alleys and all that. Everybody is going in short hops. No one wants to stop."
"Yeah." She sighed. "Is there a bus to Landy?"
"There used to be a city bus, but it went bankrupt. I guess there must be a Greyhound--
"Oh, fuck it. " She squidged the map back together and stuffed it into her pocket. She stared at the road, looking put out and worried.
"Can't afford a motel room?"
"Mister, I've got thirteen bucks. I couldn't rent a doghouse."
"You can stay at my house if you want," he said.
"Yeah, and maybe you better let me out right here."
"Never mind. I withdraw the offer."
"Besides, what would your wife think?" She looked pointedly at the wedding ring on his finger. It was a look that suggested she thought he might also hang around school play yards after the monitor had gone home for the day.
"My wife and I are separated."
"Recently?"
"Yes. As of December first."
"And now you've got all these hang-ups that you could use some help with," she said. There was contempt in her voice but it was an old contempt, not aimed specifically at him. "Especially some help from a young chick."
"I don't want to lay anybody," he said truthfully. "I don't even think I could get it up." He realized he had just used two terms that he had never used before a woman in his life, but it seemed all right. Not good or bad but all right, like discussing the weather.
"Is that supposed to be a challenge?" she asked. She drew deeply on her cigarette and exhaled more smoke.
"No," he said. "I suppose it sounds like a line if you're looking for lines. I suppose a girl on her own has to be looking for them all the time."
"This must be part three," she said. There was still mild contempt and hostility in her tone, but now it was cut with a certain tired amusement. "How did a nice girl like you get in a car like this?"
"Oh, to hell with it," he said. "You're impossible."
"That's right, I am." She snuffed her cigarette in his ashtray and then wrinkled her nose. "Look at this. Full of candy wrappers and cellophane and every other kind of shit. Why don't you get a litterbag?"
"Because I don't smoke. If you had just called ahead and said, Barton old boy, I intend to be hitching the turnpike today so give me a ride, would you? And by the way, clear the shit out of your ashtray because I intend to smoke-then I would have emptied it. Why don't you just throw it out the window?"
She was smiling. "You have a nice sense of irony."
"It's my sad life."
"Do you know how long it takes filter tips to biodegrade? Two hundred years, that's how long. By that time your grandchildren will be dead."
He shrugged. "You don't mind me breathing in your used carcinogens, screwing up the cilia in my lungs, but you don't want to throw a filter tip out into the turnpike. Okay."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing."
"Listen, do you want to let me out? Is that it?"
"No," he said. "Why don't we just talk about something neutral? The state of the dollar. The state of the Union. The state of Arkansas."
"I think I'd rather catch a little nap if you don't mind. It looks like I'm going to be up most of the night. "
"Fine. "
She tilted the watchcap over her eyes, folded her arms, and became still. After a few moments her breathing deepened to long strokes. He looked at her in short snatches, shoplifting an image of her. She was wearing blue jeans, tight, faded, thin. They molded her legs closely enough to let him know that she wasn't wearing a second pair or long-handles. They were long legs, folded under the dashboard for comfort, and they were probably blushing lobster red now, itching like hell. He started to ask her if her legs itched, and then thought how it would sound. The thought of her hitchhiking all night on Route 7, either getting rides in short hops or not getting rides at all, made him feel uncomfortable. Night, thin pants, temperatures in the 20's. Well, it was her business. If she got cold enough, she could go in someplace and warm up. No problem.
They passed exits 14 and 13. He stopped looking at her and concentrated on his d
riving. The speedometer needle stayed pegged at seventy, and he stayed in the passing lane. More cars honked at him. As they passed exit 12, a man in a station wagon which bore a KEEP IT AT 50 bumper sticker honked three times and blipped his lights indignantly. He gave the station wagon the finger.
With her eyes still closed she said: "You're going too fast. That's why they're honking. "
"I know why they're doing it."
"But you don't care. "
"No."
"Just another concerned citizen," she intoned, "doing his part to rid America of the energy squeeze."
"I don't give a tin weasel about the energy squeeze."
"So say we; so say we all."
"I used to drive at fifty-five on the turnpike. No more, no less. That's where my car got the best mileage. Now I'm protesting the Trained Dog Ethic. Surely you read about it in your sociology courses? Or am I wrong? I took it for granted you were a college kid."
She sat up. "I was a sociology major for a while. Well, sort of. But I never heard of the Trained Dog Ethic."
"That's because I made it up. "
"Oh. April Fool." Disgust. She slid back down in the seat and tilted the watchcap over her eyes again.
"The Trained Dog Ethic, first advanced by Barton George Dawes in late 1973, fully explains such mysteries as the monetary crisis, inflation, the Viet Nam war, and the current energy crisis. Let us take the energy crisis as an example. The American people are the trained dogs, trained in this case to love oil-guzzling toys. Cars, snowmobiles, large boats, dune buggies, motorcycles, minicycles, campers, and many, many more. In the years 1973 to 1980 we will be trained to hate energy toys. The American people love to be trained. Training makes them wag their tails. Use energy. Don't use energy. Go pee on the newspaper. I don't object to saving energy, I object to training. "
He found himself thinking of Mr. Piazzi's dog, who had first stopped wagging his tail, had then starred rolling his eyes, and had then ripped out Luigi Bronticelli's throat.
"Like Pavlov's dogs," he said. "They were trained to salivate at the sound of a bell. We've been trained to salivate when somebody shows us a Bombardier Skidoo with overdrive or a Zenith color TV with a motorized antenna. I have one of those at my house. The TV has a Space Command gadget. You can sit in your chair and change the channels, hike the volume or lower it, turn it on or off. I stuck the gadget in my mouth once and pushed the on button and the TV came right on. The signal went right through my brain and still did the job. Technology is wonderful. "
"You're crazy," she said.
"I guess so." They passed exit 11.
"I think I'll go to sleep. Tell me when we get to the end."
"Okay."
She folded her arms and closed her eyes again.
They passed exit 10.
"It isn't the Trained Dog Ethic I object to anyway," he said. "It's the fact that the masters are mental, moral, and spiritual idiots."
"You're trying to soothe your conscience with a lot of rhetoric," she said with her eyes still closed. "Why don't you just slow down to fifty? You'll feel better."
"I will not feel better. " And he spat it out so vehemently that she sat up and looked at him.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," he said. "I lost my wife and my job because either the world has gone crazy or I have. Then I pick up a hitchhiker-a nineteen-year-old kid for Chrissake, the kind that's supposed to take it for granted that the world's gone crazy-and she tells me it's me, the world is doing just fine. Not much oil, but other than that, just fine."
"I'm twenty-one."
"Good for you," he said bitterly. "If the world's so sane, what's a kid like you doing hitchhiking to Las Vegas in the middle of winter? Planning to spend the whole night hitchhiking along Route 7 and probably getting frostbite in your legs because you're not wearing anything under those pants?"
"I am so wearing something underneath! What do you think I am?"
"I think you're stupid!" he roared at her. "You're going to freeze your ass off! "
"And then you won't be able to get a piece of it, right?" she inquired sweetly.
"Oh boy," he muttered. "Oh boy."
They roared past a sedan moving at fifty. The sedan beeped at him. "Eat it!" He yelled. "Raw!"
"I think you better let me off right now," she said quietly.
"Never mind," he said. "I'm not going to crash us up. Go to sleep."
She looked at him distrustfully for a long second, then folded her arms and closed her eyes. They went past exit 9.
They passed exit 2 at five after four. The shadows stretching across the road had taken on the peculiar blue cast that is the sole property of winter shadows. Venus was already in the east. The traffic had thickened as they approached the city.
He glanced over toward her and saw she was sitting up, looking out at the hurrying, indifferent automobiles. The car directly in front of them had a Christmas tree lashed to its roof rack. The girl's green eyes were very wide, and for a moment he fell into them and saw out of them in the perfect empathy that comes to human beings at mercifully infrequent intervals. He saw that all the cars were going to someplace where it was warm, someplace where there was business to transact or friends to greet or a loom of family life to pick up and stitch upon. He saw their indifference to strangers. He understood in a brief, cold instant of comprehension what Thomas Carlyle called the great dead locomotive of the world, rushing on and on.
"We're almost there?" she asked.
"Fifteen minutes."
"Listen, if I was hard on you-"
"No, I was hard on you. Listen, I've got nothing in particular to do. I'll take you around to Landy."
"No-"
"Or I'll stick you in the Holiday Inn for the night. No strings attached. Merry Christmas and all that."
"Are you really separated from your wife?"
"Yes. "
"And so recently?"
"Yes."
"Has she got your kids?"
"We have no kids." They were coming up on the tollbooths. Their green golights twinkled indifferently in the early twilight.
"Take me home with you, then."
"I don't have to do that. I mean, you don't have to-"
"I'd just as soon be with somebody tonight," she said. "And I don't like to hitchhike at night. It's scary."
He slid up to a tollbooth and rolled down his window, letting in cold air. He gave the toll taker his card and a dollar ninety. He pulled out slowly. They passed a reflectorized sign that said:
THANK YOU FOR DRIVING SAFELY!
"All right," he said cautiously. He knew he was probably wrong to keep trying to reassure her-probably achieving just the opposite effect-but he couldn't seem to help it. "Listen, it's just that the house is very lonely by myself. We can have supper, and then maybe watch TV and eat popcorn. You can have the upstairs bedroom and I'll-"
She laughed a little and he glanced at her as they went around the cloverleaf.
But she was hard to see now, a little indistinct. She could have been something he dreamed. The idea bothered him.
"Listen," she said. "I better tell you this right now. That drunk I was riding with? I spent the night with him. He was going on to Stilson, where you picked me up. That was his price."
He paused for the red light at the foot of the cloverleaf.
"My roommate told me it would be like that, but I didn't believe her. I wasn't going to fuck my way across the country, not me." She looked at him fleetingly, but he still couldn't read her face in the gloom. "But it's not people making you. It's being so disconnected from everything, like spacewalking. When you come into a big city and think of all the people in there, you want to cry. I don't know why, but you do. It gets so you'd spend the night picking some guy's bleeding pimples just to hear him breathe and talk."
"I don't care who you've been sleeping with, " he said and pulled out into traffic. Automatically he turned onto Grand Street, heading for home past the 784 construction.
<
br /> "This salesman," she said. "He's been married fourteen years. He kept saying that while he was humping me. Fourteen years, Sharon, he keeps saying, fourteen years, fourteen years. He came in about fourteen seconds." She uttered short bark of laughter, rueful and sad.
"Is that your name? Sharon?"
"No. I guess that was his wife's name."
He pulled over to the curb.
"What are you doing?" she asked, instantly distrustful.
"Nothing much," he said. "This is part of going home. Get out, if you want. I'll show you something."
They got out and walked over to the observation platform, now deserted. He laid his bare hands on the cold iron pipe of the railing and looked down. They had been undercoating today, he saw. The last three working days they had put down gravel. Now undercoat. Deserted equipment-trucks and bulldozers and yellow backhoes-stood silently about in the shades of evening like a museum exhibit of dinosaurs. Here we have the vegetarian stegosaurus, the flesh-eating triceratops, the fearsome earth-munching diesel shovel. Bon appetit.
"What do you think of it?" he asked her.
"Am I supposed to think something?" She was fencing, trying to figure this out.
"You must think something," he said.
She shrugged. "It's roadwork, so what? They're building a road in a city I'll probably never be in again. What am I supposed to think? It's ugly."
"Ugly," he echoed, relieved.
"I grew up in Portland, Maine," she said. "We lived in a big apartment building and they put this shopping center up across the street-"
"Did they tear anything down to make it?"
"Huh?'