Just before she entered the glass-doored café, Monte’s Place, she glanced down the road behind her.
The hitchhiker was not in sight.
“It’s hot. I’ll just have an order of cinnamon toast and iced tea with lemon,” Miss Purdy said briskly, closing the menu and placing it squarely on the shiny black Formica tabletop.
“Nothing else, ma’am?”
The skinny waitress was a bottle blonde, her eyes hollowed out by smudges of black mascara.
There was one thing Miss Purdy knew she wasn’t going to get from such a disrespectful snip. Respect. Young people today were so judgmental and superior, like that hitchhiker, sneering at a lone woman for sensibly refusing to pick him up. Certainly, do a good deed, pick him up, and she could end up dumped in the middle of the White Sands, her car his, she left behind, robbed and . . . raped, maybe. And killed too. No, thank you. Miss Geraldine Purdy of the Roswell Public Library System was not known for taking foolish chances.
The waitress stood, awaiting her decision, one hip cocked, and her bored face wearing the hitchhiker’s same superior smirk.
“Well, perhaps a small dish of vanilla ice cream . . . but we’ll see.”
As the girl ambled away, Miss Purdy brushed the tabletop to ensure that none of the waitress’s bleached yellow hairs had fallen on it. Young people! Didn’t even have the get-up-and-go to stand up straight anymore, thought Miss Purdy. Talk like slow syrup to your face, but just imagine what they say behind your back.
It was noon. High noon. No other customer was in the restaurant. Odd. Another waitress, idle, lounged against the deserted counter, filing her nails. Most unsanitary! From the kitchen came her waitress’s lazy drawl, droning small talk.
Somehow, Miss Purdy felt conspicuous, watched, and commented upon. The girl behind the counter gazed out the window with the same unfocused squint as the hitchhiker’s.
Miss Purdy unfurled her fold-frayed map and made a point of studying it intently. She was halfway there. Before her lay the White Sands Missile Base, and on the other side, Truth or Consequences, directly opposite Tularosa.
The mountain range had to be skirted, either by going north, or south. Her forefinger traced the thick red highway line northward to Oscura, Carrizozo, Carthage, and Elephant Butte. What strange, exotic-sounding names! And yet so logical. From Carthage, the name of Hannibal’s ancient home city, to, of all places, Elephant Butte! Hadn’t Hannibal’s forces crossed the Alps with elephants to attack the Italians? She half expected to find Rome itself on the map.
Her finger darted back to the dot marking Tularosa and meandered south through Alamogordo, then along the thin blue vein of country road that cut across the southeast corner of the missile base that was the White Sands National Monument before curving up through Radium Springs and Las Palomas to Truth or Consequences.
By the time the last piece of cinnamon toast had disappeared from her plate, Miss Purdy had decided on the southern route. It was, after all, shorter and less cluttered with cattle crossings than cactus-ringed junctions like Carthage would no doubt be. Still, how exciting to drive through Carthage—it would give her a sense of history, and the names to the north did intrigue her. . . .
Miss Purdy told herself firmly—as she so often did—that she had no right to be intrigued at her age. She paid her bill, left a fifty-cent tip and the café, receiving no notice but a lifeless flicker of sooty eyelashes from her heavy-lidded waitress.
Miss Purdy spread her voile skirt carefully as she eased into her hot car seat and checked her gold watch. It was 12:14 P.M. My, but time moved slowly in the desert. She’d have to be careful not to drive too fast. Evelyn didn’t expect her until early evening. The plastic steering wheel was burning hot, so she pulled on her white cotton gloves and pulled into the street, glancing just once in the rearview mirror.
The hitchhiker was nowhere in sight.
Soon Tularosa, silly name, was no more than a narrow band of buildings in her rearview mirror. The voile dress stuck to the vinyl seat back as the heat circled around and around her. She could smell the rubber of the car’s tires on the sun-softened asphalt.
Tall, dull-green yuccas edged the road here and there like trees. The sand between patches of sharp mesquite was getting whiter. Half past noon, the sky glowed white like hot lead, merging with the paling sand. The dun-colored wasteland still hung at her back like a cloud, but she was driving farther and farther into the heart of the gypsum dunes of the White Sands.
I’m off with the wraggle taggle gypsies, O! The old folk song about gypsies sang through her mind. She was a gypsy, free of workaday pulls and rolling along free.
Behind her, the tawny Alamogordo basin sand disappeared as the Ford climbed the road’s gentle rises. In her rearview mirror, the basin receded until it curved and assumed the shape of a broad thumb, imprinted there in prehistory by some Titan hurled from the heavens.
My, this barren landscape made her fanciful. Miss Purdy adjusted her gloved hands on the steering wheel and thought about the map. Could the desert’s strange hand shape be more than an accident? Who knew what mighty race of men could have once lived here and carved the earth to match their grandeur?
She saw herself as if from a helicopter or another planet . . . Mercury, perhaps. That had a nice sound to it. She saw herself as a small, quick bug, scurrying in her shiny black shell across the hand of some tremendous being. Rushing from his thumb down his wide, grimy highway of a lifeline and, for all the 150 horse-power of her automobile, merely tickling that giant palm.
That thought tickled Miss Purdy.
I see, she chortled exultantly to herself, I see! I’m the only one who knows how things really are. That books are just so many tree trunks, and that air-conditioning is just so many rusty cogs. Miss Purdy felt a paean of joy rising inside her. I shall write a poem! she told herself. Heaven knows, she’d seen enough poetry in the past forty-four years to know what was being done nowadays.
Someone had always been coming to her desk, asking about some poet or other for a school paper. Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Rupert Brooke . . . No, they didn’t often ask for Rupert Brooke anymore. And he was such a nice poet, too. People think librarians don’t remember, but they do. Miss Purdy remembered.
Her eyes slid down to the speedometer. Sixty miles an hour! What had she been thinking? She bit her lip and relaxed her foot on the gas pedal. Her ankle had been held quite . . . taut.
The Ford slowed and Miss Purdy gazed around her with wonder.
Everything was white. Sand dunes, like huge mounds of powered sugar, spilled onto the black asphalt, dusting it pale gray. The dunes towered above her little car, reflecting sun off one another and nearly blinding her. Everything shimmered and sparkled before her eyes. If it weren’t for the dark, dead branches thrusting out here and there through the dazzling snowy sand, Miss Purdy would have thought she’d gone suddenly mad.
How utterly lovely, thought Miss Purdy. Like alabaster. Like monuments of some great race of beings wind-scoured to pure powder . . . all of them, temples . . . tombs. Strange that she had never traveled beyond Roswell before. Her little car held effortlessly to the steel-gray track of road. Miss Purdy stopped concentrating on driving and thought of milk, snow . . . oh, ermine . . . frosted sea spray.
Then, without warning, he was there.
Stark against the blanched dunes, standing as before—head cocked, eyes screwed almost shut, and thumb extended, carelessly, crudely—his white T-shirt blending into the dunes.
How? How had he gotten here before her? As if he was waiting for her.
Unless someone had picked him up . . . but who would leave him off here, in the middle of literally nowhere?
Miss Purdy’s throat felt as if it were coated with cotton batting. Cotton is white, she thought absently. Her gloves were moist through and hugged her hands. And somewhere . . . someone was pressing a heavy, hot iron down on her. . . .
She was a woman alone. Always had been. The hitchhiker had noted
that. He couldn’t have walked this far this fast. Of course! He’d seen her stop at the café for lunch, then caught a ride and, and . . . had himself let out here, in the middle of nowhere! Waiting. Waiting for her. Wasn’t there a famous story about someone who couldn’t avoid someone else no matter where he went? “Appointment in Sahara”? Oh, she couldn’t think!
Miss Purdy leaned back, away from the figure framed by her windshield, and steadily pushed, pushed, pushed the accelerator down.
The warm wind surged through the open window, blowing her bangs back against the brim of her straw hat, lifting her hat off her head and into the backseat. Her hat! A lady always wore a hat and gloves.
She wanted to clutch for her hat. She couldn’t. Miss Purdy’s hands were frozen to the hot steering wheel, which careened and swung as if granted a life of its own.
The hitchhiker whirled past her vision as the car wound around and around the glittering crystal dunes, caught in a maelstrom of white.
All at once, the car seemed to be turning over and over, like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. Miss Purdy’s terrified mind seemed to be turning over and over, lofting up into the white, white clouds, caught in a tornado. Wherever she was heading, it wasn’t Truth or Consequences. Maybe it was Oz. Maybe she and her little car were one of the passing airborne phenomena Dorothy had glimpsed in the tornado during the black-and-white part of the movie.
Maybe they were all heading for heaven, which would be a much better place than silly old “T or C,” as the residents called it.
And that would be fine with her.
Still, Miss Purdy felt she might be sinking again into a giant bowl of white sugar frosting below, spinning around to the slowing hum of an electric blender as the wind’s sound crescendoed into a shrill, evil scream, like that modern music the kids loved. The wind and an alien shrillness whirred like a thousand furies with high-pitched, mechanical madness.
But the car was not moving. Everything was level, and Miss Purdy felt as if she had stopped safely at last. Even her heartbeat was slowing down, despite the racket. She felt utterly alone.
So why had the shriek increased to a screech as a dark shape slid out of the whiteness and attached itself to her car like a huge black fly?
Miss Purdy frowned to see a black arm gesturing, a great pair of buglike dark glasses staring sightlessly at her. Oddly, she didn’t feel menace. She blinked.
Oh . . . no wonder! It was a . . . a . . . motorcycle policeman, the lone woman motorist’s guardian angel, albeit in Brando black leather.
Thank God! She wasn’t alone and at the mercy of that horrible hitchhiker anymore.
She didn’t remember stopping the car or hearing a siren behind her. Yet she must have braked, for she saw in the rearview mirror that her car had left black tire tracks like a dotted line on the whitened asphalt along the road’s sandy white side.
She was finally, really, and truly safe. And she was so embarrassed.
The officer pulled to a stop behind her, his siren whining into silence. She saw his huge black motorcycle. Miss Purdy clenched and unclenched her gloved hands. They suddenly felt freezing cold, and her cheeks felt searingly hot.
The officer strode to her open car window.
“It’s a good thing you stopped, ma’am.”
Miss Purdy watched him wrench off one black leather glove and pull a thick notepad out from somewhere. The sun gleamed on his white helmet, glancing off the big, dark sunglasses and his black leather jacket.
He might take off his sunglasses, sniffed Miss Purdy to herself. Doesn’t he know that the reflection hurts my eyes?
A pen appeared and the policeman strolled around to the front of her car, marking something down in his notebook, probably the license number. He looked so young and strong and tall. Miss Purdy eyed the huge black gun holster at his side as he walked back to her, leather jacket and holster squeaking in the dry air.
She hadn’t thought to find her driver’s license in her purse. She’d never before—
“Your name is?” he asked.
“Purdy. It rhymes with ‘birdie.’ Geraldine Purdy. Miss Geraldine Purdy.” She was so glad she could answer promptly and crisply. “Oh! You’re not going to . . . to write this . . . me . . . down? Really, it’s not necessary, I—”
“Standard procedure, ma’am.”
“It won’t go into my—my record, will it? And must you write it in ink? Couldn’t you—?”
“Afraid not, ma’am. May I see your driver’s license?”
“But, I assure you, officer, I’ve never had a record of any kind . . . not one accident in fifty years of driving. I was always so careful.”
She fumbled through her patent-leather purse. What would Evelyn think when she found out? A lady her age, ticketed. Arrested even, maybe! Evelyn might think she was, well . . . unreliable. Nobody had ever thought Geraldine Purdy was unreliable. Then Evelyn wouldn’t want . . . Oh, the newspapers!
Her name might even be listed in the newspapers! How awful. To be avoided at all costs. Oh, dear.
Miss Purdy’s hand pulled her license out of its clear plastic berth in her money clutch with a snap. She passed it triumphantly through the window. The officer looked down at her hand for a long moment, then took the license and began copying parts of it down.
“You always drive with gloves on during the summer, ma’am?” he inquired without looking up, as if that would matter with those dark glasses on. So disrespectful, young people today. She had expected more from an officer of the law, but he looked young, too. Everybody did, nowadays.
She stared at her white-gloved hands and shook her head. “No, I just happened to wear them driving today because the steering wheel was so hot, you see.”
“Wheel could slip, you know, with gloves on. You could lose control of your car and have an accident. Wearing cotton gloves while driving isn’t a good idea.”
Miss Purdy nodded miserably.
“Any excuse for speeding, ma’am?” He took in the ’56 Ford’s dusty black shell. “This car isn’t a youngster. I’m sure a lady like you must have had a reason.”
“Why, thank you, officer. It was foolish, I suppose, but that hitchhiker unnerved me, turning up like that from nowhere.”
“Hitchhiker?”
“Why, yes. The disreputable-looking one back down the road, black as the Devil against all that white sand, the one who shouldn’t have been there. Surely you passed him if you caught up with me?”
The policeman turned his sunglass-shaded eyes to scan the winding asphalt trail through the White Sands gypsum dunes behind him.
“No, ma’am. I didn’t.”
Miss Purdy heaved in an indignant breath. How dare he stand there and claim he hadn’t seen the hitchhiker? Marking her down in his little notepad and smirking over her gloves and “ma’aming” her up and down, just like that snip of a waitress back in Tularosa.
Well, she wouldn’t stand for it. The moment she got to Truth or Consequences she’d report him to his superiors, that’s what she’d do. Everybody had superiors.
She leaned out the window. “Young man,” she demanded, “what’s your name?”
The officer, who was walking down the road to peer beyond the bend, muttered something the wind picked up and whirled away across the dunes. Something about Sahara, or was it Samarra?
“What?” demanded Miss Purdy.
But the officer had disappeared beyond a white mountain of sand. She pursed her lips and sat back against the Victoria’s hot vinyl upholstery.
Moments later, the policeman was back, apologetic.
“Sorry, ma’am. There’s a hitcher, all right. Down the road a bit, walking this way. Don’t you worry. Someone will pick him up eventually.”
“He’s coming? This way? Oh, but he mustn’t! He mustn’t catch up with me!”
“Ma’am?”
“Don’t you see? I’ve got to keep ahead of him. I’ve a feeling that . . . that . . . it’s like a black cat, you know? So, if you’ve go
t all your information, please let me go on. I’m all ready to move on now, see?” pleaded Miss Purdy, pulling off her gloves and showing her thin, blue-veined hands in readiness.
The policeman pocketed his little book in silence.
In the rearview mirror Miss Purdy saw a small black speck growing with each second into the forebodingly familiar figure of the hitchhiker.
She looked pleadingly at the motorcycle policeman. He seemed to have become taller and thinner in his head-to-toe black.
“Please, officer. Please! I must go. Is there a fine? I’ll pay it now.” She milled desperately through her purse.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come to headquarters with me.”
“But I’m going to my niece’s to retire. My niece, Evelyn Taggert’s house in Truth or—”
The policeman’s helmeted head shook firmly. “No, ma’am. This is according to regulations.”
“Isn’t there any other way?”
The hitchhiker was growing in her rearview mirror. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He became bigger and clearer and terrifyingly close.
“No, ma’am. There isn’t any other way.”
The moment she bowed to authority and said, “Yes, I see that. Yes, of course,” the hitchhiker . . . vanished.
When the New Mexico newspapers reported the accident in their morning editions, the only witness was identified as a young hitchhiker, Eugene Menides of Carthage. He stated that the 1956 black Ford Victoria sedan had abruptly accelerated as it passed him on U.S. Highway 70 in the middle of the White Sands.
The car had braked violently on a sharp curve, as if the driver had encountered an obstacle, Menides said, and spun out and rolled over several times. He had seen no cause for the car to either speed up or brake. He had rushed to assist the driver, but it was too late. Menides had walked back toward Tularosa until he met a trucker, who had driven him to the nearest gas station to phone the state police.
Twilight Zone Anthology Page 10