The Highway Kind

by Patrick Millikin

  Inside the house, Caro saw Margot had left her den and was a huddled lump under the blankets on the couch. “Here, Margot,” Caro said. “Take a doughnut.”

  Margot’s hand slipped out from under the blanket, took the doughnut, and receded out of sight. “I love doughnuts,” she said, and Caro heard a happy sigh. It had a false, tinny note to it. Like Margot vaguely remembered what a happy sigh sounded like and was doing her best to get there.

  Caro took the doughnut box into the kitchen. She set the table and chairs back on their feet and hunted around in the crumbs and muck under the edge of the cabinets for the folded pad of newspaper they used to keep the table level. After she found it, she opened her backpack and brought out her algebra book again. She still had six problems to solve.

  Two days later, the last of the doughnuts had turned to rock. “They aren’t safe anymore,” Margot had said but—as usual—had been unable to articulate why the doughnuts were dangerous or how they had gotten that way. Just like she had been unable to articulate why books were bad, or sunlight, or the sound of the garbage truck that came on Friday mornings. Caro didn’t know if Margot herself didn’t know or if she just couldn’t find the words, but she knew that her mother’s terror was real. That it consumed her, that it drove her into dark soft places and, sometimes, into flaming rages of fear. Sometimes when she thought of school ending and the long months and years that came after, Caro herself felt a panicking flutter of fear deep inside her, and the thought that the flutter might be something akin to what Margot felt—the beginnings of it, maybe—kept her awake at night.

  Caro took a bite of the stale doughnut. Chris was wrong. Stale doughnuts were actually pretty depressing. She dropped the box in the garbage.

  The white paper inside shuffled and shifted. She stopped and looked again.

  There was something else in the box.

  Something green.

  It was December. The sugar cookies Eat’n Park sold were all shaped like Christmas trees instead of smiley faces. Her manager called her up to the front; when Caro got there, he was wearing a scowl. “Somebody to see you,” he said. “Outside. Make it quick.”

  She went out. There was a bench there, for busy Sunday mornings after church when the breakfast crowd overflowed the lobby, but now there was only one woman sitting on it, huddled against the cold and smoking a cigarette. When she looked up at Caro, her face twisted into a sneer.

  “Well,” the woman said, standing up, “at least you’re pretty.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” Caro said.

  “Oh, don’t you?” The woman’s voice was cold. “How convenient for you. I’m Lisa Mitchell is who I am. Chris’s wife. His wife.”

  “Oh.” Caro took a step backward.

  “I found your hair all over my husband’s car,” Lisa Mitchell said. “I found your goddamned lipstick under the seat. You know what I didn’t find?” She tossed her cigarette into a snowbank. There was an ashtray right next to her too. “I didn’t find him. I can’t seem to find him anywhere.”

  Caro hadn’t lost a lipstick. She had only two, pink for Eat’n Park and red for the hotel, and they were both in her bag. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know what you think happened—”

  “I don’t care what happened,” Lisa said, her voice low and bitter and vicious. “I traced that son of a bitch here, to that crappy hotel, and the manager there told me you were a lying little tease with a fake ID and that you worked here.” Caro felt a surge of anger. But before she could say anything in her own defense, Lisa took a step closer. “God, look at you. You’re a child.”

  This woman was an adult. Adults didn’t tackle and spit and pull hair, but Caro’s body was wary, ready to fight. Her mind was ice-cold.

  Lisa tossed her hair. Her eyes were glittery with tears. “Okay, look. I don’t care. Whatever happened, whatever you did—I don’t care.”

  A group of diners was coming across the parking lot. “All right,” Caro said.

  “All right?” Lisa’s face turned red and the tears spilled over and suddenly she was screaming. “Where is he? That lying...liar—that—” The words seemed to tangle in her mouth and she tore at her hair with one hand, shaking with rage. “He took all our money. He took our dog!”

  The entering diners looked askance at the two women and went inside without a word.

  “Karma’s going to get you,” Lisa said. “It’s going to get you, hard.” She spit on the ground at Caro’s feet. So adults did spit. From one of her clenched fists, she threw something right at Caro’s face. Caro jerked back and it missed her, but barely. It fell to the frozen sidewalk with a snap and a clatter. Lisa turned on her heel and left. Caro watched her as she stomped across the parking lot, got into a car—it looked like Chris’s—and drove away.

  Caro stood for a moment, breathing in the deep cold air. When she felt calm again, she reached down and picked up the thing Lisa had thrown at her. The lipstick. The case had cracked with the force of the impact. Not Caro’s lipstick. Not Lisa’s. Somebody else’s.

  It was Clinique, though. Caro slipped it into her pocket.

  In the restaurant, the manager pulled her aside. “That’s it, Caro,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”

  “I’m a good waitress,” Caro said.

  “Yeah, but you’re a lousy coworker. I’ve been hearing complaints about you from the other girls for months, and now I’m getting them from the customers too?” He shook his head. “You’re out. Go get your stuff. I’ll mail your check.”

  “Fine,” Caro said. In the pocket of her green polyester jumper, her fist closed around the lipstick. She thought about throwing it at him. She didn’t. It was a good color.

  What she did was go into the back room, grab her bag, and walk out the front door and across the icy parking lot to the space under the light where her car sat and waited for her—for her, for tomorrow, for the next day. For infinite possibilities. For anything that might happen.

  NIGHT RUN

  by Wallace Stroby

  LATER, KIRWAN WOULD think about how it started, when he might have stopped it. What he could have done differently. But by then it didn’t matter.

  He’d just crossed the Georgia/Florida line on I-95, running south, the lights of Jacksonville in the far distance ahead. Two a.m. and his eyes watery, his legs jumpy. The Volvo had nearly three hundred thousand miles on it, and its suspension was shot. Every pothole or patch of uneven blacktop jolted his spine.

  Still, he felt himself drifting, eyelids heavy. He’d need to sleep soon but wanted to make it as far south as he could. The meeting at Marco Landscaping, to show them the new brick samples, was at ten a.m., and New Smyrna Beach was still about a hundred miles away. He’d give it another hour on the road, then find a motel.

  He thought of Lois Pettimore, Marco’s accountant. She’d be at the meeting. The same perfume as always, her blouse open one button too deep, with a glimpse of black lace beneath. Sometimes in their office he’d notice her watching him, but he never knew how to respond. He’d look away, his face flushed, then flee as soon as he had their order sheets and contracts.

  At the last meeting, two weeks ago, she’d handed him an invoice, let her nails brush the back of his wrist. He’d seen then that her wedding band was gone, only a faint white line left where it had been. He wondered if the imminent divorce she always managed to bring up in conversation had gone through.

  His right front tire crossed onto the shoulder, hit gravel. The noise and vibration snapped him awake. He sat up straighter and steered back into his lane, the momentary burst of adrenaline clearing his mind. That was stupid, he thought, dangerous. Stay alert.

  Powering down the window to let in the night air, he caught the rotten-egg-and-sulfur smell of the nearby swamp. Trees and wetlands on both sides of the highway here. Even at this hour, the air was warmer than when he’d stopped in Roanoke for dinner eight hours ago.

  A car flew by in the far left lane, a blur of taillights as it passed. The speed l
imit for this stretch of interstate was seventy, and Kirwan kept the Volvo at a safe sixty-five, let the other vehicles pass him.

  He turned on the radio, scanned stations. Somewhere south of Charleston, the all-news station he’d been listening to had dissolved into static. Now he got only snatches of rap, country music, preachers. Nothing coming in strong. Get that satellite radio set up, he thought. Do yourself a favor. Or at least get the CD player fixed.

  He drove a thousand miles a week, and sometimes during thunderstorms he would pick up faraway AM stations, the signal bouncing off the clouds. Once, near Atlanta, he’d gotten a talk station out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, crystal clear for a solid half hour before the storm passed.

  No such luck tonight. More static; then, near the end of the dial, someone speaking rapid French. A Haitian station out of Miami. He switched over to FM, finally got a country tune he recognized. He left it there, settled back.

  Sometimes at night, when the danger of falling asleep at the wheel was strongest, when he felt himself starting to dream, he’d turn off the headlights, the road going black in front of him. The jolt of adrenaline and panic that followed would wake him up, keep him going for another half hour. He’d leave the lights off for only a few seconds, but it was enough.

  There was a guardrail on the right now, and the lane seemed to narrow. He signaled, even though there were no other cars around, started to move into the near left lane, heard the sharp bleat of a horn.

  He jerked the Volvo back into the right lane, saw the single headlight to his left. A motorcycle had come out of the blind spot there. Had he missed it in the rearview? Had he even checked the mirror before changing lanes? He wasn’t sure.

  He turned off the radio, wanted to call out Sorry, realized how stupid that would sound. He slowed, waited for the motorcycle to pass. Instead, it came abreast of him, hung there. He could hear the rider shouting. Kirwan kept his eyes forward. He couldn’t make out the words, but his face grew hot.

  He slowed to fifty-five, but the bike stayed with him. He looked then. It was a big Harley with extended front forks, black all around, dual silver exhausts. The rider had a beard and mustache, wore a leather jacket and jeans with a wallet chain. No helmet.

  Kirwan faced front again. Don’t look. It’ll just aggravate the situation.

  The biker was still shouting. Kirwan looked in the rearview, hoping to see a vehicle coming up from behind that would force the bike to speed up or pass him. Only darkness back there. They were alone on the road.

  The yelling stopped. He chanced a look, saw the biker’s right hand leave the throttle and come up, middle finger extended. Kirwan shook his head, faced front again. Just go, he thought. I’m sorry about what happened, but it’s over now. Just go.

  The bike surged past him, engine growling, went up two car lengths, and swept into his lane. His headlights lit the back of it, the pale gray Georgia plate, and then the bike slowed and the Volvo was almost on top of it. Kirwan hit the brake, and the Volvo slewed to the right, the front fender inches from the guardrail. The boxed samples in the rear cargo area slid across the floor, bumped into the wall. He straightened the wheel, got centered in the lane once more. The biker twisted around in the headlights, grinning, gave him the finger again, then sped up.

  Kirwan felt a rush of anger. Without thinking, he hit the gas, closed the space between them. The motorcycle glided easily back into the left lane, the rider gesturing to Kirwan as if inviting him to pass. When he didn’t, the rider looked at him, grinned, and shrugged. A tractor-trailer came up in the far left lane, rumbled past them, disappeared over the rise ahead.

  Kirwan knew this part of 95—no exits for at least another few miles. He could pull over, hope the biker kept going, but there wasn’t much shoulder here. It would be dangerous to stop.

  The biker slowed until they were even again, then pointed at him. Kirwan tried to ignore him, kept the speedometer at sixty. It was no use speeding up or slowing down. The motorcycle would stay with him. He just had to wait until the biker lost interest, sped off.

  More shouting. He started to power up the window, saw the motorcycle ease ahead of him. The biker’s right arm flashed out, and something clicked against the windshield, flew off. Kirwan jerked his head back, saw the tiny chip in the glass. A coin, maybe. Something too small to do much damage, but enough to mark the glass, get his attention. The bike slowed, and they were side by side again. Kirwan turned to look at him then and saw the gun.

  It was a dark automatic. The biker pointed it at him through the half-open window, not shouting now. The gun was steady.

  Kirwan stood on the brake. The Volvo’s tires screamed, and its rear end slid to the left, the wagon going into a skid. He panicked, fought the wheel, and pumped the brake, trying to remember what he’d learned—turn in the direction of the skid. Don’t lock the brakes. The front end of the wagon swung from right to left and back again, headlights illuminating the guardrail, the trees beyond, the roadway, then the guardrail again. The sample boxes thudded into the back of the rear seat.

  He steered onto the shoulder, gravel rattling against the undercarriage. He braked steadily, avoiding the guardrail, and the wagon came to a stop, bucked forward slightly, settled back and was still.

  A cloud of dust rose in his headlights. He jammed the console gearshift into park, gripped the wheel, tried to slow his breathing. His knuckles were white.

  When the dust cleared, he saw the motorcycle. It had pulled onto the shoulder three car lengths ahead. The rider was looking back at him.

  Kirwan felt the sharp stab of fear. He waited for the rider to get off, come back toward him, the gun out. For a moment, crazily, he considered shifting back into drive, hitting the gas, plowing into the bike. Decided that’s what he would do if the rider came at him with the gun. Could he do that? Run a man over, maybe kill him?

  But the biker stayed where he was, boots on the gravel, balancing the bike under him. No sign of the gun. Kirwan wondered if he’d imagined it, if his fear and the night had colluded to make him see something that wasn’t there. Or had the gun just gone back into wherever he’d pulled it from? Maybe the biker had brought it out only to scare him, make him overreact and oversteer, wreck the Volvo on his own.

  The biker watched him as if waiting to see what he would do. Kirwan didn’t move, kept his hands tight on the wheel. The biker grinned, faced forward again. He steered back onto the roadway, gave the Harley gas. His taillights climbed the rise and vanished.

  Breathe, Kirwan told himself, breathe. His neck and shoulders were rigid. He could feel a vessel throb in his left temple. What now? Get off at the next exit, find a town, a police station, report what happened? Even if he did, he had no proof except the chip in the windshield, which could have come from a small rock, a piece of gravel. And the Harley had been moving fast. They’d never catch up with the biker, and what if they did? Down here, like as not, the gun would be legal—if there even was a gun. It would be Kirwan’s word against his. No witnesses.

  His cell phone was in the console cup holder. He could call 911, give a description of the biker, have the dispatcher alert the highway patrol. But he’d already forgotten the plate number. A G, maybe an X after that, but that was all he had. And calling it in might mean more questions, a report, hours spent in a station house or trooper barracks. And if they caught the biker, Kirwan would have to face him again, the man who’d pointed a gun at him, nearly run him off the road.

  Cars passed. When his breathing was back to normal, he powered the window shut, put on his blinker. He shifted into drive, waited until the road was clear, then steered into the lane, gave the Volvo gas.

  He would have to get the alignment checked, the tires as well. The Volvo had lost its grip on the road for a moment, and that had frightened him almost as much as the gun—the sense of powerlessness, of being out of control. He’d find a garage in New Smyrna tomorrow, right after the meeting; he wouldn’t put it off. Get the windshield fixed too, before the chip turn
ed into a crack.

  Back up to sixty, keeping it steady there. Any cars that came up behind would pass him, give him space. And with every minute, the biker would be farther ahead, farther away from him. Kirwan breathed in deep, then exhaled. He turned the radio back on, the same country station.

  After a while, he realized he had to urinate. He tried to ignore it at first, but the pressure in his bladder grew. He didn’t want to stop, wanted to keep going, make up the time he’d lost. But now there was a twinge of pain, and he knew he couldn’t wait until he found a motel.

  There were exits ahead now, motels and mammoth gas stations right off the roadway, their signs raised on poles so they’d be seen from a distance. He took the exit for I-10. At the end of the ramp, signs pointed left and right, logos showing what gas and food were available in either direction, how far they were. It made no difference. The restaurants would be mostly fast-food joints, and some of them would be closed at this hour. If nothing else, he’d top off the tank at a gas station, find a restroom.

  He turned right, the road here leading away from the highway. A mile ahead, he saw the lights of a truck stop and diner, a Days Inn adjoining them. He thought about checking in, but it was too early still, and he was wired, wouldn’t sleep. He decided to keep driving for a bit longer before he found a place to stay. Then a quick breakfast in the morning and on to New Smyrna. He thought of Lois, her perfume.

  He signaled, even though there was no one behind him, pulled into the diner lot. And there, parked alongside an idling tractor-trailer, was the Harley. Kirwan felt his stomach tighten, and for a moment he thought his bladder would let go. He pulled the Volvo beneath a tree on the edge of the lot, out of the light wash from the big pole lamps, killed the engine and headlights.

  Half a dozen cars here, and just the one tractor-trailer. Through the big diner windows, he could see people sitting at booths, two men at the counter beyond. No sign of the biker.