She opened the door and climbed into the cab before I could say anything. She smelled of gasoline. I rolled down my side window, and the gas smell became stronger.
“These shoes are ruined,” she said. Then she added crossly, “You’re late.”
She was right. It had taken me longer than I had expected to get rid of my load of produce in Dallas and to pick up the stuff I needed. I shifted gears and started off.
“Where are you going?” she snapped. “That pig’s still over there. You’ve got to—”
I turned toward her. She was staring at me in the dim light of the instrument panel. She wasn’t as young as I had thought, but she wore a good paint job.
“Who are you?” she asked hoarsely. “Why are you in this truck?”
“Name’s Thompson, ma’am, and it’s my truck.” I pushed the accelerator down. The engine coughed and then smoothed into a whine. I shifted through second into high. “What is it I got to do?”
“Let me out!”
We were rolling along pretty good. Sheet lightning shot a silvery glow through the dark sky in front of us.
“A lady got no business out in the thicket on a night like this, ma’am,” I said slowly. “I’ll take you where you can make a phone call or do whatever you need to do.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me, old man,” she said, her voice rising. “Stop this thing!”
I cut my eyes toward her. She had her right hand inside that big brocaded bag. It seemed to point in my direction. Just as I took my foot off the accelerator, the CB blared out.
“Hey, there, Southbounder,” the speaker said. “This is Arkansas Traveler, getting kind of lonesome. Got your ears on?”
The woman jerked. “What’s that?”
“Citizens band radio.” I pointed down the highway to twin points of light in the distance. “That fella comin’ toward us is calling me.”
I took the microphone out of its holder and pressed the transmit button carefully. If I jam it all the way down, it sticks. I got to get me a new mike one of these days.
“Arkansas Traveler, you got Bird Dog,” I said. “Bring it on.”
I pulled on the transmit button to make sure it had released and laid the microphone across my lap. We continued to slow down.
“Mighty fine, Bird Dog,” the speaker said. “You got rain ahead on the twin slabs. How’s it look over your shoulder?”
I pushed the microphone button gingerly. “Clean and green and dry all the way to Jacksonville, Arkansas Traveler, but mighty black to Woodville. Watch out for a six-wheeler with blown tires about five miles north of Village Mills. No lights showing.”
“Six-wheeler? A truck?” the woman said. “Damn that Vern!” She slumped back in the seat.
“That’s a big ten four, Bird Dog,” Arkansas Traveler said. “Some state smokies and a county mounty around Kountze. Keep your eyes peeled and your foot light on double nickels.”
“What’s he saying?” the woman asked.
The Arkansas Traveler’s lights were coming up fast. I pulled over on the shoulder and rode the brakes.
“What are you doing?”
“Stopping, ma’am. Like you said.”
“You can’t stop now!”
I shrugged. “Whatever you say, lady.” I romped on the accelerator and twisted back on the pavement.
“Got problems, Bird Dog?” the speaker blared.
“Nothing I can’t handle, Arkansas Traveler,” I said. “I think.”
We had not reached my usual cruising speed of 55 — double nickels — when Arkansas Traveler roared past — a big eighteen-wheeler, the top outlined in amber running lights.
“I’m on my way to old Tyler town, Bird Dog. Have a good night tonight and a better day tomorrow. This is Arkansas Traveler, standing by on nineteen. I’m gone.”
“Where did you say you were going?” the woman asked.
I hesitated. “Kountze is the next town. A few miles to Beaumont from there. Then Interstate Ten clear to Houston.”
The red lights of Arkansas Traveler receded in my rear-view mirror. I glanced toward the woman. She was watching the mirror on her side.
I pushed my glasses farther up on my nose and turned my attention to the road. Night driving bothers me. My eyes just aren’t as good as they used to be, particularly my “peripheral vision,” as old Doc Trumbull Called it when he examined my eyes last year. “As we get older, Charley,” he said, “we begin to lose our side vision. Then our foresight. But we never lose our hindsight.” His fat belly shook with laughter, and he charged me $25.
“Whooee!” Arkansas Traveler’s voice broke in. “What we got here?”
“Don’t answer him,” the woman said.
I shrugged. “He didn’t call me.”
We drove on. The lightning flickered continually ahead of us, and static began to hiss again on the CB. Drops of rain speckled the windshield. As the highway widened into four lanes, I felt the first gusts of wind shake the truck.
“Gawdamighty!” Arkansas Traveler’s voice was high-pitched and shaky. “Bird Dog, you still there? We gotta get the smokies — quick! I’m gone to the emergency channel.”
“Shut that thing off,” the woman said slowly and ominously.
I turned my head. She was facing me, her hand buried deep in the handbag. I could see the whites of her eyes. My gut felt queasy, and my legs tingled like they used to when someone pointed a gun at me. I wasn’t tired any more.
“Take it easy, lady,” I said soothingly. When I placed the microphone back in its holder on the dash, I jammed the transmit button down hard. I turned the channel selector to 9. The only sound was the roar of the engine, the rush of the wind by the open window, and the hiss of the tires on the pavement.
“That’s better, old man,” the woman said. “What did he mean, smokies?”
“State highway patrol,” I said loudly. “Sounded like he found something back there — about where I picked you up.”
“You say you’re going to Houston?”
“Could be, lady — if I don’t get too sleepy.” I looked at my watch again. I peered hard down the highway. There was practically no traffic this time of night, but the Department of Public Safety boys sometimes made a pass up this stretch of the thicket fairly early in the midwatch. It is a bad place for a motorist to get stranded.
“Stop calling me ‘lady,’ ” she said petulantly.
“Okay, Delilah.”
She sniffed. “Delilah?”
“Had to be Delilah,” I said slowly. “I figure you to be the kootch dancer with that carnival I saw in Beaumont — the one that uses a big snake in her act.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. She straightened decisively. “I’ll go on to Houston with you.”
I rolled up the window to cut down the noise. “You’ll have to talk louder, Delilah. My old ear ain’t so good. What were you doing out there at this time of night?”
“My car broke down.”
“I didn’t see any car.”
“I had to get it off the highway, didn’t I?”
I thought I could detect a reflection of headlights on the clouds in front of us. “Did you leave Samson back there, Delilah?”
“Very funny.”
The headlights came into view. “The driver of that eighteen-wheeler figgered it was funny enough to want the state police to help him laugh.”
“Just keep driving, old man,” she said shortly.
“Oh, I will — if I don’t go to sleep. I figger you got that snake in that big handbag, Delilah, and old Bird Dog ain’t about to argue with a snake.”
“Now you’re getting smart, Bird Dog.”