"Do you know what metaphor is, truckin mamas and poppas? Have you ever met with it in your waking hours? Benzedrine, there's a metaphor for you, and a good one. For sleep. It serves the same purpose but makes you understand better, makes everything clearer, opens the way to more metaphor. Friends and neighbors, have you ever seen dinosaurs lumbering past you, the road sizzle like a fuse, night drip down like old blood? I have, people, I've seen things only gods and the grandfather stars have seen, I've seen dead men sit in my cab beside me and living ones melt like wax. When you break through the cycle you're beyond the laws of man, beyond CB manners or Smokies' sirens or statutes of limitations. You're beyond the laws of nature, time, gravity, friction, forget them. The only way to win is never to stop. Never to stop. Never to stop."
The sentences are strung out now, a full minute or two between them.
"The only escape from friction is a vacuum."
(Miles flying under, North Platte glowing vaguely ahead on the horizon, Coyote, dogged, hangs on.)
There is an inexplicable crackling on the wire, as if he were growing distant. There is nothing for miles to interfere between. them. "The shortest distance — between twd points — ahh — a straight line."
(Two alone on the plain, tunneling Nebraska darkness.)
"Even the earth — is falling. Even — the sun — is burning out."
(The side-to-side drifting more pronounced now, returns to the middle more brief. Coyote strains to pick the voice from electric jam, North Platte's display brightens. Miles pass.)
"Straight — "
There is a very loud crackling now, his speaker open but his words hung, a crackling past the Brady exit, past Maxwell. (Coyote creeping up a bit, then lagging as the stockhauler picks up speed and begins to slalom for real, Coyote tailing it like a hunter after a gut-ripped animal spilling its last, and louder crackling as it lurches, fishtails, and lurches ahead wheels screaming smoke spewing saved only by the straightness of the road and crackling back when Coyote breaks into the Band yelling Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! pulling horn and flicking lights till the truck ahead steadies, straddling half on half off the right shoulder in direct line with the upspeeding concrete support of an overpass and he speaks. Calm and clear and direct.)
"This is Ryder P. Moses," he says. "Going west. Good night and happy motoring."
(Coyote swerves through the flameout, fights for the road as the sky begins a rain of beef.)