languorously.
He saw the car first, a station wagon. It was pulled off to the right
of the roadway, approximately a mile ahead, near a drainage culvert
where no water flowed except during rare storms and flash floods.
His heart began to pound harder, and in spite of the rush of cool air
coming out of the dashboard vents, he broke into a sweat. This was it.
Then he spotted the motor home, too, half a mile beyond the car,
surfacing out of one of the deeper water mirages. It was lumbering away
from him, toward the distant wall of the valley, where the highway
sloped up between treeless, red-rock mountains.
Jim slowed as he approached the station wagon, not sure where his help
was needed. His attention was drawn equally to the wagon and the motor
home.
As the speedometer needle fell back across the gauge, he waited for a
dearer understanding of his purpose. It didn’t come. Usually he was
compelled to act, as if by an inner voice that spoke to him only on a
subconscious level, or as if he were a machine responding to a
pre-programmed course of action. Not this time. Nothing.
With growing desperation, he braked hard and fishtailed to a full stop
next to the Chevy station wagon. He didn’t bother to pull onto the
shoulder. He glanced at the shotgun beside him, but he knew somehow
that he did not need it. Yet.
He got out of the Camaro and hurried toward the station wagon. luggage
was piled in the rear cargo area. When he looked through the side
window, he saw a man sprawled on the front seat. He pulled open the
door -and flinched. So much blood.
The guy was dying but not dead. He had been shot twice in the chest.
His head lay at an angle against the passenger-side door, reminding Jim
of Christ’s head tilted to one side as he hung upon the cross. His eyes
cleared briefly as he struggled to focus on Jim.
In a voice as frantic as it was fragile, he said, “Lisa. . .
Susie. . . My wife, daughter. . .”
Then his tortured eyes slipped out of focus. A thin wheeze of breath
escaped him, his head lolled to one side, and he was gone.
Sick, stricken by an almost disabling sense of responsibility for the
stranger’s death, Jim stepped back from the open door of the station
wagon and stood for a moment on the black pavement under the searing
white sun. If he had driven faster, harder, he might have been there a
few minutes sooner, might have stopped what had happened.
A sound of anguish, low and primitive, rose from him. It was almost a
whisper at first, swelling into a soft moan. But when he turned away
from the dead man and looked down the highway toward the dwindling motor
home, his cry quickly became a shout of rage because suddenly he knew
what had happened.
And he knew what he must do.
In the Camaro again, he filled the roomy pockets of his blue slacks with
shotgun shells. Already loaded, the short-barreled pump-action 12-gauge
was within easy reach.
He checked the rearview mirror. On this Monday morning, the highway was
empty. No help in sight. It was all up to him.
Far ahead, the motor home vanished through shimmering thermal rents like
undulant curtains of glass beads.
He threw the Camaro in gear. The tires spun in place for an instant
then skidded on the clutching sun-softened blacktop, issuing a scream
echoed eerily across the desert vastness. Jim wondered how the stranger
and his family had screamed when he’d been shot point-blank in the car
Abruptly the Camaro overcame all resistance and rocketed forward.
Tramping the accelerator to the floor, he squinted ahead to catch a
glimpse of his quarry. In seconds the curtains of heat parted, and the
vehicle hove into view as if it were a sailing ship somehow making way
through that dry sea.
The motor home couldn’t compete with the Camaro, and Jim was riding its
bumper. It was an old thirty-foot Road king that had seen a lot of
miles. Its white aluminum siding was caked with dirt, dented, and