“He was really bombarded,” Rocky went on. He drove on the left side of the road for a while and then the Chrysler wandered back. “Good thing for you — he prob’ly won’t remember what you tole him. Another time it could be different. How many times do I have to tell you? You got to shut up about this idea that you got a fucking hole in your back.”
“You know I got a hole in my back.”
“Well, so what?”
“It’s my hole, that’s so what. And I’ll talk about my hole whenever I — ”
He looked around suddenly.
“Truck behind us. Just pulled out of that side road. No lights.”
Rocky looked up into the rearview mirror. Yes, the truck was there, and its shape was distinctive. It was a milk truck. He didn’t have to read CRAMER’S DAIRY on the side to know whose it was, either.
“It’s Spike,” Rocky said fearfully. “It’s Spike Milligan! Jesus, I thought he only made morning deliveries!”
“Who?”
Rocky didn’t answer. A tight, drank grin spread over his lower face. It did not touch his eyes, which were now huge and red, like spirit lamps.
He suddenly floored the Chrysler, which belched blue oil smoke and reluctantly creaked its way up to sixty.
“Hey! You’re too drunk to go this fast! You’re…” Leo paused vaguely, seeming to lose track of his message.
The trees and houses raced by them, vague blurs in the graveyard of twelve-fifteen. They blew by a stop sign and flew over a large bump, leaving the road for a moment afterwards. When they came down, the low-hung muffler struck a spark on the asphalt. In the back, cans clinked and rattled. The faces of Pittsburgh Steeler players rolled back and forth, sometimes in the light, sometimes in shadow.
“I was fooling!” Leo said wildly. “There ain’t no truck!”
“It’s him and he kills people!” Rocky screamed. “I seen his bug back in the garage! God damn!”
They roared up Southern Hill on the wrong side of the road. A station wagon coming in the other direction skidded crazily over the gravel shoulder and down into the ditch getting out of their way. Leo looked behind him.
The road was empty.
“Rocky — ”
“Come and get me, Spike!” Rocky screamed. “You just come on and get me!’
The Chrysler had reached eighty, a speed which Rocky in a more sober frame of mind would not have believed possible. They came around the turn, which leads onto the Johnson Flat Road, smoke spurting up from Rocky’s bald tires. The Chrysler screamed into the night like a ghost, lights searching the empty road ahead.
Suddenly a 1959 Mercury roared at them out of the dark, straddling the centerline. Rocky screamed and threw his hands up in front of his face. Leo had just time to see the Mercury was missing its hood ornament before the crash came. pulled out and began to move toward the pillar of flame and the twisted blackening hulks in the center of the road. It moved at a sedate speed. The transistor dangling by its strap from the meathook played rhythm and blues.
“That’s it,” Spike said. “Now we’re going over to Bob Driscoll’s house. He thinks he’s got gasoline out in his garage, but I’m not sure he does. This has been one very long day, wouldn’t you agree?” But when he turned around, the back of the truck was empty. Even the bug was gone.
Half a mile behind, lights flickered on at a side crossing, and a milk truck with CRAMER’S DAIRY written on the side