At the outbreak of the war, a point of contact in the industrialized Midwest proved useful to those out of work and unable to fight. Many more in the driver’s extended family joined them up North later on, to assemble tanks and armaments in converted car factories. How strange the once-familiar wasteland of steam whistles and clock-in lines seems compared to this no-man’s land of…what, exactly? It has gotten dark so fast, and there is such a noticeable lack of electric lamps in the desert, that the driver seems to be racing through pure night.

The sound of the tires accelerating against asphalt offers its own, strange type of solace. Despite the driver’s current ragged state -where one moment brings despair, the next a flash of murderous rage, but always detached with a numbing exhaustion- it feels good to peel away from such a God-forsaken corner of the Earth. His mind stretches out in both directions of the highway, thinking of how many more there are out there just like this one: little hovels of failure. It makes him smile the smile of a man who’s lost everything, but can still manage to move, race down a deserted highway. It feels good to speed; not only for the rush it brings, but because every second brings him closer to…The Moment. He fantasizes about it –not knowing how long it will take or how far he will have to go to find it- and it leaves a metallic twinge in his mouth. He doesn’t know what Paula’s killer looks like, but the driver can see his stunned expression as he pulls the trigger. Bang.

He and Paula had moved down to California less than a year ago, so they could be closer to his sister in Fresno. She had left Michigan just as the driver and his sweetheart, Paula, were really starting to settle down and get serious about each other. They discussed marriage -as a formality, since they had come to feel 'as good as' husband and wife over the course of their four-year courtship- and possibly moving away. Once the driver's sister learned of their deepening commitment, and their desire to leave Dearborn, she extended an invitation for the two of them to join her out West. It took them three years of soul-searching and saving, but in the early hours of January 18, 1948, the couple loaded up their Chevrolet pickup truck and struck out on the road, with a new life together as their destination.

Now here he is, driving that same pickup truck every inch of the two thousand, three hundred and thirty-six miles back to Michigan. The reverse trip feels a lot less like a homecoming than it should. Maybe that’s because the driver has no one to return home to. In fact, he must go directly to the home of Paula’s family, Karl and Erma Warshansky. They are sure to be no more welcoming of him now -bearing news of their daughter's death at the hands of an ex-lover upon his release from prison, and a warning that they are next- as when they first laid their disapproving eyes on him.