“Wind muss’ve kicked it up from th’salt flats.”

The clumps become even more infrequent before the haze lets up and the two are released onto a perfectly clear highway. The driver can see the remains of the storm in the rearview, and the pickup has been painted a new shade of dirt-white, but the suddenly restored calm makes the whole episode seem like a hallucination. It would have to be a collective one, though, because the hitchhiker is still bouncing from the excitement.

He continues to cough out his “can’t believe it”’s and “who would’a thought”’s, though the salt clouds have quickly faded from view. The driver feels the exhilaration too, but it is more from the prospect of finally having the hitchhiker awake and alert to answer some questions. The driver knows how easily the hitchhiker can clam up once again if he is so much as prodded with the wrong tone. He lets the excitement abate a little, while he gathers himself, his thoughts.

The driver isn’t sure what he hopes to get out of the hitchhiker, but knows that there is something to be found. It will either prove that his instincts are wrong and the hitchhiker is merely shy, but has nothing to hide; or else the driver is justified in wanting –however inexplicably- to stop his passenger in his tracks, with whatever blunt object happens to be at hand. When the hitchhiker starts clicking his jaw, loudly, in time to the squawking of the wipers as they grind dry salt crumbs into the windshield, the driver realizes that no matter what the hitchhiker’s story ends up being, it won’t make him any less of a nuisance; or a liability, as far as his mission is concerned.

“So where-ju say you was comin from?” The driver asks shortly after the last and fruitless squeaaaaaak of wiper blade. The hitchhiker doesn’t answer right away, but he can’t let this question hang in the air as he’s done with all the others. He feels if he doesn’t answer now, then that will be telling the driver too much.

“Death Valley, round Mesa Verde. We were routin ducts to th’coast.”

“At’s right,” thinks the driver. “He’d said somethin’ bout those ducks b’fore, but ah never quite got it.”

“Funny, cos you kinda have-a…a sorta…Mishy-gun type a twinge…”