“Yeah, my parents were from Dee-troy,” the hitchhiker answers very quickly this time.

“Oh, I’m from round there m’self. Not originally, but we moved out there when I was bout ten. Ya know Dearborn?”

“Nope,” again, too quick; but this time it rides on an insistent breath of finality. The driver decides not to push the issue. He figures he’ll get to the bottom of this whole Death-Valley-worker-hitchhiking-into-the-middle-of-the-country business eventually.

The thought renews another wave of nauseous panic; as if once he does get through to the hitchhiker’s story, it will somehow affect his plans as well. The driver can’t have that and dismisses the queasiness pitting itself in his stomach with a rub and a complaint of “goddamned pie.”

“Not feelin’ too good?” The question comes out as a taunt.

“I dunno. Must’ve been somethin’ I ate.”

“Well you’ve been driving quite a while, an at was quite a bit of excitement back there. You wanna take a break?”

Break or no break, the thought of giving the wheel over to the hitchhiker, this most troubling and troublesome character, repulses the driver. It is getting close to mid-day and even though it is winter and cloudy, the glare off the salt-bleached planes is taking a toll on the driver’s eyes. When he blinks, he sees the same image of a black, unfurled snake –with the same dotted stripes running down its back- set against a blank, but rocky, terrain. The serpentine road is flaked with scales of saline grit. They sparkle in the diffused sunlight, much like the clods of gray dirt clumped in the corners of the windshield and streaked across the glass by useless wipers. The thought of so much salt around them, everything caked with it, causes the driver’s eyes to sting and his throat to grow parched.

“Arright. I’ll stop off once we hit Colorado.”

The pickup has already begun to groan on the increasing grade that leads into the Rocky Mountains. Too far in the distance, their tops disappear somewhere between the brackish residue staining Utah’s foothills and the droopy ceiling of clouds, pregnant with gloom above.