There follows the familiar sound of a sack of flour hitting the asphalt, accompanied by a hurt grown. The driver can’t be sure why the hitchhiker seemed to light up when the cop revealed that he is from Fresno, but the reaction doesn’t sit right with the driver. An urge stronger than the force of a hundred hitchhikers slamming into the pickup is telling the driver to take off, leave the two of them to sort out whatever the policeman was sent to sort out, and he can be in Dearborn by nightfall. The keys are still in the ignition, all he has to do is give them a turn and he’s as good as gone. His hand finds the grip of his gun instead.

“Why?”, but there’s no time. He sneaks alongside the truck. The policeman is directly behind it, while the hitchhiker cowers on the pavement between the two. The cop is backing up to firing distance as he reaches for his belt. The cop catches the driver coming at him, barrel first, and draws. There are simultaneous shots, but the cop’s has gone wide.

At the last moment possible, the hitchhiker was able to grab the cop’s legs and bring him down. Far from incapacitated, the cop struggles and kicks in a tangle of beige legs and denim arms. Another blast from the driver’s Barringer is enough to separate the uniformed man from the bloodied hitchhiker.

The latter checks himself for a gunshot wound as well. The driver may know more than he lets on. If he does, then the hitchhiker could have easily lost as much of his head as the cop. There is the expression ‘to lose one’s head’. In the case of the overzealous police officer, it wasn’t so much ‘lost’ as evenly distributed across two lanes of highway. The hitchhiker rubs the hair falling down his neck; as much for reassurance as out of disbelief at the painted highway before him.

“Whatcha got in there? Shot gun shells?” The hitchhiker only now realizes how the blast continues to ring in his ears, and trembles upon every one of his words.

“A lil somethin’ I cooked up m’self. Bullets fron-loaded wi’some-monium nitrate. Splode on m’pact.”

To the hitchhiker’s shocked, if somewhat deaf, expression the driver wants to add, “an don’t you forget it.” Instead, he smirks at the gun and then back at the hitchhiker. Both of them think –how will they ever forget?- how the cop’s head broke up like a pumpkin dropped from on high. Just like that: a stringy, pulpy goo everywhere.

The morning traffic should be starting up soon, and it doesn’t speak well for a man’s innocence to be standing on the roadside with half a policeman. They leave the corpse as it lies and wipe as much brain and fragments of skull as they can from the rear of the vehicle. Their clothes are also splattered. The hitchhiker has one change in his bag. The driver will have to wait for the first shops to open up in Plattsmouth, the next moderately sized city, before he can ditch his shirt and pants. It’s going to be one sickening ride into the city.

“Is something the matter?”

“Now.” He snatches the card but he obviously already know with whom he’s dealing.
“So you’re all the way from Fresno, Cally Fornya.” The hitchhiker perks up at this, but he’s already caught in the policeman’s glare.

“You. Let’s see some ID too.”

“But I wasn drivin off-cer.” The hitchhiker sings his best hillbilly impersonation.

“I said let’s see some ID.”

“Jee, s’pose I don have any. Well luck be…”

“Out of the car.”

The policeman is already swinging around for the passenger door while simultaneously undoing the latch on his holster. The hitchhiker is up on his feet, too. Before he slams the door, he gives the driver a meaning-laden look amidst all his mockery. Carefully, he points with his eyes from the driver, down to his pillow case bag, and then over to the policeman, who is already hauling one arm behind him and shoving him towards the rear of the truck. Words are imprecise as it quickly escalates to a back-and-forth of angry shouts. The policeman’s voice is prevailing, though it’s no clearer what he’s barking. A thud rocks the pickup and the driver turns to see the hitchhiker laid up against the side of the pickup.

“What’id he mean, with’at bag?” The driver reaches for it with a couple of curious outstretched fingers. Before he can lean over completely another thud rocks him from the seat. He can’t see the hitchhiker any more but judging from the sound, the combined weight of the two struggling men was thrown against the chassy.

Weston

They hear the inevitable whirl of motorcycle engine ten miles before Omaha. The driver is surprised by how quickly they were found. The morning has only begun to break over the frozen flatlands, where a million tiny stubs of wheat stalk –arranged in neat, infinite rows- seem to fracture the sunlight into as many golden shards. A few lonely silos watch over it all, while an even lonelier blackbird circles, but never manages to escape the dreariness of yet another crisp, clear winter’s day in Nebraska.

It sounds like only one engine, but in the silence of the fields, it carries on forever. The hitchhiker is equally perplexed. Surely the biker gang would have come out in great numbers to run down and lynch –or drag by motorcycle, or whatever it is they do- the brutes that killed their leader.

In the rearview is a uniformed man who sits atop his bike proudly and not threateningly, like a sheriff riding into town on his horse. Closer yet: it is a sheriff, or at least some arm of the state’s highway patrol. The driver and the hitchhiker know that this is not going to be good –a shade preferable to dealing with the biker gang- but at least the officer has arrived alone. Maybe he knows nothing of what they’ve done, or maybe he just wants to pass by. The pickup slows, then slows some more, and the policeman in the rearview slows with them.

Eventually they come to a stop, the bike tailing the pickup. Its roar dies down to a putter, and suddenly the policeman doesn’t seem so admirable or officious, waddling up the window in his birches. The driver already had the window down. He becomes increasingly unnerved as he can’t find anything to do with his hands. The hitchhiker has it easy. He pulls out another cigarette, lights it coolly, and leans back in his seat to take in the show.

“Can I see some ID?”

The first things to make the driver suspicious: although he often sped through the night just eat up time and distance, he was actually going a reasonable speed when the policeman appeared, even though there was no speed limit posted. Second, the policeman asked for ID, not a driver’s license. The driver, and certainly the hitchhiker, has had enough dealings with the law to know that when it comes to any kind of automobile, they have to ask for a driver’s license. Also well known is the prevalence of ‘crooked’ cops, and their willingness to work with common criminal, including biker gangs, if it meant a little more padding for their pockets. This cop looks straight –fine-combed mustache and all- but he walks with a swagger that says he feels himself to be way above the lowly status of beat cop. There’s definitely some unscrupulous characters supporting the cocksureness to those steps.

Confusing it for an offer of a makeshift tourniquet, the driver initially waves it off. “Thanks, but’am not bleeding that much.” The words are spat out with scorn, though it’s not clear who it’s intended for.

“Nah, ya thick shit. Th’story. On th’front page.”

Blood rises to the driver’s face in equal parts pain, impatience, and embarrassment at his limited reading capabilities. The familiar words “motorcycle” and “dead” in the headline is enough for the driver to guess that the anachronistic-looking photo is of Nado. Taken altogether, he is able to piece together the information.

“Shit.” The word is slow and drawn out, but also rich with inflection. It could say as much about his ever-increasing pain as the perennial riddle of human mortality. The driver is capable of deep thought when it is presented right before him; but when such pondering concerns a man who rushed him in a gas station store and possibly tried to run him off the road, one can’t expect the driver to be too sympathetic.

The driver limps to the pickup, leaving the paper where it lies on the ground. The hitchhiker hangs back a little. His eyes unwittingly float over to where he last saw the biker’s girlfriend disappear. The hitchhiker can’t see much beyond a dumpster, but he imagines that he and the driver are both being watched and laughed at. The girl will get back to Nado’s mates -who will undoubtedly hear of the news once they wake up, assuming they’ve gone to sleep- and a gang of an unknown number of bikers will soon be searching every highway, side road and parking lot for two men in a rust brown, mud-caked pickup. Where will they be when Nado’s gang receives word? And how far can a girl with multiple fractures and a swollen-shut eye get anway?

The hitchhiker catches the oversized plastic donut in the coffee shop’s window. It’s lit in friendly cursive: “Always time for a donut.” At its center, two baker’s fingers point to a six and somewhere between a three and a four. The hitchhiker jumps into his side of the car as he has so many times before. It’s time for them to go.

“What was that?”

He spots a woman’s high-heel shoe laying flat on the third step from the top of the motel’s stairway. It glistens, singularly lit by the persistent lamplight, so that the effect is similar to that of a lone artifact in a museum’s display case. That’s when he remembers: the girl! He chases through the parking lot to the motel’s back end. The hitchhiker probably would have caught her, or at least spied which back alley she ran down, if he hadn’t frozen at the sight of another shadowy figure. This one is hovering to the ledge of the motel’s balcony railing. It’s the driver and there’s something in his hand.

“Which way she go?!” He catches the hitchhiker in the gleam of his .44.

“You gonna shoot her?”

The driver answers with the clear and concise cock of the hammer.

“That-a way, but don’t”
“Somofabitch! You realize if she gets word back to those bikers what we done, we’re finished?” The driver is already at the end of the balcony before he’s finished explaining. He puts one foot down on the stairs and then another. He’s caught and he’s tumbling down. A bang rips the air, physically, while the blink of a flash illuminates the driver: ass coming over head in mid-somersault. He lands with full force on the concrete slab at the bottom. The driver doesn’t dare move, but his gun is still pointed out and above him.

“Quite a spill.”

“Fuck you.”

“I think we got bigger things to worry bout than some biker cooz.”

The driver simultaneously understands and is perplexed at how the hitchhiker could possibly know of his plan: had he said something in his sleep or while he was laid out on Indian crank? Before the driver can search the hitchhiker’s face for a clue –he’s a darkened mess with the lamp hanging overhead anyway- a newspaper is thrown over his numb, sure-to-be-hurting-soon body.

Those last few words pass the hitchhiker by, but he hears “biker” and puts his lick-cleaned hands on the linoleum.

“It’s right there on the front page.”

Sure enough, the paper is plastered with a giant photo of a man who would appear to be the biker known simply as Nado. Though the driver and the hitchhiker had seen all three up close –much closer than they would wish- the picture is only vaguely recognizable. Its an official headshot, probably taken from a lineup. While Nado’s wild beard is there, cut slightly shorter, as well as his off-the-rails stare, the mimeographed print of black and white lends the figure a more historic, and thereby unreal, quality. It’s as if the photo was found at the back of a drawer while some academic researcher, far off in the 21st century or even later in this century, was compiling a dossier on criminal culture in the 1940s.

As we can see here, it was the mark of gang members such as this one to attempt an approximated air of barbarism through their unkempt looks and a wild-eyed stare. It proved effective in distinguishing themselves from benign, motorcycle hobbyists, but it is questionable to what extent this look actually served to intimidate rival gang members and the authorities.

The hitchhiker holds the flattened, though no less haunting, stare and can hear the prissy, egghead voice continue in this manner for quite some time. It jars with the very flat, matter-of-factual block letters of the headline.

Motorcycle Gang Leader Found Dead Along Route 6

Why does the hitchhiker feel such a flutter of glee rise up his throat from his ribcage, like a hummingbird inside come to life? It commingles with the rush of sugar from the muffin and the caffeine kick from the coffee, and the hitchhiker cannot sit on that stool for another eternal second. He grabs the paper, leaves a pocketful of change and runs back for the motel. Stranger than his thrill at learning that they actually finished off that son of a bitch biker, is his immediate desire to tell the driver. The shadow of a woman at the opposite end of the motel breaks the hitchhiker’s enthusiasm. It hobbles like no human ever has.

“What can I get ya?” The clerk interrupts his wiping of the counters only for a second, to inspect the hitchhiker. He obviously gets many marginal characters in here, the only ones to be found with nowhere to go after the rest of the Midwest has long gone to bed, so he knows that minimal eye contact is best, even if these drifters are longing for some sort of a connection. The hitchhiker’s brilliantly blue, but unfocused, eyes certainly warrant the same, if not more, cautious treatment.

“A coffee. An a muffin. Please”

“Which one ya like?” The clerk nods to the shelf behind him seemingly without moving his head, a carefully practiced feat.

“Mmmmmmm, blueberry.”

“Comin right up,” as he drops the cup of coffee on a saucer in front of the hitchhiker. The latter stares and sips, and gives the muffin the same unflinching treatment once it arrives. The clerk wishes to carry on with his tidying up and regular, idle routine, but is unnerved by the way the hitchhiker seems to eat without blinking.

“It’s not natural, and I’m certainly not turning my back on that,” the clerk reasons to himself before cutting the string around the stack of newspapers that old Thom McCarroll just dropped off –his route begins at 5:30 am every weekday, starting just down the road at the print shop- and flicks one at the hitchhiker. It lands without the stranger so much as flinching. He’s finished the muffin in a few hungry bites and is now licking his blackened fingers.

“This’s excruciating,” thinks the clerk. He decides its better to engage the man, as long as it’s done with full attention to what he says.

“D’ja hear about wha’happened to that biker gang West on The Route, out round Mackey ways?”

There’s no way the hitchhiker could sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he would see a bright blue afterimage of the room; like a photo negative, except it would shimmer with the brilliance of a summer’s day. Between the peyote aftereffects and the sight of a pretty young thing –no matter how banged up and damaged- in the next bed over, the hitchhiker burned with the desire to not only stay awake, but to wrench as much out of these pre-dawn hours as he could. Unfortunately, the driver had already once stepped in and spoiled his fun, just as things were getting good. The hitchhiker’s restlessness led him to wonder what lay beyond that peeling motel door; what unknown opportunities –for fun, for mischief, for anything- would rear their head once he stepped out into the gray pre-dawn outside.

Much as he expected, the air was shockingly cold –like the driver, he considered his clothing needs only as far as the modest chill of the California desert. It woke him up further -not the effect he was looking for- until he thought the wet in his eyes would freeze over; but they only became wetter. The immediate freeze had originally made him double over, but he was soon able to straighten himself up and greet the barely brightening sky over Lincoln.

Water towers and the masonry of roofs could not have stood more still, nor have hid in greater relief from the streetlamps below. They were glossed with an unnatural painterly quality, as if the whole night had passed through and left them coated in a residue of its black-but-crystal-clear lacquer. If the whole scene had collapsed as one Hollywood backdrop, the hitchhiker would hardly have been surprised.

Besides gazing at its modest skyline, Lincoln, Nebraska doesn’t offer much else for the early riser (or for those to skip bed entirely). The motel is lit in a gentle, but lonely, glow from a coffee shop next door. It catches the hitchhiker’s attention. It must be a twenty-four hour operation, but there is no one inside apart from a young clerk in a white apron. The oversized booths lining the wall of windows seem a bit uninviting, but there’s one of about a dozen stools at the counter with the hitchhiker’s name on it (or maybe it just reads “the hitchhiker”) and he’s as good as inside from the moment he sets foot down the motel’s second-story staircase.

The clerk doesn’t show it, but he’s glad to see another living soul, even if it is the unenviable sight of an unkempt hitchhiker. The sugary smell of glaze will do well to hide the no-doubt gamey confirmation of his past two days and counting on the road. The hitchhiker allows the scent of brewing coffee and warm pastries to fill his nostril, before shortly filling his belly.