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.