Thunder Road and Other Stories

1 | Spears Out

1 Spears Out

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My dad used to say, “It’s amazing what you can see from the back of a pickup, if you’re in the right place at the right time.”

For him, it was watching ash from Mt. Saint Helens darken the sky from the bed of his own father’s truck in 1980—when he was just 13 years old. For me, it was watching Mt. Hood smolder and spume at precisely the same age; sitting not with my back against a rusted cab, as he had done (I knew because he had told the story a thousand times), but on the hump of a brand-new Chevrolet’s wheel well—so I could keep an eye on the driver.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” said Jesse, watching the man carefully, suspiciously. He held his stocking cap down so it wouldn’t blow from his head. “And why the hell does he keep staring at us—me in particular?”

I watched as the old man (he had to have been at least 40) glanced at us through the rearview mirror—again. “Dunno; we’re probably the first people he’s seen—look around.” We glanced at the spare, hardscrabble pines and the blurred, yellowed sage; the great, brown piles of basalt which littered the plain like porous turds. “Probably hasn’t seen anyone alive since the Flashback.”

Quint harrumphed. “No way. He would have said something.” He stared through the rear window at the driver. “Probably cooks kids and feeds ‘em to the dinosaurs. Or he’s a pedo. I don’t trust him. Not around Jess.” He looked at Jesse as though the boy were fragile and needed special care. “Pretty, pretty—”

“Say it again,” said Jesse, menacingly.

Quint hesitated. “Say what?”

“What you just said. Say it again.”

Quint guffawed. “How can I say it again when I don’t know what I said in the first place?” He looked at me as though he were completely nonplussed—all Quint f*****g Holloway: Innocent Man. “I don’t get it. Seriously, though. What’d I say?”

“Ignore him, Miles,” said Jesse. “He just wants to drag you into it.”

Quint touched his fingers to his chest.

“Yeah, you,” said Jesse. “Peckerwood. Tornado bait. Son of a crawdaddy.”

“Yo, lay off that.”

“What’s the matter? Your trailer wheels showing? Wood booger. Swamp Yankee. Inbredneck ...”

“Okay; it’s not cute anymore,” Quint growled. “Keep it up. And I swear I’ll jam that stick right up your—”

“All right, knock it off, both of you. (I’d heard that in a movie once and had always wanted to say it in real life.) There’s a sign coming up—what’s it say? Is it Goldendale?”

The sign answered my question:

WEST 142

Goldendale

Klickitat

RIGHT ½ MILE

“Okay,” I said. “This is our stop; he said he was continuing on 142.” I reached for the thick, sharpened stick at my back. “Bikes ready and spears out—just in case.”

We unslung our spears and stood our bikes upright. “I’ll go first and you can hand the bikes down to me.”

“And if he tries something?” Jesse looked at his weapon; at the clean, whittled point, which had been untested by anything—the fresh, white wood. “I mean, are we talking fight or flight? Because I’m not sure if I’m ready—”

“Flight,” I said—without hesitation. I adjusted the strap of the Thermos (because that’s what the lead tube looked like), feeling the sheer weight of it, the awesome responsibility. “Because—what’s Hal say about unsecured places?”

“Commotions attract predators,” said Jesse.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Unless he has a firearm,” said Quint. He waved at the cab, where we saw the driver craning his neck and smiling at us—folksily, fatherly. “In which case, we kill the son of a bitch.”