four-thirty he saw Big Charlie’s headlights flashing him, and his heart tripped.
He slammed his foot on the power brakes and swung off onto the emergency lane. The other truck pulled in behind and Charlie jumped out of the high cab and worked himself under the engine. He reached up into the machinery. He brought down his hand, then showed it to Davey. It shone with diesel fuel.
‘How much you got left?’
‘Nearly empty.’
He ran back to his truck and leaped up into the cab. He revved the big engine and slammed off the brake. His heart was pounding and he felt sick.
He drove hard, willing the truck to go faster, racing the moment Charlie’s lights would flash at him again. That meant disaster: trying to fix it themselves, patching up the leak, and siphoning fuel from his truck to Charlie’s, parked wide out in the open highway.
At twenty minutes to five Big Charlie’s fuel gauge registered empty.
At quarter to five he saw a sign, GAS FOOD LODGING IO MILES, and he felt a surge of relief.
There was a long hill ahead, stretching away in his headlights. The accelerator was pressed to the floor, he was praying feverishly, Please God not this hill … Black yellow tarmac swept up and up endlessly, and all the time the diesel was squirting out of Big Charlie’s fuel pump. Then at last the headlights picked up the hilltop, and far away on the horizon he saw the signs, a hundred feet high: Shell, Texaco and, higher than them all, Exxon. Then his teeth clenched: there was another hill to climb.
His eyes darted to the mirror, willing Big Charlie to make it. He was halfway down the first hill now, and he still could not see the lights of Big Charlie’s truck. He wanted to bellow out, God, help us now!—and Big Charlie’s headlights came over the crest. He sighed and trod on the accelerator.
Davey roared up the new hill, his headlights searching for the top. Then, five miles ahead, he saw the signs gleaming like lighthouses, and he had never been so grateful to see American commercialism blighting the landscape. Then he gritted a curse as he saw one more long hill before those truckstop lights. Big Charlie’s headlights came into his wing mirror. Davey started up the last long hill, and the crest came into view. He roared to the top, and Big Charlie’s headlights were in his wing mirror all the way. Just three miles to go: he started downhill towards the lights, thanking God, and Big Charlie was still hammering up the other side of the hill, and his truck gave out.
Suddenly the engine coughed, and Big Charlie trod on the accelerator. The truck jerked, the animals lurched, and the huge machine started to shudder. It came to a grinding standstill in the emergency lane of Highway 81. David was pounding down on the other side of the hill, watching desperately for Big Charlie’s head-lights. He came to the bottom, with the hillcrest half a mile behind him; then he swung the truck into the emergency lane and slammed on his brakes.
He stared into the mirror for half a minute, praying, Please God … The eight-lane highway was divided by a wide ditch of no-man’s-land—it. was impossible to drive across. Then he clenched his teeth and rammed his truck into low gear. He roared the engine and heaved the wheel into a U-turn. He swung his huge truck right across the highway, then jammed his foot flat. He pulled back into the emergency lane, then roared the massive truck northward up the southbound lanes, his eyes bright with fury, praying Please God no traffic for just two minutes!
He drove flat out, hunched over the wheel, heart drumming. The long black hill stretched up ahead of him, on and on. He was almost crying. At last his headlights showed the top. He leaned on the horn, and came over the top of the hill.
There, halfway down, was Charlie’s truck. Davey tore down the hill, praying to God to keep the traffic away, then he drove out across the highway into another U-turn.
He swung his huge truck right across the four lanes, desperately checking the long hill for headlights. His wheel was hard over, the great truck was coming around, and he thought he was going to make it in one swing. His right fender was coming around, around, around—and then it was not going to make it. He slammed on his brakes and jerked his engine into reverse. Teeth clenched, he twisted the wheel and let out the clutch.
Big Charlie bellowed, ‘There’s a truck coming!’
Suddenly a big beam lit up the sky beyond the crest of the hill. The truck full of elephants was stretched across all four lanes. David kicked the accelerator flat and his truck screamed backward as the terrible headlights burst over the crest, blinding bright. Then Big Charlie was running at them, shouting and waving his arms. David rammed his gears, roared the engine, and let out the clutch; the truck leaped—and it stalled.
It jolted to a stop across all four lanes. The other truck was three hundred yards off, hurtling down on them at sixty miles an hour. David bellowed, wrenched out the decompressor and slammed his foot on the starter. The truck was two hundred and fifty yards away now, and the driver still had not seen him. David shoved back the decompressor, and the engine roared to life. He revved it for all its might, took his foot off the clutch, and the massive vehicle surged forward.
The truck was a hundred and fifty yards off when the driver saw the long side. At sixty miles an hour a vehicle travels a hundred and fifty yards in five seconds. The driver leaned on his horn and jammed his foot on the brakes. There was a screaming blast and a shattering hiss of brakes, the roaring of engines and the screaming of tires. The other truck came tearing down the highway toward his side, twenty yards, fifteen, ten, five—blasting and screeching—and the driver swung wildly to the left; David roared his truck full of animals across the road, and the truck hurtled past, missing Davey’s by a yard, blasting a wall of wind in front of it, the driver bellowing obscenities. Davey brought his vehicle to a stop in front of Big Charlie’s and slumped over his wheel, ashen-faced, eyes closed.
Fifteen minutes later the two trucks of The World’s Greatest Show crawled into the all-night truck stop, one towing the other.
It was a big complex, scores of massive vehicles parked shoulder to shoulder. Some of the trucks still had their engines running, exhausts spewing, while their drivers were in the cafeteria, and the cold night air was dense with diesel fumes. David towed Big Charlie’s truck into the farthest corner of the big parking lot. Then they set feverishly to work. Davey wriggled under the engine with the wrench while Big Charlie held the flashlight. He began to unbolt the fuel pump.
‘Where’s another Fargo?’
They found one, and Davey scrambled under the hood and stole its fuel pump.
The two trucks of The World’s Greatest Show hurtled down the eight-lane highway.
The first gray was slowly turning pink above the Appalachians; then came the golden red spreading across the starry sky; and now the trees on the Appalachian ridge were flaming silhouettes. Then the tip of the sun came up, setting the east on fire, beaming down into the Shenandoah Valley, casting long shadows through the trees and the farmlands and across the highway, shining golden into the cabs of the two trucks and into the tired faces of David Jordan and Big Charlie Buffalohorn as they hammered down Highway 81. And for those moments the world beyond this ugly highway was young and beautiful; those purple and gold early morning mountains stretched southward in the sunrise, and Davey knew every river, stream, glade and gulley, and he was glad with all his heart for what he was doing.
For once upon a time,
