The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [132]
Wayne had ripped the CB radio from the dash, and as the trucker pulled from the rest area back onto the interstate, Wayne climbed around the spacious cab, roomy even for his frame, feeling around in every compartment and cranny.
Under the seat, in a wooden box, he found a hunting knife, sharp on its hooked end, serrated on the side.
And a gun.
Here we go, he thought.
He held the pistol the way murderer Wayne would, carelessly, confidently. He tried to see if it was loaded, couldn’t find the magazine release right away, then stopped looking because murderer Wayne would know where the fucking magazine release was. He at least found the safety and then scratched his head with the grip and had serious doubts he could pull this disguise off.
The trucker looked nervous, which was the only important thing for the time being; the whole point of pretending was to make this guy afraid. But not too afraid, not desperate like Wayne was. A desperate person might do something crazy, might call his bluff, might drive the damn semi right through the wall of a state police station. Wayne was ready to go that far—he had no choices now—but he needed to keep the driver on just this side of the edge for another eight hundred miles.
His name was Denny Waller and his face was pretty fucked-up. The bleeding had stopped, but his nose was crooked where it had broken and would have to be reset. He had a tissue, brown from dried blood, stuck up one nostril. His right eye was black and his whole face from the cheekbones up was a topographical map of busted capillaries. He’d taken about half a bottle of aspirin and some other pills Wayne didn’t ask about. If he was still in pain, it didn’t show.
“You still use a CB?” Wayne said after about an hour of silence, which seemed to be doing the trick, tensionwise, but was making Wayne tense, too, which he didn’t need. He fingered the wires that used to connect the radio to the dash. “I would have thought cell phones had made these things obsolete.”
Denny jumped a little when Wayne started talking, but he swallowed and nodded. “Cell phones ain’t much good if I need local info. I’d have to know who was around. Have to know their number.” His voice was anxious, clipped and nasal—there wasn’t much air getting through that nose. “And sometimes you just want somebody to talk to, right?”
“Yeah,” Wayne said. “But now you got me to talk to.”
“Yeah,” Denny said with a nervous wobble. He nodded at his radio on the floor. “It’s even better these days, they say, because you don’t have the … the douchebags sitting at home with the CB on. That’s what the old-timers say. Course, a lot of them used to get laid like that.”
“Really?” Wayne said.
“Yeah, that’s what they say. Back in the seventies, you know. Lonely trucker hag sitting at home alone with her CB.”
“Do you really believe that ‘Dear Penthouse’ bullshit?” Wayne said.
“Nah,” Denny said, and they laughed and for the first time Denny loosened his hands on the wheel.
Wayne asked, “You got enough gas to get to Chicago?”
“Yep.” Wayne was surprised he was so honest. The easiest way to escape would be to say they needed to fill up.
“What kind of gas mileage does this thing get?” For some reason, Wayne felt the need to correct himself. “Rig. What kind of gas mileage does this rig get?”
“It doesn’t get any gas mileage; it’s diesel.” Denny glanced quickly at Wayne to see if being corrected had pissed him off. It hadn’t. “With the load I got, all that water in back?” Denny said. “About five, six miles to the gallon. But I got a pair of one-hundred-and-fifty-gallon tanks, so we can drive a long way. I don’t usually like to go deep into the second tank, but you don’t look like you want to stop.”
Wayne laughed until he started coughing, and soon Denny was laughing, too. “No, I don’t, Denny,” Wayne said, and as a gesture of goodwill he put the gun on the floor between his feet and cleaned four days of dirt from his nails with the knife. Just