I was on the road again by one a.m., merging the Tacoma onto the empty highway four days before Thanksgiving. 

The asphalt stretched out like a deserted runway, devoid of slow-moving tourists or farm tractors. Abandoned rest stops flew by with picnic tables as empty as ghost towns. One lone gas station stood silent, pumps covered in dust and cobwebs, a haunting reminder of inflation’s power to prune the public’s desire to travel. Or buy cars so they could. 

The holiday hadn’t kept truckers out of the diner in Choteau. A grizzled oldster cursed me and the burst of the frozen outdoors that followed me inside. Freshly brewed coffee and sizzling bacon permeated the interior, demanding I sit for a full meal. 

A damned fool choice. Five hours remaining to Eureka and the kid had been missing over 24 hours. 

My vindictive subconscious, stuck on Johnny Horton Martin’s treacherous breakfast, blurted, “I’ll have the Angry Mexican Omelet,” before I could stop it. Thirty minutes later, my stomach growled its hatred. One more portent of doom for the Pierce-family Thanksgiving 2000. 

If I made it back at all.

The Tacoma and I were turning wheels out of Miles City by sundown. It was a heart-ripping moment with Nansi and the kids on one side and Renée’s missing child on the other. Without the Johnny Martin deal, finding that little girl and coming home with a pocket full of cash was the only play to make it through Christmas.

The engine roared to life while my children moaned their disappointment. Mother left five messages on my cell phone before giving up somewhere this side of Lewiston. My stomach ached well before I ate the miserable omelet. 

Crisp air whipped through my open window, flushing the tang of discontent. And with it, the fragrance of hope. The onrush of harsh, snowy terrain offered no confirmation that I’d made the right choice. Wind kicked blankets of snow across the highway. Dividing lines guided me with sporadic consistency, transforming into wide sheets that spanned the blacktop and blended the roadway into the snowy landscape. Gusts shoved the tail of my truck sideways, fighting against my efforts to stay out of the ditch. They had me second-guessing my decision to bring the Tacoma with an empty truck bed. In the end, she handled the challenge with responsive reassurance. 

Thermos full of coffee, lucky dog tags dangling from my rearview, I patted the tattered map in the passenger seat to help my memory and scratched frozen gravel on the way out of the diner lot. The sour odor from an old milk spill nudged me for a cleaning, but the temperature kept it at bay. I wasn’t smelling great by then either.

I almost had a smile on my face when the lunatic showed up in my rearview. He ran up behind me with such ferocity I thought we’d wind up as a single vehicle. When we didn’t collide, I expected him to go around with the proverbial finger.

Nothing doing.

I’d been driving as fast as I thought was safe, pushing sixty-five, when he appeared. I pumped it to seventy, but he stuck right on my bumper. After a couple skips in the road, I backed off, keeping it around sixty. 

“If you want to ride my ass all the way to Browning, do it,” I told his reflection. I could let him play that game until he tired out.

That little road bandito rode me for a couple of miles. He’d back off a bit and then race up on me again. Once or twice the moonlight would hit just right, showing me a glimpse through the glare of his windshield. He’d pulled his hat low, and I swear he wore a bandana over his nose and mouth, but my focus stayed on the highway.

He charged at me relentlessly, closing in seven or eight times. My heartbeat thumped like a tom-tom as I tried to evade his attacks. Each lunge forward, threatening to ram my tail end, spiked fear that I’d wind up rolling over the snow-covered prairie like tumbleweed. 

Anger ramped up as well. No matter how many times the bastard came at me, I refused to back away. I would survive this encounter, even if it meant a slam dance with Bandito on the deserted winter highway.

My foot hovered over the brake pedal, heart pounding murderously. I fought the impulse to stomp hard and smash his front end. Impulsive urges and rational thought raced each other for the win, one side pumping me up for a collision, while the other reined the fury in with a desire to get to Eureka before daylight.

We were doing sixty when he made a move to pass.

I gave him plenty of room.

His beat-up, light blue, 1989 F-150 whipped by on my left.

“One more way for Ford to stick it to me,” I muttered, glad to be rid of him.

He nearly clipped me cutting back in. Then the rat bastard slowed to forty-five. It was an act of God that I didn’t ram his rusted tailgate. He kept me guessing about switching positions by swerving back-and-forth across the two-lane highway.

I’d had enough of the idiot and smacked my palm against the horn.

He jammed his brakes harder, and I kissed his tail lightly.

My only choice was to get around him. That, or add another four hours that the little girl was missing. But going for it meant taking the risk that his erratic behavior was more than stupid. I could spin out and land in the ditch and burn the rest of the night. Less lucky, and I’d end up dead.

On one of its swerves, the F-150 went wide to the right, losing traction in its hindquarters. I took advantage and gave the Toyota enough rein to run past him. The F-150 found its feet before I made it, and it sped alongside. Before I could get another burst into my gallop, the lunatic veered into me.

I hit the brakes.

Bandito followed suit.

When I stomped the gas, the fanatical jackwagon rolled down his window, poked a pistol out and fired at my tires.

My wheels stumbled on the eastbound shoulder, and I lost control. With a sidelong skid into grassland, the Tacoma skated free of my control. The light snow cover allowed me to glide under a county road overpass as gently as a toboggan. I stared in slow motion wonder as the abutment skimmed across my view through the windshield.

That 1998 Toyota Tacoma came to rest in the snowy grass facing east with my headlights turning the tiny snowflakes to sparkles.

Breath came in ragged gasps, as the rise and fall of my chest attempted to tear my shirt. There didn’t seem to be enough oxygen on Earth to relieve the lightheaded feeling. I might have sat there learning to breathe again for fifteen minutes before Momma Bear rolled up in a County Sheriff SUV. I think it was a Chevy, but I was so shook up I can’t be certain.

The robust woman asked maybe three questions before calling a tow truck. She chatted about the late winter and her expected grandchild while we waited for a tow truck to wrestle my pickup from the road gutter.

Words came at me, and I nodded at what I hoped were appropriate intervals. My eyeballs felt like glass marbles as I half-listened, running a hand over the side panels of the Tacoma. There were no bullet holes. Maybe I’d dreamed the gun and the shooting. I chose not to mention it. No need to appear crazy on top of everything else. She’d probably want me to fill out a complaint form and burn more daylight. Even if they found the guy, he’d deny it.

“Thank you,” I told her, almost using the phrase “Sheriff Momma Bear” before catching myself. Hers was a name I should remember, but somehow I don’t. 

In the final exchange of goodwill, she said, “Pay attention to the lines in the rode,” and gave me a wink.

I handed her a business card for some disturbed reason.

She peeked at it with a confused smirk and tucked it away. That was the end of our conversation, and she climbed back into her SUV.

A diesel rig from Cho-tow—“pronounced Show Toe” the driver told me with a chuckle—hauled my wounded pride out of the ditch. We crawled around in the disarranged snow beneath the Toyota and did a prelim check for any twist in the frame, found it straight enough to drive and drug our dampened bodies back to our feet beside the pickup. 

He smiled. I sighed with relief, handed him a fifty from my dwindling pile and limped toward the nearest westbound gas station to use the toilet.