Stay on Highway 127

I stay on Highway 127. The decision does not feel brave so much as stubborn. The old man at the gas station gave me the shortcut with entirely too much enthusiasm, and every instinct I possess tells me that trusting cheerful strangers in isolated desert horror stories is usually how people end up hanging from meat hooks.

So I stay on the main road. The powder blue International rumbles steadily beneath me while the Airstream sways behind it in the side mirrors. Sunlight bleaches the desert flat and pale around me. Heat rolls off the asphalt in visible waves. Somewhere far ahead, according to the gas station attendant, traffic has backed up for miles because of an overturned fuel truck.

At first, I expect to see signs of it. I keep waiting for brake lights to appear beyond the next rise or for a line of stopped cars to materialize in the distance beneath the heat haze. I watch for state troopers, construction cones, flashing hazard lights, or even smoke from an accident somewhere ahead.

Instead, the road stays empty. I drive another ten minutes with the engine humming steadily beneath me and the Airstream swaying gently behind the truck. The highway stretches farther into the desert without interruption, black asphalt cutting through endless rock and sand beneath the brutal afternoon sun.

Then another ten minutes pass, and I finally realize there is no traffic jam at all. The highway continues stretching ahead of me in a long black ribbon without a single stalled vehicle in sight. An occasional car passes in the opposite direction, but traffic flows normally. Nobody seems trapped. Nobody seems delayed.

My expression hardens slowly behind the wheel. “That son of a bitch,” I mutter. The realization settles over me piece by piece while the truck eats up more empty highway. There never was a traffic jam. The old man lied directly to my face to push me toward the mining road.

I replay the conversation in my head while my fingers tighten around the steering wheel. The nervous smile. The way he kept glancing toward the hills. The eagerness in his voice whenever he mentioned the shortcut. The cold knot in my stomach returns immediately.

I ease off the gas as cracked pavement appears ahead where an old service cutoff branches from the highway. Empty beer bottles glitter in the dirt nearby. Tire tracks scar the sand. The truck groans while I crank the wheel hard and begin the slow process of turning both the International and the Airstream around.

The maneuver takes nearly five minutes. By the end of it, sweat sticks to my skin beneath the denim overalls and the truck faces back the way I came. The truck now faces back toward the gas station and the distant hills beyond it while the engine idles steadily beneath me.

I sit there for a long moment with both hands resting on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield while I try to decide whether confronting the lying old man is smarter than driving willingly into whatever waited up that mining road.

Maybe I should go back and confront the old bastard directly, put my revolver on the counter and ask him exactly why he tried steering me into the desert. Maybe he scares easy once somebody stops treating him like a harmless old man. Or maybe he is bait.

Maybe the real danger is already waiting up the mining road, expecting me to arrive hours ago. I look toward the empty highway behind me. Then I look toward the distant mountains where the mining trails disappear into jagged rock and heat haze. Neither option feels good. That usually means both are dangerous.