Flash Nano 3 Alone on a Highway

 

Flash Nano 3  "You are alone on an empty highway..."

After three some decades I still think of that drive across the desert. I had never been so alone on a highway.

I’d driven Boston to Maine on 93 and Boston to New York on the Mass Pike, the French autoroutes and the German Autobahns all at night when it was just me, a couple of cars and a few trucks.

Nothing prepared me for the miles and miles of sand, a few cacti, some sage brush.

It was stupid to do it during the day with the heat, but I was prepared with a can of gasoline, lots of water and a spare tire, not that I could have changed one. Even with the manual, I wasn’t sure I had the strength in my hands to get the bolts off: if I did, could I have secured them?

There was no place to stop and pee. Finally, I pulled over to the side of the road and squatted with the front and back doors open giving me privacy from nothing. My eyes searched for rattlesnakes. None appeared.

My tape deck played folk music. I was listening to Bob Franke sing For Real when I saw them. A woman and a child standing in the heat by the side of the road.

I never picked up hitchhikers. Any of them could be a serial killer but a woman and child? Heat over 100°? No choice.

She thanked me as she hopped in. I asked her where she was going.

“Anywhere.”

I offered them water. They drank and drank.

The little girl fell asleep.

No matter what I asked her, the answer at best was a few syllables so I stopped talking.

Four hours later we came to a town. The sign said, population 800.

“You can let me out anywhere,” she said.

I stopped the car by a gas station/store. I filled my car.

When I came back from paying, they were gone.

Over the years, I wondered who they were, what they were doing there, where were they going. It will remain one of those things, I’ll never know.

Notes: This is part of Flash Nano 2025 where Anglophone writers respond to the same prompt every day during the month of November. 

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