stopped crying. I wedged myself into a corner. It seemed like we'd have
to ride it out.
Then a pair of headlights appeared way in the distance behind us. We
watched as the car slowly caught up with the U-Haul. After a few
minutes, it pulled up right behind us, and its headlights caught us there
in the back of the cab. The car started honking and flashing its brights.
Then it pulled up and passed us. The driver must have signaled Mom and
Dad, because the U-Haul slowed to a stop and Dad came running back
with a flashlight.
"What the hell is going on?" he asked. He was furious. We tried to
explain that it wasn't our fault the doors blew open, but he was still
angry. I knew that he was scared, too. Maybe even more scared than
angry.
"Was that a cop?" Brian asked.
"No," Dad said. "And you're sure as hell lucky it wasn't, or he'd be
hauling your asses off to jail."
After we peed, we climbed back into the truck and watched as Dad
closed the doors. The darkness enveloped us again. We could hear Dad
locking the doors and double-checking them. The engine restarted, and
we continued on our way.
BATTLE MOUNTAIN HAD started out as a mining post, settled a
hundred years earlier by people hoping to strike it rich, but if anyone
ever had struck it rich in Battle Mountain, they must have moved
somewhere else to spend their fortune. Nothing about the town was
grand except the big empty sky and, off in the distance, the stony purple
Tuscarora Mountains running down to the table-flat desert.