Traffickers

1.
Morgan just wanted to make his mother happy.  He also needed a loan.  But what good son doesn’t want to please his mother?  Everyone’s got mixed motives.

See: Morgan is between jobs.  The internet concierge idea didn’t work out and the inland wastewater shrimp farming venture failed as well.  Investors were threatening litigation and debts were due and several of the bill collectors had proven themselves annoyingly persistent.  So Morgan had to hole-up at his property on Okoboji, a cottage purchased as an income-producing asset -- Air B’n B to be precise.  The cottage was where the beach had been before the drought dropped the water-level, a lake-home down a gravel lane that looped around the bay, about mid-way between the casino and Arnold’s Park amusement park.  The location was prime, convenient to both attractions, and Morgan had invested some money and a lot more sweat equity in renovating the place, and, now, just as summer was approaching and, with it, the high season in northwestern Iowa tourism, circumstances compelled him to retreat to his property, regroup and lick his wounds, and, therefore, since he was dwelling in his investment not earn a penny on the place.  It was his custom to call his mother once a week on Sunday, and, on this unseasonably warm afternoon, he is sitting in his underpants in a folding beach chair, talking to his mother and drinking beer on his Air B’n B porch that overlooks the muddy shallows and his swimming dock stranded out in the black bog where the lake was once.   

Mom wants to talk about Rachel.  Poor Rachel.  She is living in a Denver suburb with her most recent boyfriend, an older man who works as a physical therapy aide at the VA hospital.  Morgan has never had the pleasure of meeting this man.  He isn’t close to Rachel who is ten years his junior and the focus of the conversation bores him.  Some birds with long legs are poking around in the black mud beneath Morgan’s stranded dock.  Beyond the mud on open water, a few battered-looking fishing boats are also poking around.  It’s too early for water-skiing and, in fact, despite the warm sunshine, there’s still a few fibrous-looking crescents of winter ice in the tight little bays where the shade trees lean over the shore.  The Ferris wheel and the roller-coaster across the lake are motionless and silent.  It’s pretty in the summer time when Arnold’s Park is lit up like a Christmas tree and music wafts across the lake, but nothing much is happening now.

Mom says that Rachel is very unhappy and that the VA hospital nurse, a bass player in a Denver garage band named The Stiffs, has been drinking too much and, even, maybe, slapping his sister around a little.  This doesn’t much interest Morgan.  Rachel is annoying and has bad taste in men, selecting them on the basis of their resemblance to famous rockers – the VA nurse supposedly looks just like The Edge in the band, U-2.  Morgan would like to ask his mother for a loan but she keeps chattering on and on about Rachel and how she has no friends in Denver and is all alone and, further, says that Rachel has asked to be rescued and brought back home to Des Moines – she can’t make the trip on her own because her boyfriend who looks just like Mr. Edge is “controlling” and Rachel has no money and her vehicle which failed during the winter and had to be towed to the shop remains with the repairman because there are, supposedly, no funds with which to pay his bill.  So it doesn’t seem propitious for Morgan to ask for a loan in light of this subject of conversation.

“I would like you to go out there,” Mom says, “I can pay you gas money.  You need to rent a U-Haul and go to Rachel’s place when her boyfriend’s at work and get her out of there.”

“Extract her, you mean,” Morgan says.  “And probably get the shit kicked out of me by Joe Edge or whatever his name is.”

“You’ll need to time it when the guy isn’t there,” Mom says.

Morgan promises to think about it. 

A couple weeks pass.  Mom brings up the rescue mission every time they talk.  Morgan is still thinking about it.  The ice has melted and, sometimes, pontoon boats float in the center of the lake crowded with people who are drinking and casting fishing lines over the side but not catching anything.  It’s still too soon for the jet-skis and the water skiers.  The amusement park is dark during the weekdays but bright on Friday and Saturday nights, the Ferris wheel and roller coaster outlined in colored bulbs that reflect in the still, black expanse of limpid water.   

One Sunday, Mom says that Rachel’s best friend, a lady cop named Chastity, has reported to her that the VA nurse is beating up his sister about every five or six days and that Rachel has gone to the emergency room on a couple of occasions.  “She should get a restraining order,” Morgan tells his mother.  “The guy is supposedly threatening to kill her,” Mom says. “She’s panicked.  But Chaz will go with you.  She’s a female cop.”

Morgan remembers Chastity, who goes by the nickname “Chaz”, from when Rachel was in High School.  Chaz is very attractive.  Boys used to describe her as “smokin’ hot.”  Because she’s a lady-cop, Morgan assumes that she is very physically fit.  Dope is legal in Colorado and he, suddenly, flashes on smoking weed with Chaz under the noble ramparts of the Rocky Mountains – it’s a cheerful thought.

Mom says that Chaz, who knows all about the “legalities” of this situation, has volunteered to ride with Morgan when he goes to Denver and help with the driving.  Time, it seems, is of the essence.  Morgan asks when Chaz can leave.  “She works strange hours, 12 hour shifts, three days a week and, then, four days the next week.  It alternates,” Mom says.  “She wants to go right away because she says she’s deathly afraid about what will happen out there.”

Morgan says that he has some business to transact, a couple of appointments also for the upcoming weekend, but that he can cancel these meetings if Mom will wire him five-hundred dollars for gas.  “I could go on Thursday afternoon, if Chaz will come out here to meet me,” Morgan says.  “I’ll check with her,” Mom tells him, saying that she’ll call right back.  “Oh, one more thing,” Morgan says.  “You said I needed to rent a U-Haul to get Rachel’s stuff back here.  I’ll need another thousand for that - they’ll want a deposit.”  Mom says that she doesn’t know if Rachel wants anything but the clothes on her back.  “It’s an awful relationship,” Mom says.  “She just wants out.”

“No, we’ll need to pick up her stuff,” Morgan tells his mother.  “I don’t want that abusive son-of-a-bitch to keep her stuff.”

Mom sounds doubtful.  “I’ll call you back after I talk to Chaz,” Mom says.

“I’m looking forward to your call,” Morgan responds in a business-like way.


2.
Thirty miles beyond Central Daylight Savings Time: car-clock doesn’t synch with cell-phone time. 

Max: “Can you set back the clock on the console?”

Hani’s long fingers pushing buttons.

“No good. Hab to pull ober,” Hani says.

“There’s cars behind me,” Max replies.  “Trucks”

Smear of yellow moon skidding over the horizon.  Treeless antelope-prairie.  Utility tower blinking on barren flat-topped hill.

Wide-shoulder with a round nest of fur forty feet away, some animal smashed by a truck, spray of pinkish gravel, moon the color of amber.

Max turns off the panel-van’s ignition.  Hani re-sets the display clock.  Trucks sail by, slipstream thudding against the van.

Hani says: “Dare is dat pee-rat car.”  A vehicle passes not bothering to pull into the far lane.

“It’s been chasing us since Lincoln,” Max says.

“Mebbe is anoder car.”

“I think there’s pretty much only one that looks like that.”

“We’re bean fool - ohed.”

“You’re paranoid,” Max says.

“Para...noyed?”

Glint of copper filling the van.

“Nuts, crazy.”  Max doesn’t speak Somali that well.  Never got into the habit.  Can’t think of the right word.

Clock corrected and back on the road again – about 3 a.m.


3.
The meet’s at 8.  Morgan re-fuels at a truck stop a mile from the Shelby rest stop.  He’s a little early and so he pays extra for a car-wash.  Might as well ride in style.  After the Impala is washed, he slugs some quarters into a pay-vacuum and uses the plastic attachment to suck out some leaf litter and sand on the floor pads. 

Morgan drives to the rest stop on the west-bound interstate.  It’s at an exit where an overpass crosses over the four lanes.  He sits in his Impala watching a couple of old women walking dogs on the grassy median between the truck and the car parking lots.  People go in and out of the toilets.  The freeway hums like a taut, stretched wire. 

Chaz doesn’t show up.  Morgan paces the sidewalk in front of the vehicles parked at the rest stop.  A man and a woman sit at a picnic table and eat fried chicken.  The night is cool with a brisk wind.  The fields stretching to the horizon are seamed with corn-stalk stubble.   He calls Chaz’ number, but it must be a land-line – no one answers.  People aren’t always reliable – that’s for sure.

Then, it occurs to Morgan that she may be waiting for him on the other side of the overpass, at the rest stop for eastbound vehicles.  He drives over to that facility. 

Although he hasn’t seen her for years, Morgan recognizes Chaz standing next to a big black pick-up with a king cab.  She’s tall with an extravagant halo of blonde hair framing her face.  A man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans stands at her side.  The man seems to be a little younger than her, head shaved to conceal incipient baldness.  He’s shorter than her but with broad shoulders and compact piston-like legs. 

Morgan approaches tentatively.  Chaz looks at him, a puzzled expression on her face.  Then, she calls out in a silvery, bell-like voice: “Morgan...you look a lot like your sister.”  Chaz says that she didn’t recall his appearance, but that he has the same features at Rachel.  The burly man blocks Morgan’s path to Chaz, putting out his hand to be shaken.  He grips Morgan’s hand tightly, encircling his knuckles with his big fist and, then, squeezing so hard that Morgan gasps.  “This is Billy,” Chaz says, “my boyfriend.”  Billy pushes his bullet-shaped bare head a little too close to Morgan who backs up a step.  “Pleased to meet you,” Billy says, scowling and, obviously, not pleased in any way.

Chaz is taller than them both.  Her legs are long and she has a long-distance runner’s body.  Her features are a little sharper and more pronounced than Morgan remembered – there’s a sculpted quality to her chin and her nose is beak-shaped between high cheek-bones rouged pink. Her eyes are raccoon-ringed with eye-shadow and she wears her sunglasses clipped to the top of her shirt.  One of them, either Chaz or her boyfriend, smells slightly of patchouli. 

Chaz reaches behind the truck’s passenger seat and lifts a brown Louis Vuitton bag, larger than a purse, but smaller than a suitcase.  She hugs her boyfriend who puts his gorilla-vise hands down low around her hips.  His bald head orbits her face ringed like Saturn in blonde hair.  The sun has dropped below the horizon and its chilly now and the cars throbbing by on the freeway are pushing their low-beams ahead of them.  The boyfriend asks rhetorically if he can accompany her, but the discussion is for Morgan’s benefit only and the question has already been answered and answered, and, then, after putting her bag in the back seat of the Impala, she is positioning herself and her long legs in the passenger seat of his car. 

“I’m ready if you are,” she says.

“We have a long drive ahead of us,” Morgan says.

“Where is the U-Haul?”  Chaz asks.

“I couldn’t rent one – they were all out on the road,” Morgan says.

In fact, there’s a problem with his driver’s license and he isn’t insured either and, so, there was no way he could rent a U-Haul trailer even if he had wanted. 

“That’s too bad,” Chaz says.  “We’ll have to just get her out of this situation with as much as she can carry.  We can get some garbage bags maybe at a Walmart for her stuff.”

Morgan eased onto the freeway, finding a slot between two long trucks.

“Are you going to kick his ass?” Chaz asked. 

“What?”

“That guy who’s beating up your sister,” Chaz said.  “Billy wanted to go along and administer an ass-kicking to that guy.  But he’s a cop and I don’t want him to get in trouble.”

“I’m no longer in the ass-kicking business,” Morgan said.

“Oh, come on,” Chaz replied.  “Just a little bit?”

“Not even a little bit,” Morgan told her.

“A guy who treats a woman like that is a coward, a total pussy, I could bitch-slap him myself,” Chaz said.  “There’s a principle at stake here.  You don’t get to act that way.  Never, under no circumstances.”

As they were coming down the long hill above Omaha, Chaz asked Morgan if he had a gun. 

“Of course,” Morgan said, but he was lying.  He had no gun and couldn’t buy a firearm as a result of some inconvenient records that affected his right to bear arms.

“That’s good,” Chaz said.  “Because we might have to point a gun.  You never know with these wife-beater fucks.” 

“No, you never know,” Morgan agreed.

The big silver bridge below the rounded bluff opened its wings for them and the Missouri River spread bank-to-bank filled up with meltwater from the Dakotas and its head waters in Montana.  The red “Woodman of the World” sign on a downtown skyscraper greeted them and, then, slid away, in the wake of darkness behind them. 

“I was thinking we would have to stop at Walmart or something and acquire a firearm,” Chaz said.  “You know for the big beat-down.”

“I thought you would be carrying a weapon,” Morgan said.

“Why?”

“You’re a cop right?”

“No,” Chaz said.  “I’m just dispatch, a dispatcher for law enforcement.  I don’t go out in the field.”

“I thought you were a cop,” Morgan said.

“No, I’m sleeping with a cop,” Chaz said.  “But I’m not a cop myself.”

On the outskirts of Omaha, fast food places and motels lined long, straight boulevards.  Car dealerships with pennants and big top tents in their lots stood among strip malls and big retail stores with glowing, colossal signs on their facades.  They stopped at a Runza drive-through.  “Whenever I’m in Nebraska, I have a Runza sandwich,” Morgan said.  Chaz had a wrap with some fries.

In the open country east of the Lincoln exits, Chaz asked Morgan where the “power point” was located in the Impala.  She said: “My cell-phone is running low.” 

“I don’t think I have a power-point,” Morgan said.

“Fuck, how old is this car anyway?”

“Pretty old, but runs like a top,” Morgan replied.

“I guess I’ll just conserve the charge, then...” Chaz said, turning off her phone. 

They saw the capital building at Lincoln rising over the city and the huge football stadium like a aircraft-carrier beached in the dark. 

“I got off work at 5,” Chaz said.  “Been working four days straight, 12 hours shifts.  I feel a little crusty.  Do you mind if I sleep for awhile?”

“Be my guest,” Morgan said.

The road ran straight as an arrow in a river valley where the gravel pits lining the interstate were full of dark water.  The country was empty except for the freeway where trucks made their way west through the night. 


4.
His Big Gulp coca-cola from Runza was a bladder-buster and Morgan pulled off the road at the Goehner rest stop.  The place wasn’t that far from Lincoln, less than a half-hour.

“Wakey, wakey,” Morgan said softly.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Chaz said.  “I’m so fuckin’ tired.  But I don’t sleep well in a car.  Anyway, I need to pee too.”  She asked him if he had any beer in his trunk.  “I could sip a beer while we drive,” Chaz said.  “That might put me to sleep.”

Morgan didn’t have any beer. 

“This road trip is turning out to be a real bummer,” Chaz said.

In the rest stop, someone was punching the pop machine.  A truckdriver with a grey beard and wearing his pajamas, baggy sweat pants and a tattered yellow tee-shirt, was smoking a cigarette and watching traffic come and go.  The men’s toilet smelled bad and Morgan held his breath, washing his hands without inhaling and skipping the hand-dryer with the puddle of water dripped under it.

Chaz was in the toilet a long time.  Morgan stood by the water-fountain, looking at a map of Nebraska spread across the wall under glass.  A thumb-tack marked the location of the rest-stop.  The map was big and distances seemed daunting.  Next to the map, a couple of flyers were posted in the display case.  One of them showed a picture of large man, portrayed in silhouette, dragging a small, cowering woman toward a van.  STOP HUMAN TRAFFICKING, the poster said.  A list of “trafficking indicators” printed in English and Spanish told Morgan that victims of trafficking, often, showed signs of injury, were poorly dressed, not allowed to speak to strangers, and might seem to be under the supervision of some other person:  If you see something, say something – Si ve algo, diga algo – with a toll-free phone number. 

Morgan went to the car and sat behind the wheel.  A man with a sore foot limped into the rest stop kiosk with a young girl following him.  See something, say something.

Chaz ambled out of the women’s toilet, paused to look at the map, and, then, puzzled-out the Human Trafficking sign.  She got into the car and buckled her seat belt.  “The crazies are all out tonight,” Chaz said.  Morgan nodded as she told him that some girl had tried to tell her something in a language that she didn’t recognize.  “She didn’t want to leave the toilet,” Chaz said.  “She kept mumbling something about Denver.” 

Morgan was puzzled.  Other than Chaz, he hadn’t noticed any women entering or leaving the toilet.  The young girl with the man with the sore foot was in the rest room now, but she had passed through the door after Chaz emerged.

Chaz took a thin joint from her purse.  “Do you want to smoke some weed?” she asked Morgan.  “Not now,” he told her.  “I won’t be able to drive.” 

“It’s not that good of weed,” Chaz said.  “We’ll get the primo stuff in Denver.  You know it’s legal.”

Morgan backed up.  Chaz rolled the window down.  It was cool and smelled wet, the river bottom where they were driving flooded in some places, a black lawn rolling out between the little pothole lakes that reflected the stars. 

Set apart from the other parked vehicles, Morgan noticed a small white panel truck with a hatchback and rounded corners.  The panel truck displayed a Minnesota license and its windshield was tinted so that you could not see into the vehicle.  Morgan saw a chain and padlock wrapped around the handles on the rear doors.  Other than the windshield and front-seat side windows, there were no other openings into the van.  One of the rear doors was blistered with a plate-sized round portal covered with a round plastic dome.  The sides of the panel truck were ghost-white without writing or advertisement or any kind of placarding.  A figure was hunched in the shadow of the van, sitting on the curb.

Morgan passed the panel truck and, then, accelerated down the entrance ramp.

As he was merging onto the freeway, he gasped.  An old stationwagon was rolling down the right-hand lane of the Interstate completely cloaked in thick, coagulated mud.  For some reason, Morgan hadn’t seen the car as he merged and he almost clipped it with his Impala.  Chaz exhaled a big, sweet-smelling cloud of dope-smoke.

“Jesus!” Morgan said.

“You nearly hit that dude,” Chaz said.  “And you’re not even stoned.”

“Not yet,” Morgan said.

The stationwagon looked as if it had been towed up out of a sewer.  The mud was all warted and stiff on the sides and the rear of the car and the hood were also shit-brown with the stuff.  Windshield wipers had cleared a couple of arched eye-holes on the front of the car, but otherwise the windows were all smeared with mud. 

Morgan had jerked the wheel of the Impala to the side to avoid crashing into the left front quarter-panel of the mud-car.  The vehicle seemed to take no notice that he was nearby on the highway, arrowing along the right-hand lane without any perturbation at all. 

“I wonder what happened to that car?” Morgan said.

“Fell in the shit, that’s for sure,” Chaz replied. 

Morgan kicked down on the accelerator, shifted lanes and drove around the mud-car.  The highway was very straight and flat. Far away, there were low bluffs hunched up against the black horizon.  A gravel road ran parallel to the freeway, linking the little round lakes.  A bonfire flickered between two of the ponds and, then, they rushed past the flames, Morgan passing a few trucks and, then, settling into the groove of the road.  Chaz took a few more puffs from her joint and, after pinching out the flame, carefully stored the roach in her purse. 


5.
About fifteen miles past the rest-stop, the odd-looking white panel truck from rest stop appeared behind them.  The van came uncomfortably close to the rear of the Impala, then, swerved left, rocking a little on its tires, as it passed them. 

Chaz said that she thought she saw a face behind the round dome of the rear portal.

“I didn’t see it,” Morgan told her. 

“No windows in that vehicle,” Chaz said.  “Looks suspicious.”

Tail-lights glinted ahead of them.

“Did you read that poster about human trafficking?” Chaz asked.

“Yes,” Morgan said.

“There’s a lot of awful things that go on,” Chaz said.  “I know because I get the calls.  To dispatch cops.  I think I have post-traumatic stress.”

“From all the police calls?”

“And from the rape...being raped.  You know, I’m a survivor of sexual violence.”

“I didn’t know that,” Morgan said.

“I’m not going to explain myself. I don’t have to explain myself.  It’s no one’s business, but mine.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to tell me anything.”

“I don’t have to and I won’t,” she said.  It was silent as she waited for Morgan to ask more about her rape.  He didn’t say anything.

“Sometimes, I can’t believe men,” Chaz said. 

“What do you mean?” Morgan asked her.

“You see - I don’t have to explain myself,” Chaz replied.

The white panel truck’s speed was erratic.  The distance between the Impala and the taillights closed.

“There was a girl at the rest stop,” Chaz said.  “She looked unhappy.”

“Lots of people look unhappy,” Morgan said.

“She looked very, very unhappy,” Chaz said.

Morgan signaled, let a truck pass on his left, and moved into the passing lane himself.  They slipped back the white van with the tinted windshield and the odd nautical portal in the rear door.,

“Now, they are behind us,” Chaz said.  “I don’t know if that’s good.  We should follow them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the way that van looks,” Chaz said.  “Call it intuition if you want.”

“Intuition of what?”

“I think that girl who looked so unhappy is in the van,” Chaz said.  “I’m pretty convinced of it.”

“Did you see her get in the van?” Morgan asked.

“No,” Chaz replied.  “She just sort of vanished.”

Chaz turned around in her seat and looked over her shoulder at the headlights behind them.  She took out the half-smoked joint, lit it, and took two more hits.

“Pretty weird,” she said.   She closed her eyes and reclined her seat as far as she could. 


6.
Morgan stopped at the rest stop at Kearney.  The lights in the toilet complex had attracted truckers like moths and several men were standing on the sidewalk in flabby-looking sweat-pants smoking.  One of the men smelled strongly of booze.

Chaz seemed to be asleep.  The clock in the Impala was broken, set at 4:30.  It was hard to know what time it was. 

Morgan bought a Mountain Dew from the vending machine.  In the distance, the lights of a village flickered a little.  The wind swept across the dark open country and Morgan wondered if bare tree-limbs were waving back and forth in front of the distant lights to make them wink on and off.  To the south, the sky was a field of scattered bluish stars into which a couple of red-eyed communications towers had been inserted.

Chaz moaned a little.  Morgan put the car in gear and drove toward the scimitar-shaped curve ramping back onto the freeway.  At the far end of the parking spaces, he saw the white panel truck.  It must have pulled into the rest stop while he was in the toilet.  The cube of the van glowed in lamp-light, set apart from the other cars by five or six spaces, and the way that the vehicle was isolated sent a sudden, indefinite chill down Morgan’s back.

Chaz opened her eyes and saw the panel truck just as they were passing it.

“Stop,” she said.  “We have to go back and investigate.”

“I’m committed,” Morgan said.  The Impala was already half-way down the ramp to the freeway and, in fact, a big semi-truck had closed off the curving lane behind him.

“Jesus!” Chaz said.  “We’ve got to go back and investigate.”

“I can’t,” Morgan said.  Chaz reached over and hit him hard on the right bicep with her little bony fist.

Morgan couldn’t tell if the punch was some kind of endearment or intended to hurt him.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked.

“I’m very good at solving crimes,” Chaz said.  “Sometimes, at work I solve crimes from just the dispatches.  I can figure things out,”

After about twenty miles, Chaz said that she had the munchies and wanted to get some potato chips and, maybe, some cookies as well.  Morgan said that he would pull off at the next truck stop.  A sign at the next exit said that there was gas in the town as well as a hospital and restaurant. 

“Get off here,” Chaz said.

“I don’t see a town anywhere,” Morgan said. 

“It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” she replied.

They crossed a long bridge over the river, a meander of black water in a channel choked with gravel and cream-colored sand.  At an intersection, a sign gestured in the direction of a huddle of lights under the some bare round hills.  The moon had appeared improbably in the sky, not where anyone would expect it at this hour of the night.  High altitude clouds made a vague yellow smear of the half-lit moon. 

The town was asleep except for a C-store at an intersection.  Morgan filled-up with gas and went into the store to use the toilet.  On road trips, always avail yourself of the amenities.  Who knows when you will get another opportunity?  Chaz picked out a bottle of Classic coca-cola, a bag of Doritos, and a bag of small bite-sized cookies.  She told Morgan that she didn’t have anything in her purse smaller than a hundred dollar bill and so he bought the munchies along with the gas using a credit card.

The kid behind the cash register had bad acne and tattoo on his throat.

“Do you know how far it is to Denver from here?” Morgan asked him.

“I don’t know.  I ain’t from around here.”

“You don’t know where Denver is?” Morgan asked.

“Not really,” the kid said.  “Anyway, it depends on how fast you drive.”

“Yes it does,” Morgan agreed.

When they stepped out of the store, Morgan saw the station-wagon caked in filth pulled up at the pump.  The crust of mud on the car seemed to be about two-inches thick.  He heard a door open and shut – someone had gone into the toilet on the side of side of the building by the dumpster.

“That car’s really a mess,” Chaz said. 

Metal scraped on metal somewhere in the small, dark village and dogs began to bark and Morgan saw the yellow pennant of the old smeared moon reflected on the flank of a big grain elevator. 

7.
A dozen freeway miles before they reached North Platte, Morgan saw the white panel truck pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate.  He zoomed past hoping that Chaz wouldn’t notice the van, but she saw it and began to shout.

“Pull over, pull over!”

“I got a truck on my ass,” Morgan said.  But he signaled, veered right, and rolled to a stop on the side of the freeway.  The truck screamed by, lifting roadside gravel that pelted them for a moment.

“Get the gun and get out,” Chaz ordered.

“What?”

“We’ve got to save the little kid,” she said. 

“What kid?”

“The little kid that’s being trafficked,” Chaz said.

“I’m not going to brandish a gun at someone,” Morgan said.

“You wuss,” Chaz said.  “You fuckin’ pussy.  If you won’t lift a finger to help that little kid, then, I’ll do it by myself.” 

She started to open the car door, but there were lights rushing toward them.

“I’ll get out,” Morgan said.  He waited for the car to zoom by. 

The panel truck was parked on the road side about a quarter mile behind his Impala.  The emergency lights hadn’t been engaged, but the headlights were on, illumining a long, pale path in the darkness.  A figure was next to the van, stumbling up out of the ditch.  Morgan took ten or twelve steps toward the panel truck and, then, paused.

What was he supposed to do?

The side-door on the van slammed as the figure who had climbed out of the ditch got back into the vehicle.  The van didn’t move and Morgan was still also.  They were on a slight upgrade and a truck was laboring a little on the hill.  The interstate was uneven here and the truck’s headlights bobbed up and down as it approached.  There was water somewhere in the ditch and frogs were chanting in the cold mud. 

Morgan took a two or three more steps toward the panel truck.  Chaz was shouting something at him.  The station wagon in its garment of filthy excremental mud changed lanes because of the vehicles stopped on the right shoulder and, then, passed by.  Morgan didn’t see the vehicle with any clarity; he was focused on the panel truck but he vaguely noticed that something was wrong with station wagon’s front. 

Morgan stopped again and eyed the panel truck.  Suddenly, it rolled forward, accelerating along the shoulder as if it intended to run over him.  At the last moment, the car veered back onto the freeway and roared down the road.

Morgan turned and walked toward his Impala.  “Hurry, hurry, move your ass!” Chaz shouted.  Morgan trotted toward the car and got behind the wheel.  “Get going,” Chaz commanded.  “We don’t want to lose sight of that vehicle.”

“You want me to follow him,” Morgan said.

“You bet,” Chaz replied. 

Morgan accelerated until the speedometer read 90 miles an hour.  The back of the panel truck suddenly hove into view.  He slowed down, matching his speed to the white van.  The vehicle was going about 80 miles per hour.

“Now, we just follow him,” Chaz said.

“What are we doing?”

“I’m convinced that there’s a little kid who’s being trafficked in that van,” she said.  “We have to save  her.”

“What evidence do you have for that?” Morgan asked.

“Why the fuck did the van pull over without activating it’s emergency red lights?”

“I didn’t either,” Morgan said.  “I didn’t put the lights on either.”

“The van was trying to be fucking inconspicuous,” Chaz said.  “That’s a clear sign.”

“I don’t know...”

“And the way the fucking thing came right at you,” Chaz said.  “He was gonna run you over.”

Morgan turned on the radio but the signal was weak, layers of voices and music interfering with one another.

“Just stay on his tail,” Chaz told him.  “Is that so hard to do?”


8.
Beyond North Platte, they crossed into Mountain Standard Time and the road signs announced a big intersection in fifteen miles, maybe more, the fork in the freeways that led (via 76) to Denver or to Cheyenne on I-80.  Morgan tried to keep the tail-lights of the panel truck in view, but the vehicle was a half-mile ahead of him, sometimes surging forward at 85 or 90 miles an hour, and sometimes lagging back, at one point, even slowing to 55. 

At the fork, the van’s headlights seemed to cleave to the right-hand lanes, continuing to run westward in the dark valley beside the river, glistening now and then with the butter-colored smear of the moon tracking west also along the horizon. 

“Follow the van,” Chaz said.

“That’s the road to Cheyenne,” Morgan told her.  “We have to go to Denver.”

“We can get to Denver from Cheyenne,” Chaz said.

“No, it’s hours out of our way,” Morgan said.

“You’re fucking pussy, a total coward,” Chaz said.  “I hope the guy beating up your sister isn’t home when we get to Denver.  He’ll kick your fucking ass.”

“Whatever,” Morgan said. 

The left-hand fork climbed above the valley and rocked up and down over steep treeless hills.  Stock tanks stood in barren valleys and Morgan thought he saw herds of cattle in the dark.  The fences were tall to keep antelope from bounding onto the freeway.

Ten miles beyond the border with Colorado, there was an Info-Stop with toilets, vending machines, and tourist information.  A metal awning was pulled down over the counter at the information kiosk.  Between the entrances to the toilets, there was a big video screen frozen on an image of Pikes Peak.

When he returned to his car, Chaz told him to unlatch the trunk.  “Why?” he asked.  “Just do it,” she replied.  Morgan pulled the lever and sprung the trunk.  Chaz went behind the car, rummaged around for a moment, and, then, found the tire-iron.  She shut the trunk so hard that the car bounced on its suspension.  Then, she began to walk across the parking lot.  It had become cold and the wind came toppling over the barren hills and made the metal clips on the flagpole jingle. 

At the far edge of the parking area, Morgan saw the white panel truck parked askew across two spaces.  Suddenly, the headlights flared and the van backed, pausing for a moment, before changing direction and accelerating out of the rest stop.  Chaz flung the tool after the van and Morgan heard the iron skidding across the concrete.  She ran after the tire-iron, picked it up, and darted back to the Impala.

“Follow them,” Chaz said.

“You’re crazy,” Morgan replied. 

“I’m not going to let that little girl become a victim.”

“What little girl?  Did you see a little girl?”

“There’s a little girl,” Chaz said.  “I saw her face at that port-hole.  Clear as could be.”

“You didn’t see anything,” Morgan said.

But he put the car in gear and pulled out onto the freeway.  Far away, a truck changed lanes.  Otherwise, the interstate was deserted except for the tail-lights of the van climbing the hill ahead of them.

“Why don’t you just call the police?” Morgan said.  “Use your cell-phone and call the cops.”

Chaz took her cell-phone from her purse.  “I’ve got no power,” she said.  “This fucking hunk of junk doesn’t have a charger.”

“I’ve got less than a half-tank of gas,” Morgan told her.  “I’m gonna have to refuel.”

“Not yet,” she said.  “Speed up and catch that van.”

Morgan accelerated.  The dark landscape was wild with hills separated by deep troughs.  Sometimes, the van forged ahead of them, gaining distance, but on the upgrades the vehicle slowed – it seemed to be heavily loaded. 

“Go around, pass them,” Chaz said.  “Then, put on the brakes and just stop.”

“I can’t stop in the middle of the freeway,” Morgan told her.

“There’s no fucking traffic,” she said.

Every time, Morgan came close enough to read the Minnesota license-plate, the van sped up, a trickle of smoke spurting out of its tail pipe.  On a high hill’s upgrade, Morgan caught up with the white panel truck and jammed down his foot to roar around the laboring vehicle.  His engine throbbed and he felt the tires grip and rocket them forward over the crest of the hill. A vast black landscape spread out before them, a sea of hills like dark waves, some of them broken at the top into pale ceramic shards of exposed rock.  Far away, lost in the countryside, a tiny village winked at them.

“Get ahead,” Chaz said.  “Then, stop.”

The van seemed to hover over the top of the hill, hesitant, even braking.  Morgan took his foot off the gas and let his vehicle roll a dozen car-lengths ahead of the panel truck.  Then, he stopped in the middle of the right lane.

The van was just below the crest of the hill.  Suddenly, headlights exploded over the rise and a semi-truck veered crazily toward the median, catching its rear dual tires in the soft prairie between east- and west-bound lanes.  The median opened like a mouth and sucked the truck sideways so that it jack-knifed, the trailer snapping up to its hinge with the cab, and, then, crashing sideways.

“My god,” Morgan said. 

He began to back up, twisting the wheel to angle onto the shoulder.  The headlights of the semi-tractor made a crazy oblique angle with the roadway, raking across the center of the interstate.  As he was backing, the van, suddenly, flung itself forward, topping down the hill like an avalanche.

“We have to see if anyone’s hurt,” Morgan said.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Chaz said.  “This is proof...this is total proof that they are trafficking a child.”

“What do you mean?

“Otherwise why would they cause a crash like that?”

The van shot by them even as Morgan snapped the car out of reverse.

“They’re getting away,” Chaz said. 

Morgan pulled back onto the freeway.

“I’m not gonna speed,” he said.  “I just won’t.”

Chaz reached over and hit his arm hard.  “You’re a coward,” she told him. 

He sped up so that he could see the van’s taillights, a quarter mile or so ahead of them.

The moon dived down and hid behind the horizon.  A cloud concealed somewhere above them splashed the windshield with a few droplets of rain.  Morgan rolled down his window and heard the land rushing by – the drizzle of rain made the grass seem to sigh.

9.
“What the fuck!”

“It’s dat pee-rat car, dat one-eyed pee-rat.”

“It’s chasing us. It’s been chasing us all the way from Omaha.”

“We’ll gorge oud his odder eye,” Hani said.

“How would anyone know?” Max asked.

“Dey been afder us all sin’ Minneapolis,” Hani said.

“Someone from the neighborhood, some fuckin’ gangster from the neighborhood.”

“Doan madder,” Hani said.

Hani opened the glove compartment and took out a pistol, setting it on the console.

“We godda gun,” Hani said.


10.
“Catch up again,” Chaz said.

“I’m not gonna play this game,” Morgan replied.

He looked down and saw that he had about a quarter-tank of gas.  Forty miles, maybe.

“I’m almost out of gas,” Morgan said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chaz said. 

The taillights swerved, changing lanes to pass something.  Ahead of them, Morgan saw the station-wagon encrusted with mud.  The license plate was illegible under the filth and the rear window was a shield of hardened brown clay.  Morgan pulled around the mud-car.  He saw a town in a hollow place in the rolling plains, a scatter of lights around a tulip-shaped water-tower.

“I gotta get gas,” Morgan said.  He took the exit ramp off the freeway, up the slope to the overpass.  A sign at the intersection said that it was three miles to the village but that there were no services.

“You can’t get gas here,” Chaz said. 

Morgan put the Impala in park, got out, and pissed into the ditch.  Then, he got back into the car.

“I’m not gonna drive if you’re brandishing that goddamned tire-iron,” he said.  He reached down an unlatched the trunk.  “Get out and put it in the trunk.”

“If I get out of the car, you’ll leave me here,” Chaz said.

“I would never do a thing like that.”

He reached across her, unlocked the door, and pushed it half-way open.  Birds were singing, a musical sound like water rippling in the ditch.

“If I get out, you’ll drive away,” Chaz said. 

“Don’t you have to pee?” Morgan asked.

“I’ll pee my pants if I have to,” Chaz said.

“Listen, this is bad craziness,” Morgan said.  “We’re both going crazy out here.”

“I’m not crazy,” Chaz said.  “I’m a survivor of sexual violence.  I’m a survivor and I just want to help that little girl.  She’s been kidnaped.”

“There is no little girl,” Morgan replied.

Chaz shifted the tire-iron to her right hand so that she could swing it if Morgan tried to push her out the door.  With her left hand, she checked to see that her seat belt was buckled.

“Okay,” Morgan said.  “We’re going to Denver.”

She pulled her door shut, locked it, and Morgan drove over the cross road to the entrance ramp on the other side of the overpass. 


11.
“Dat pee-rat car is ride dare agin,” Hani said. 

Max asked: “What do you want me to do?”

“Dare’s a roost stop comin up,” Hani said.  “Go off dare.”

“It’s closed,” Max said.  “The sign says it’s closed.”

“Doan madder,’ Hani said. “Ged off anywho.”

“Why?”

“God do know if dey is chasin’ us or nod,” Hani said.

“The car with one headlight right, just the one head-light?”

“Like an old sea-pee-rat wid jes’ one eye.”


12.
The car covered in mud was ahead.

Morgan pulled out to pass the car and saw that it was about a quarter mile behind the white van.  A rest stop was approaching although the signs said that it was closed.

Suddenly, the van turned sharply to the right and sped down the ramp toward the closed rest stop.  The tail-lights flared suddenly as the panel truck steered around a traffic barricade placed in the center of the ramp near a pile of gravel and two graders. 

“Follow him,” Chaz said.

At least, this stop would bring this madness to an end and, so, Morgan signaled, looking in his rear-view mirror.  He noticed that the mud-smeared station-wagon had a front head-light burned-out.  The car rolled forward one-eyed.

Morgan eased down the entrance ramp to the rest stop.  At the barricade, he stopped, surveyed the passage ahead, and, then, steered around the obstruction.  The Impala rocked a little as the wheels on its left side rolled up over the edge of the pavement and coursed along the grooved gravel and dirt beside the road. 

A conical mound of pea-sized rock stood beside the parking lot.  The rest stop building was beyond a little bridge that spanned a dry creek-bed.  The membrane atop the structure had been scalped off the roof and lay in tatters next to the sidewalk and there were a couple of silver ladders leaning up against the wall.  A plumbing contractor’s truck was parked on the sidewalk, next to the trash barrels and there was an open trench cut down into prairie.  At the end of the parking lot, a porta-potty was set next to another pyramid of gravel.

The white van was stopped in the middle of the parking lot.  On the freeway, the mud-smeared car with only one headlight rolled forward, ascending a hill overlooking the draw where the rest stop was located.

13.
“It’ ain’ the pee-rat car,” Hani said.

She handed Max the pistol.  He checked to see if it was loaded properly and, then, flipped off the safety.

The back of the van was stacked to the ceiling with copper wire stripped out of old, vacant houses in Minneapolis.  The plan was to exchange the wire for marijuana and bring the weed back home for sale.

“Is it a cop?” Max asked.  “It ain’t the pirate-car, that’s for sure.”

“He’s god a medal club,” Hani said.


14
Morgan felt very weary.  He had never been more tired in his life.

“Get the gun and go up there,” Chaz said.

“I don’t have any gun,” Morgan said.  “I’m not crazy.”

“You said you had a gun,” Chaz said.

“Well, I don’t,” Morgan told her.  “I’m not crazy.”

She handed him the tire-iron.

“Go out there and rescue that little girl,” Chaz said.

“There isn’t any girl,” Morgan said.

“Prove it.”

Morgan’s body ached in all of his joints and muscles.  He was so very tired that it took him a moment to understand what she was saying.

Then, he took the tire-iron in his hand and opened the car door.  He didn’t shut the door behind him.  This wouldn’t take more than a few seconds.

The first and faintest light of dawn made the air tremulous with a grey tint like the wing of a dove.

Morgan approached the van, touched its cold metal flank, and, then, went to the driver’s window.  He gently tapped at the window with the tire-iron.   
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