“Why did you pull me over?” he said. “You ain’t supposed to stop till you hit Mobile. You should be almost out of the state by now.”
“I got my markers out. Nobody is going to bother us.”
“You ain’t supposed to stop.”
“What have you and Bonham got on?”
“Mind your business,” the driver said.
“Why did you wait thirty minutes to follow me?”
“You ain’t paid to know anything.”
“You could have carried the whole load. He don’t need another driver.”
“He splits a shipment so he don’t take a chance on losing it all. The police ain’t going to get us both.”
“He ain’t the type man to trust a hot load with somebody he don’t know.”
“Ask him about it.”
“You’re the man I’m talking to.”
“Quit if you don’t like it.”
“I got another hundred dollars coming.”
“Earn it, then. I ain’t going to stand out here no longer.”
“What’s Bonham got planned?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I ain’t got to take that from you.”
“You work for a nigger,” Toussaint said.
The man tried to hit him, but Toussaint caught his arm in midair with his good hand and held it helpless before him.
“I’ll break your arm like a stick, white man.”
“God damn you.”
Toussaint pushed him away.
“Get in your truck,” he said. “I’m following you this time. I’m going to be on your bumper all the way to Mobile.”
The man climbed up in the cab and slammed the door. Toussaint picked up the reflectors from the roadside and got in his truck. He dropped the reflectors on the seat and followed the other truck off the shoulder onto the highway. He kept close behind so no cars could get between them.
As the road straightened out, the other truck began to widen the distance. Toussaint pressed on the accelerator to keep up. The speedometer neared fifty and the truck in front continued to gain. Toussaint pressed the gas pedal to the floor, but his speed didn’t increase. It’s got a governor on it, he thought. The gas feed is fixed so it can’t do more than fifty. He knows it too. He might have
even put it on. They want to make sure I don’t stay with the other truck. He must be making seventy. He’s got a clear stretch ahead of him. I can’t catch him unless he runs into traffic.
Toussaint watched the taillights grow dimmer. The lead truck went over a rise and disappeared. The glow of the headlights reflected against the night on the other side and then disappeared too. Toussaint approached the rise and shot the truck into second gear to pull the grade. The highway before him was empty when he reached the top. He looked off to the side of the highway. There was a dirt farm road that led between two fields into a wood. He must have turned out his lights and took the side road, Toussaint thought. He couldn’t have got that far ahead of me.
Toussaint pulled into the road and hit his brights, illuminating the grove of trees. A yellow haze of dust still lingered in the air over the road. There were two lines of heavy tire marks crushed into the dry ruts. He stopped the truck and turned off the engine and cut the lights. He could faintly hear the engine of the other truck toiling along the back road through the woods. In a few minutes the truck would take another road and cross the border into Mississippi.