The truck stopped. I went around back in the hard, driving rain. It was an unfamiliar road, but the kind you find all up and down the East Coast near the ocean, with scrubby growths of pine on either side in sandy soil and no sign of civilization except the marching files of telephone poles. I pulled out the lock bar and swung down the tongue and opened the back doors.
Just then the truck growled to life. The rear tires spun and whined and threw pebbles at me. The truck lurched forward. I lunged after it, grabbing the swinging lock-chain and pulling myself up on the tongue. My right foot scraped along the ground and for a minute I thought I was going to lose my hold and fall off. But slowly I pulled myself up while the rain beat down on me. I tried to keep it quiet. As far as I knew, Joe thought he left me back there. That crazy Joe, I told myself, climbing into the van. The rear doors swung in the wind, banging against the frame. Joe must have known I had opened them. He didn't seem to care. He was like a crazy man up there. We didn't work for any trucking company. This truck was ours. With what we made on it we hoped to buy another before long and start a fleet. Joe and Harry, trucking. But Joe was up there in the cab, acting like a crazy man, and I was back here in the van—with what?
I listened. Nothing but the sound of the motor and the rain outside. I sniffed. That odd smell was gone. I fumbled for my matches and scratched one against the flint. It made a faint sodden sound and I thought I wasn't going to have any luck. But just then the match spluttered and flared and caught.
There were no potatoes. There wasn't any glob of jelly.
"Come on in away from the rain. Come over to me, Harry, honey," she said.
I dropped the match and it went out. It was a woman. There was a lovely blonde-haired woman in the van there. She had been dressed up like for a party, at least in the little I saw of her I thought that was the way she was dressed. And she was absolutely dry, as if she hadn't somehow come in out of the rain or anything.
"Come on, Harry," she called in a seductive voice. "I'm waiting, Harry."
I walked stiffly into the van. Well, I'm human, aren't I?
I was fumbling again with the matches. I had to see her once more. If this was highway hypnotism, I was all for it. In the light of the first match she'd been beautiful. I struck the second match but the head crumbled wetly. I tossed it away irritably and was about to strike a third when her hand touched me. "Harry," she said. "Harry."