Midnight Missouri Mountain Highway Ride... Part 1

It has been suggested that too many of my posts are written in the first-person, so let's see how a first-person story does when it's told in third-person.

Part 1 - The Chase Begins

"Oh, damn!"  It was barely a whisper.  Billy was already over the crest and passing the tanker when he heard the driver lose his gears.  His head jerked around,  and he caught the sign with the corner of his eye:

Steep Hill!!!

Trucks Use Low Gear!!!

If he hadn't been so tired, the sign might have registered sooner... before he was almost past the truck.  But it was nearly midnight, and Billy was fighting sleep.

The late February rain was heavy and wind driven.  The fourteen hundred-mile drive to San Antonio had begun in snow in Akron, Ohio, at seven in the morning.  The snow had changed to rain fifty miles south, and he'd been fighting wet roads, poor visibility and highway construction ever since.  Now, he was cresting a mountain somewhere in Missouri.

After thirteen long months in Korea and a month's leave, he was on his way to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.  The '59 Ford Galaxie he was driving belonged to his brother, and Sandy, his brother's wife, slept in the passenger seat beside him.  On the way, he would drop off Sandy and his brother's car at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.  They'd take him the rest of the way to Fort Sam.  He was reconsidering his decision to drive straight through to Ft. Hood as he passed the tanker at the crest.

As the Galaxie and the tanker started down the mountain with the car just past the driver's side fender, he heard the trucker try to downshift.  The tanker's transmission made loud rude noises and gave up, grinding the gears into shards.  Flames shot from the upright exhausts as the big diesel over-revved.  The tanker's tires smoked on the wet pavement and the trailer came sideways at the Galaxie as the driver slammed on the brakes.  Billy hit the gas.  The truck backfired again, lurched, stuttered and straightened out, and Billy was in front of it - and smack into a construction zone.

The two downhill lanes of the four-lane highway narrowed to one lane just ahead of him, and there was no time to brake and let the truck go by.  The road was too wet, he was going too fast, and the truck was too close.  Billy cut the Galaxie into the lane ahead of the truck, and prayed the road would widen out - soon!  He glanced in the rearview mirror.

The tanker was gaining - had its brakes gone so soon?  Billy accelerated, and so did his heart.  As he entered a left-hand curve, he felt the front end lift over the driver's side wheel.  The car had been ditched the previous summer, bending the tie-rod and flaring the fender.  He'd replaced the tie-rod (and the ball joints) and had the car aligned, but straightening the fender had seemed like an unnecessary expense.  Now, the fender was catching air like a parachute, and lifting the left front of the car.  Worse, the car was overloaded in the rear, shifting the center of gravity and lightening the front end.  He feathered the gas and shifted the steering wheel slightly to the right.  The rear tires held as the curve began to straighten.

He looked in the mirror.  The tanker's headlights filled it and flooded the car with light, making it almost impossible to see ahead.  He accelerated again, pulling away from the truck a few feet.  He reached up and flipped the mirror up, killing the truck's blinding headlights.  They still filled the side mirror, but by shifting his head to the side, he could avoid the worst of the glare.

Peering ahead, Billy could see that the barricades ended, and the road widened again into two lanes.  But a right-hand curve began almost immediately.  There was no time to pull aside and let the truck pass before he was into the curve.  At the end of the barricades he saw a car, parked with no lights on.  It had to be a cop!  He looked for the first time at the speedometer.  The needle was hovering at ninety, and a quick glance in the side mirror told him the truck was gaining again.  He shot out of the single lane and into the curve.  In his side mirror, he saw the lights come on and the car at the end of the barricades pull out behind the truck.  He turned his attention back to the road.  As the curve developed, he felt the front tires float on the wet pavement, and then the rear end loosened.  Backing off as much as he dared, and letting the car drift toward the outside of the curve, he felt the tires bite again, and he began to hope.  Although the tanker was following him to the outside of the curve, when the road straightened it should be able to change lanes and go by on the inside.

Billy felt the driver's side wheels rub something, and the car lurched.  Sipping air and fighting the wheel with small movements, he peered through rain-smeared glass into the darkness.  There was a low, narrow rolled curb dividing the highway.  He had touched it.  There were no lines marking the edge of the curb, and no divider.  He looked toward the outer edge of the road.  There were no edge lines.  The stone in the blacktop was red and wet, and the raw dirt at the edge of the highway was wet red clay.  There was no berm, and he could barely tell where pavement ended and dirt began.  If he dropped off the edge of the highway, whichever wheel left the driving surface would stop, but the rest of the car would keep moving.  He would flip and roll down this mountain if he ever left the road!

The curve was straightening.  Billy backed off the accelerator, preparing to let the truck pass.  The road straightened more, and the trucker pulled up behind him and began a swing to the right.  He never finished it.  The road ahead disappeared in a sharp curve to the left around a vertical face cut into the side of the mountain.  There was no time for the tanker to complete the pass, and neither Billy nor the truck driver was ready for the curve.  Billy's heart started to hammer.  If he tried to hold the curve from where he was, he would slide across highway and roll the Galaxie off the road.  Billy goosed the Galaxie and the tanker pulled in behind him.

From the corner of his eye, Billy caught the red flash of the Trooper's gumball light.  The police car was passing the truck!  "Damn!" Billy thought.  "He'll kill us all!"  The Trooper's car seemed to lurch, and then it was beside him - in the uphill lanes!  The Trooper's inside light was on.  For just an instant, Billy caught a glimpse of the Trooper frantically waving for him to follow, and then the squad car was ahead of him, and into the curve.

Part 2 in a few days - For Part 2, Click *here*

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