Meeting Evil by Thomas Berger Page A

belligerent tuba of a colossal tractor trailer, the enormous chromed radiator-grille of which was too large and too close to fit within the rearview mirror.
    Richie’s reaction to the episode was focused in anger on the truckdriver, whose cab was too elevated for him to be seen at so short a range. “When we get out of this squeeze,” he told John, “pull him over. I don’t take shit from his kind.”
    John regarded this as empty bluster. “Sure,” he said derisively. “I’ll run him off the road with this tank. That’ll show him.”
    Without transition Richie returned to his former topic. “Know what I approve of? Your wife is home with the kids, not out of the house all day at some job like some bitches think they ought to be.”
    If the truth be known, John was in a certain agreement with this sentiment, though he would never have expressed it openly to his wife. At the moment no trustworthy child-care facilities were available for Melanie, at least in Joanie’sopinion, in these days when all one heard of were those in which the children were abused. And little Phil was still too young to be deprived of his mother for long. Even so, John disliked Richie’s idiom and did not want to encourage him in the further expression of his ideas on this or any other subject. But it would make for an oppressive atmosphere if he tried to get him to shut up until they reached Hillsdale. Including Sharon in the conversation might be an answer to the problem.
    He looked for her in the mirror. “How about you, Sharon? Are you married?” She was not wearing a ring on the relevant finger, but then some married persons did not, especially women of a pronounced feminist bent, along with the usual men who assumed they were thereby duping potential pickups. To John this kind of deceit was almost as deplorable as adulterous sex. He had always told himself that if he were attracted to another woman than his wife, he would at least be honest enough to define himself, taking the consequences.
    “Not any more,” she answered.
    Richie sent some air derisively through his lips and kicked his feet in the assertive running shoes. “Don’t tell us your troubles. So your old man found a boy who was better-looking.”
    John admonished him. “Will you stop being so insulting?” He addressed Sharon again. “You just go ahead, say anything you want.”
    He saw her silently shake her head and wondered what kind of medication she was on, if that could explain the state into which she had fallen. But then he was distracted again. The street had become a three-lane county highway, on which it was possible for him to increase speed, the traffic ahead having suddenly melted away. But though he went to the posted limit, forty-five, and then to fifty, the tractor trailerstayed virtually against his rear bumper, an ominous situation to be in, for the middle lane at the moment was monopolized by a series of cars traveling in the opposite direction, and he was as far to the right as he could be, almost onto the narrow shoulder, beyond which was a drainage ditch.
    Again Richie was quickly aware. “Don’t speed up. Gradually slow down, drive him nuts. He won’t hit you unless you stop without warning.”
    This took a lot of nerve, for as soon as John began subtly to decelerate, the truckdriver sounded shattering blasts of his horn. The only way to persist in the tactic was to avoid looking in the mirror, grit your teeth, and put your being on automatic pilot. He had once successfully employed the technique as a passenger on a light aircraft in stormy skies. Whether it would have worked again he was not to determine now, for after another mile, by which point he was still going better than forty, the highway became positively spacious, with two full lanes separated by a grassy median strip from the two that went the other way.
    His sigh of relief, however, proved premature: the truck stayed directly behind him even when both vehicles had gained the