Rural Road #7

By Miles Harvey © 2010

Her house was at the end of a long driveway. The lane was rutted and covered in snow that ranged from off-white to dull-yellow and would have made horrible snowmen.

His coffee sent thin wisps up from the dash of the police cruiser. Darb Hendleson stared hard beneath the stiff brim of his South Dakota State Trooper derby. He saw a warm house, a glowing kitchen and a moon-faced girl puttering about making dinner. She probably didn’t even notice the sleet that was coating his car’s windshield in vanilla pudding.

The wipers struggled at first, and then rose triumphantly with an impressive burden of the slushy snow.

That highway’s gonna be a mess, he thought. The big Nor’easter, the one Channel 4 started calling a ‘Once in a Generation Weather Bomb, was starting to bare its teeth.

Lilly’s dog ran up the driveway toward Darb’s car, its floppy paws sending high arcs of the freshing snow into the air. Darb rolled the window down halfway. “Get back inside,” he yelled. “You don’t want to be outside for this one.”

Under the dark shadow of his government-issue hat, his eyes flashed to the warm kitchen window. She was scooping something out of a casserole dish and laughing.

He pulled the car off the shoulder slowly and set out down the snow-packed road.

The highway’ll be all messed up for sure.


This is Miles Harvey's first contribution to Truckin'.