（外文电子版资料）Trucks.docVIP

TRUCKS The guys name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy. His eyes had got bigger, showing a lot of the whites, like a dog getting ready to fight. The two kids who had come skidding into the parking lot in the old Fury were trying to talk to him, but his head was cocked as though he was hearing other voices. He had a tight little potbelly encased in a good suit that was getting a little shiny in the seat. lie was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep. Try the radio again, the truck driver at the counter said. The short-order cook shrugged and turned it on. He flipped it across the band and got nothing but static. You went too fast, the trucker protested. You might have missed something. Hell, the short-order cook said. He was an elderly black man with a smile of gold and he wasnt looking at the trucker. He was looking through the diner-length picture window at the parking lot. Seven or eight heavy trucks were out there, engines rumbling in low, idling roars that sounded like big cats purring. There were a couple of Macks, a Hemingway, and four or five Reos. Trailer trucks, interstate haulers with a lot of licence plates and CB whip antennas on the back. The kids Fury was lying ~n its roof at the end of long, looping skid marks in the loose crushed rock of the parking lot. It had been battered into senseless junk. At the entrance to the truck stops turnaround, there was a blasted Cadillac. Its owner stared out of the star-shattered windshield like a gutter fish. Hornrimmed glasses hung from one ear. Halfway across the lot from it lay the body of a girl in a pink dress. She had jumped from the Caddy when she saw it wasnt going to make it. She had hit running but never had a chance. She was the worst, even though she was face down. There were flies around her in clouds. Across the road an old Ford station wagon had been slammed through the handrails. That had happened an hour ago. No