Desperation by Stephen King Page B

motorcycles is? Computed on a road-hours basis? I can tell you that because I’m a wolf and we get a circular every month from the National Safety Council. It’s one accident per four hundred and sixty drivers per day. That sounds good, I know, until you consider the ratio of drivers-to-accidents on passenger vehicles. That’s one in twenty-seven thousand per day. That’s some big difference. It makes you think, doesn’t it?”
    â€œYes.” Thinking, Did he say something about being a wolf, did I hear that? “Those statistics are pretty . . . pretty . . .” Pretty what? Come on, Marinville, get it together. If you can spend an hour with a hostile bitch from Ms. magazine and still not take a drink, surely you can deal with this guy. He’s only trying to show his concern for you, after all. “They’re pretty impressive,” he finished.
    â€œSo what are you doing out here? And on such an unsafe mode of transportation?”
    â€œGathering material.” Johnny found his eyes dropping to the cop’s blood-stiffened right sleeve and forcibly dragged them back up to his sunburned face. He doubted if many of the people on this guy’s beat gave him a hard time; he looked like he could eat nails and spit razor-wire, even though he really didn’t have the right skin for this climate.
    â€œFor a new novel?” The cop was excited. Johnny looked briefly at the man’s chest, hunting for a name-tag, but there was none.
    â€œWell, a new book, anyway. Can I ask you something, Officer?”
    â€œSure, yeah, but I ought to be asking you the questions, I got about a gajillion of em. I never thought . . . out in the middle of nowhere and I meet . . . ho-lee shit !”
    Johnny grinned. It was hotter than hell out here and he wanted to get moving before Steve was on his ass—he hated looking into the rearview and seeing that big yellow truck back there, it broke the mood, somehow—but it was hard not to be moved by the man’s artless enthusiasm, especially when it was directed at a subject which Johnny himself regarded with respect, wonder, and yes, awe.
    â€œWell, since you’re obviously familiar with my work, what would you think of a book of essays about life in contemporary America?”
    â€œBy you?”
    â€œBy me. A kind of loose travelogue called”—he took a deep breath—“ Travels with Harley ”?
    He was prepared for the cop to look puzzled, or to guffaw the way people did at the punchline of a joke. The cop did neither. He simply looked back down at the tail-light of Johnny’s bike, one hand rubbing his chin (it was the chin of a Bernie Wrightson comic-book hero, square and cleft), brow furrowed, considering carefully. Johnny took the opportunity to peek surreptitiously at his own hand. There was blood on it, all right, quite a lot. Mostly on the back and smeared across the fingernails. Uck.
    Then the cop looked up and stunned him by saying exactly what Johnny himself had been thinking over the last two days of monotonous desert driving. “It could work,” he said, “but the cover ought to be a photo of you on your drag, here. A serious picture, so folks’d know you weren’t trying to make fun of John Steinbeck . . . or your own self, for that matter.”
    â€œThat’s it !” Johnny cried, barely restraining himself from clapping the big cop on the back. “That’s the great danger, that people should go in thinking it’s some kind of . . . of weird joke. The cover should convey seriousness of purpose . . . maybe even a certain grimness  . . . what would you think of just the bike? A photo of the bike, maybe sepia-toned? Sitting in the middle of some country highway . . . or even out here in the desert, on the centerline of Highway 50 . . . shadow stretching off to the