The Damned Highway by Nick Mamatas

air whips my face. I roll the window up again and say, “I had an adventure with Jack Kirby just a few days ago.”
    â€œThe guy who draws for Marvel? I don’t read that stuff. Too much melodrama. I like the underground comix.”
    Merle Haggard fades away, and the song segues into a duet between Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. I tap along in time with the music. It’s not so bad.
    â€œYou are not an easily definable man, Mr. Smitty. Indeed, you remind me, in some ways, of myself. I like the cut of your jib.”
    â€œThanks . . . I think?”
    â€œI’m being sincere. Are you a political junkie?”
    â€œNot so much, no. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I voted. It’s all just the same thing since Kennedy died. Know what I mean? Ever since he was shot it just seems like America is going downhill faster and faster, and nobody cares as long as they still have money, a roof over their heads, a Ford or a Chevy in the driveway, and a piece of ass to keep them warm at night.”
    â€œA chicken in every pot,” I whisper. “The American Dream. Not a burned-out slab of concrete in Las Vegas, but the real deal. The real American Dream. The guiding principle that made this country great.”
    â€œYeah, but I don’t reckon Kennedy would have fixed things either. I don’t think they would have let him. This country is going to hell in a fucking handbasket, and I don’t think either side has our best interests at heart anymore. They all answer to someone else.”
    â€œIndeed, they serve dark masters. Different masters, as I’m discovering, but malignant all the same.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œNothing,” I say, waving my hand in dismissal. “Ramblings of a diseased mind. I have been up working all night and am low on medicine. How close are we to the airport?”
    â€œNot far now. About another ten minutes. Which terminal are you flying out of?”
    I tell him, and perhaps it is the tone of my voice or the look in my eye, but he leans harder on the accelerator and the big rig’s speed increases. Trees rush by in the darkness. The tires thrum.
    â€œNeed for speed, eh?” I ask with a wink.
    Misunderstanding me, Smitty shakes his head. “No, I don’t mess with that stuff. Some of the other drivers do. They pop those black beauties and shit like that, but not me.”
    â€œYou don’t use anything at all?”
    â€œI got high a few times in the Nam. To be honest, I liked it. It’s natural, ya know? Not like this chemical shit people are snorting and shooting and swallowing. Weed comes from the earth. But I don’t do it much anymore. It always makes me hungry and sleepy, and ain’t neither one of those things good for a long-haul truck driver.”
    â€œIndeed. How about shrooms?”
    â€œMushrooms? I’ve heard about them, but I ain’t never took one. Saw a thing on TV once. Cronkite was talking about them and peyote. Some folks want to use them in religious ceremonies and such. I can’t say as I see the harm in it, but I’ve never had them. Only mushrooms I eat is on my pizza.” He laughs at this, and I chuckle along with him, even as my great and terrible mind is seized with an idea. I need to find out if what I’d seen while under the shrooms’ influence was a real, transcendental experience or simply yet another nonsensical, drug-fueled hallucination, and what better way to find out than to test Mac’s stash on someone else? And a pigeon like my new friend Smitty is an absolutely perfect test subject. Here is a man who very rarely uses drugs, let alone powerful hallucinogens. He has a belief structure that he seems firm and steadfast in, and a relaxed demeanor. He is a solitary man who probably spends much of his day in a forced-laconic silence broken only by his occasional interactions with truck-stop patrons, waitresses, fuel-station attendants,