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FREEWAY GAMES
FREEWAY GAMES
by
Orson Scott Card
Except for Donner Pass, everything on the road between San
Francisco and Salt Lake City was boring. Stanley had driven the
road a dozen deadly times until he was sure he knew Nevada by
heart: an endless road winding among hills covered with sagebrush.
“When God got through making scenery,” Stanley often said, “there
was a lot of land left over in Nevada, and God said, ‘Aw, to hell
with it,’ and that’s where Nevada’s been ever since.”
Today Stanley was relaxed, there was no rush for him to get back to
Salt Lake, and so, to ease the boredom, he began playing freeway
games.
He played Blue Angels first. On the upslope of the Sierra Nevadas
he found two cars riding side by side at fifty miles an hour. He
pulled his Datsun 260Z into formation beside them. At fifty miles
an hour they cruised along, blocking all the lanes of the freeway.
Traffic began piling up behind them.
The game was successful – the other two drivers got into the spirit
of the thing. When the middle car drifted forward, Stanley eased
back to stay even with the driver on the right, so that they drove
down the freeway in an arrowhead formation. They made diagonals,
funnels; danced around each other for half an hour; and whenever
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FREEWAY GAMES
one of them pulled slightly ahead, the frantically angry drivers
behind them jockeyed behind the leading car.
Finally, Stanley tired of the game, despite the fun of the honks and
flashing lights behind them. He honked twice, and waved jauntily to
the driver beside him, then pressed on the accelerator and leaped
forward at seventy miles an hour, soon dropping back to sixty as
dozens of other cars, their drivers trying to make up for lost time (or
trying to compensate for long confinement), passed by going much
faster. Many paused to drive beside him, honking, glaring, and
making obscene gestures. Stanley grinned at them all.
He got bored again east of Reno.
This time he decided to play Follow. A yellow AM Hornet was just
ahead of him on the highway, going fifty-eight to sixty miles per
hour. A good speed. Stanley settled in behind the car, about three
lengths behind, and followed. The driver was a woman, with dark
hair that danced in the erratic wind that came through her open
windows. Stanley wondered how long it would take her to notice
that she was being followed.
Two songs on the radio (Stanley’s measure of time while
travelling), and halfway through a commercial for hair spray – and
she began to pull away. Stanley prided himself on quick reflexes.
She didn’t even gain a car length; even when she reached seventy,
he stayed behind her.
He hummed along with an old Billy Joel song even as the Reno
radio station began to fade. He hunted for another station, but found
only country and western, which he loathed. So in silence he
followed as the woman in the Hornet slowed down.
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FREEWAY GAMES
She went thirty miles an hour, and still he didn’t pass. Stanley
chuckled. At this point, he was sure she was imagining the worst. A
rapist, a thief, a kidnapper, determined to destroy her. She kept on
looking in her rear-view mirror.
“Don’t worry, little lady,” Stanley said, “I’m just a Salt Lake City
boy who’s having fun.” She slowed down to twenty, and he stayed
behind her; she sped up abruptly until she was going fifty, but her
Hornet couldn’t possibly out-accelerate his Z.
“I made forty thousand dollars for the company,” he sang in the
silence of his car, “and that’s six thousand dollars for me.”
The Hornet came up behind a truck that was having trouble getting
up a hill. There was a passing lane, but the Hornet didn’t use it at
first, hoping, apparently, that Stanley would pass. Stanley didn’t
pass. So the Hornet pulled out, got even with the nose of the truck,
then rode parallel with the truck all the rest of the way up the hill.
“Ah,” Stanley said, “playing Blue Angels with the Pacific
Intermountain Express.” He followed her closely.
At the top of the hill, the passing lane ended. At the last possible
moment the Hornet pulled in front of the truck – and stayed only a
few yards ahead of it. There was no room for Stanley, and now on a
two-lane road a car was coming straight at him.
“What a bitch!” Stanley mumbled. In a split second, because when
angry Stanley doesn’t like to give in, he decided that she wasn’t
going to outsmart
him
. He nosed into the space between the Hornet
and the truck anyway.
There wasn’t room. The truck driver leaned on his horn and braked;
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the woman, afraid, pulled forward. Stanley got out of the way just
as the oncoming car, its driver a father with a wife and several
rowdy children looking petrified at the accident that had nearly
happened, passed on the left.
“Think you’re smart, don’t you, bitch? But Stanley Howard’s
feeling rich.” Nonsense, nonsense, but it sounded good and he sang
it in several keys as he followed the woman, who was now going a
steady sixty-five, two car-lengths behind. The Hornet had Utah
plates – she was going to be on that road a long time.
Stanley’s mind wandered. From thoughts of Utah plates to a
memory of eating at Alioto’s and on to his critical decision that no
matter how close you put Alioto’s to the wharf, the fish there wasn’t
any better than the fish at Bratten’s in Salt Lake. He decided that he
would have to eat there soon, to make sure his impression was
correct; he wondered whether he should bother taking Liz out again,
since she so obviously wasn’t interested; speculated on whether
Genevieve would say yes if he asked her.
And the Hornet wasn’t in front of him anymore.
He was only going forty-five, and the PIE truck was catching up to
him on a straight section of the road. There were curves into a
mountain pass up ahead – she must have gone faster when he
wasn’t noticing. But he sped up, sped even faster, and didn’t see
her. She must have pulled off somewhere, and Stanley chuckled to
think of her panting, her heart beating fast, as she watched Stanley
drive on by. What a relief that must have been, Stanley thought.
Poor lady. What a nasty game. And he giggled with delight, silently,
his chest and stomach shaking but making no sound.
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FREEWAY GAMES
He stopped for gas in Elko, had a package of cupcakes from the
vending machine in the gas station, and was leaning on his car when
he watched the Hornet go by. He waved, but the woman didn’t see
him. He did notice, however, that she pulled into an Amoco station
not far up the road.
It was just a whim. I’m taking this too far, he thought, even as he
waited in his car for her to pull out of the gas station. She pulled
out. For just a moment Stanley hesitated, decided not to go on with
the chase, then pulled out and drove along the main street of Elko a
few blocks behind the Hornet. The woman stopped at a light. When
it turned green, Stanley was right behind her. He saw her look in her
rear-view mirror again, stiffen; her eyes were afraid.
“Don’t worry, lady,” he said. “I’m not following you this time. Just
going my own sweet way home.”
The woman abruptly, without signalling, pulled into a parking
place. Stanley calmly drove on. “See?” he said. “Not following. Not
following.”
A few miles outside Elko, he pulled off the road. He knew why he
was waiting. He denied it to himself. Just resting, he told himself.
Just sitting here because I’m in no hurry to get back to Salt Lake
City. But it was hot and uncomfortable, and with the car stopped,
there wasn’t the slightest breeze coming through the windows of the
Z. This is stupid, he told himself. Why persecute the poor woman
any more? he asked himself. Why the hell am I still sitting here?
He was still sitting there when she passed him. She saw him. She
sped up. Stanley put the car in gear, drove out into the road from the
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