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Show Flying - 107 them thought he clearly saw Tex's face under a ten-gallon hat in the cab and the white flash of a bandaged wrist pulling at the wheel. "He's a dead man," says Tucson John getting up to go back to his truck. "He'll never make it to the bottom alive." My private corpse. A dead man all my own. Back to haunt me, who never hurt him at all. Who listened to his troubles. There'll be no wreckage from that truck on the slopes of the Tehachapi. He's all mine. The day seems darker and the land below less fertile. A cabin would not be enough and the olives would begin to taste bitter after a while. And I would be alone among these yellow hills. Rest-stop over, the convoy begins its plunge toward the valley below, every truck, by Biggs' direct order passed down the long line from sergeant to sergeant, in bottom gear. Slower than the pace of a brisk walk the hundred trucks of the Fifty-third wind their way down the west slope of the Tehachapi range. Right foot barely touching the throttle, left foot braced on the wheel well, John Henry holds himself in the seat against the steep angle of their descent. The yellow hills begin to close in all round the jeep and he wishes he was back on the flat plains of Texas, where you can see danger coming and have a chance to get ready. I wish I had not come. Tnis land is haunted. |