Not all hitchhikers reminded him of his daughter Charlotte. This one did. He leaned over, opened the door, and saw a matted helmet of dark curls. She raised her head; her unblinking eyes examined him levelly, and she stood for an extra beat while the heat and dust from underneath the idling truck whorled into the cab and created a thin curtain of haze between them.
“Climb in,” he said. He waited, squinting into the fields, while she grabbed her things from behind a clump of sage at the edge of the asphalt and pulled herself up into the passenger seat.
“Thanks,” she said. “You’re just the ride I was hoping for.” Her lips were chapped in a clown circle, licked over until the corners of her mouth were bleeding and raw. Otherwise her skin was flawless, stretched to perfection over her high cheekbones and pointed jaw. Mediterranean, he decided. Maybe South American.
He introduced himself and eased the truck back onto the highway, wondering if she was high.
“Francis,” was all she said, with a hint of an accent he couldn’t identify. She sniffed and whispered under her breath. A thumb in her mouth that she bit at in corncob rows, gnawing away patches of skin and spitting them out toward the dash.
Not high, he decided. Something else he couldn’t put his finger on. Sometimes it took him longer to figure them out. Still, his radar was out now. Someday it could all go wrong. One of them could grab the wheel; drive off in the rig and leave him at the side of the road. Or worse. A chill rippled through him, and the hair on his arms raised and bowed over like wheat. Next to him, she turned away and drew shapes on the window with a nail-bitten finger.
“What’s your story?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No stories. Just a ride.” One hand rubbed the thigh of her torn jeans. “I bet yours is better anyway.”