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too high.
    I checked out the fuel gauge, too, to see how much gas I had. One tank was full, the other about half. Each tank carried about 120 gallons. When gas gets as high as four dollars a gallon, it must cost pretty near a thousand dollars just to fill up the rig. No question I had plenty of gas to get me a good distance, but I was thinking I’d go just until I got to a city, or a small town, where I could park the truck and take off again. By then, the state police and everybody else would surely be on to all this.
    In fact, why didn’t I check that out? Reaching up over the rearview mirror, I flipped on the CB radio and turned to Channel 19, the truckers’ channel. As a kid, riding with my dad, I loved listening to those guys chatter back and forth.
    First thing I heard on Channel 19 made me tense up: “Hey, there, westbound, there’s a smokey ahead of you with radar . . .” A smokey—that’s a cop—and he had speed radar out. I didn’t know if that message was for me or not. Quite frankly, I didn’t know if I was headed east or west, which was pretty important. But I didn’t have a clue about the lay of the land out there in western Maryland, and even if there was a frickin’ GPS in the cab, I wouldn’t have known how to use it. But just in case it
was
me headed toward that smokey, I eased up on the accelerator so I wasn’t exceeding the speed limit, which I guessed was fifty-five or sixty miles an hour.
    For a long time I chewed that gum hard and focused on driving that big rig. I finally saw a big sign that said I was headed east, toward Frederick and Baltimore.
Yes!
I hissed to myself. That’s the direction I wanted: east. I have to say, I was really enjoying that ride. I even thought that if I didn’t become a Marine, that maybe one day I’d be a trucker instead ’cause I liked driving and I could be my own boss. You have to be sixteen to get a Class B license to drive a truck, but that was only two years away for me. I even started wondering what I was hauling in that trailer behind me, and whether it might be some kind of food, and if there was any way I could get inside to take a look.
    I was going up and down some big hills and seeing lots of pretty, open countryside with fields and stuff. I come to a town once, but I was going too fast and blew right by the exit ramp so I just kept driving. I had to downshift some to slow her down and take some mean twists and turns through that town. Almost sideswiped a guy in a station wagon and nearly rammed into a bus that was going too slow. But all in all, I did pretty good. And let me tell you, driving that truck through traffic was better a hundred times over than any video game I ever played in my life.
    Once I got outside of town on the open highway, I opened up and put some miles on that odometer. More big hills, then a mountain—Polish Mountain it was called. I wondered if that was some kind of a joke, only the sign for it looked legit. I dropped down to sixth gear and kept to the right lane, pulling twenty to twenty-five miles per hour up the entire incline. I cruised down the other side in the same gear, but with the brakes on, too. Easy, I thought. I could do just about anything with this truck. The problem would be police after me as soon as that trucker got done eating his biscuits.
    When I spotted a police car traveling west, I got nervous and pushed my foot down on the accelerator. Then another mountain come up. Again, I pulled into the far right lane to go slower, and kept checking the rearview mirror.
    Something about the mountain seemed familiar and when I got to the top—the Kenworth was really groaning by then—I realized it was Sideling Hill with the big cliffs and the colorful rock layers. I remembered that prison van driver talking about the marine fossils and I couldn’t help but turn my head to take a look. Sure enough, I could see that black stripe