Savage Tales

years before they electrocute you or fill you with needles. That's probably not the case at all. You look like a clean-cut college kid or something out on the road living some kind of adventure of fantasy or maybe running away from a family that tried to get you to be a lawyer or politician or computer person or some other straitjacket of life. And maybe you didn't like it and had to get away. You don't need to confirm or deny this since you're only in my car for a ride and not subject to twenty questions just on account of it being my dime that filled the gas. You can keep it tight to yourself if that's how you play it and I wouldn't hold it against you. Or perhaps you are a vicious animal that is rather good at keeping up a charade of normality and I wouldn't ever suspect a thing, although I should warn you that I keep me a little pea-shooter in my boot although I don't know why I should warn you if you are indeed criminal-minded, but you have been given warning nevertheless. But I mention this to let you know that I am no great lover of company when I have Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard to accompany me without the odor or oxygen-consuming properties of their actual bodies, for I have a preference for their singing and not their being. So you may be wondering why I have stopped my car to let you inside. Let me tell you. It is because I am tired. I have already been driving for six hours, and I would be tempted to take the car to the side of the ride and give it a rest were it not for the urgency of my arrival in El Paso at the earliest moment possible, and so I go on at this steady rate, halting only for gas and my bread and water, and now you, not that I plan on eating you, settle down. But I do ask that you not sleep because I too would like to sleep and for me to sleep while driving would prove dangerous to both of us, so I will not, I will drive. And perhaps you can help me stay awake. Yes, I have come to the point. I need you to keep me awake."
    "Oh, sure," he said. "I'd be glad to do some driving too."
    "I can't let you do that," I said. "Nobody else drives this vehicle short of an emergency, least of all a person I have only just met through the randomness of the road just minutes before. That is the way of it."
    "I understand. That's fine. And I'd be glad to help you stay awake. I think I have some coffee beans I can give you too."
    "I don't take drugs," I said, "least of all from strangers I have only met moments before. Unlike kings and emperors I don't have the luxury of a taster to test the quality of your coffee beans, and as delicious as they sound and helpful as they could prove in keeping me awake, I must say no and find alternate means for sustaining myself. My suggestion was conversation."
    "Sure. That's totally fine."
    I guessed him for a West Coast big city kid with his over the top laid back attitude, and I was considering dumping him in the ditch of the road just to give him some backbone, but I didn't want to slow down. He had already forced me to make one unnecessary stop with his entrance.
    "So what's your story?" he said. "What's in El Paso?"
    "Hey, slow down with the questions, trigger," I said. "When I said we could converse I did not mean I'd be writing my autobiography. Why don't I save the big stuff for when I know you better like a brother, which isn't likely to happen from one night of conversation, if you catch my drift. Why don't you begin by winning my confidence and explaining your own secret origin and history, omitting any and all sections that would bore your average citizen, remembering that the goal is to keep me engaged and awake to save your life and my own."
    "All right," he said. "That's just fine. Oh, by the way, my name is Rich."
    He stuck out his hand to shake it and probably get my name like the nosy person he was turning out to be. Instead of shaking it, I said, "You'll forgive me not touching your hand since we just met and I don't want to take my hands off the steering wheel. A lot of folks will drive a car with only one hand on the wheel, but any DMV personnel will be glad to tell you that the safest way to drive a vehicle is with both hands on the wheel, in the ten o'clock and two o'clock positions, and you'll notice that that's where my hands are right now and where they intend to stay."
    "Okay, sure. You clearly want us to be safe. I appreciate that. So what's your name?"
    "If you must know, people call me Ace," I said. No one's ever called me Ace in my