Strange Highways

bullet-hard ferocity against the Mustang.
     The windshield wipers throbbed - lubdub, lubdub - as though the car were a great heart pumping time and fate instead of blood.
     At last he dared to look at the rearview mirror.
     In the dim light from the instrument panel, he could see little, but what little he could see was enough to fill him with wonder, with awe, with wild exhilaration, with fear and with delight simultaneously, with respect for just how very strange the night and the highway had become. In the mirror, his eyes were clear, and the whites of them were luminescent white: They were no longer bleary and bloodshot from twenty years of heavy drinking. Above his eyes, his brow was smooth and unlined, untouched by two decades of worry and bitterness and self-loathing.
     He jammed his foot on the brake pedal, the tires shrieked, and the Mustang fishtailed.
     Celeste squealed and put out her hands to brace herself against the dashboard. If they had been going fast, she wound have been thrown out of her seat.
     The car skidded across the double yellow line into the other lane, coward the far rock wall, but then slid into a hundred-eighty-degree turn, back into the lane where they'd begun, and came to a stop on the roadway, facing the wrong direction.
     Joey grabbed the rearview mirror, tilted it up to reveal a hairline that had not receded, tilted it down past his eyes, left, right.
     "What are you doing?" she demanded.
     Though his hand was shaking uncontrollably, he found the switch for the dome light.
     "Joey, we could be hit head-on!" she said frantically, though there were no headlights approaching.
     He leaned closer to the small mirror, turned it this way and that, craned his neck, trying to capture every possible aspect of his face in that narrow rectangle.
     "Joey, damn it, we can't just sit here!"
     "Oh, my God, my God."
      "Are you crazy?"
     "Am I crazy?" he asked his youthful reflection.
      "Get us off the road!"
     "What year is it?"
     "Drop the stupid act, you moron."
     "What year is it?"
     "It isn't funny."
     "What year is it?" he demanded.
     She started to open her door.
     "No," Joey said, "wait, wait, all right, you're right, got to get off the road, just wait."
     He swung the Mustang around, back in the direction they had been heading before he'd slammed on the brakes, and he pulled to a stop on the side of the road.
     Turning to her, pleading with her, he said, "Celeste, don't be angry with me, don't be afraid, be patient, just tell me what year it is. Please. Please. I need to hear you say it, then I'll know it's real. Tell me what year it is, and then I'll explain everything - as much as I can explain it."
     Celeste's schoolgirl crush on him was still strong enough to overcome her fear and anger. Her expression softened.
     "What year?" he repeated.
     "It's 1975," she said.
     On the radio, "She's the One" rocked to its glorious end.
     Springsteen was followed by a commercial for the current big hit in the movie theaters: Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.
     The past summer it had been Jaws. Steven Spielberg was just starting to become a household name.
     The previous spring, Vietnam had fallen.
     Nixon had left office the year before.
     Amiable Gerald Ford was in the White House, caretaker president of a troubled country. Twice in September, attempts had been made on his life. Lynnette Fromme had taken a shot at him in Sacramento. Sara Jane Moore had gone after him in San Francisco.
     Elizabeth Seton had become the first American to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
     The Cincinnati Reds had won the World Series in seven games.
     Jimmy Hoffa had disappeared.
     Muhammad Ali was world heavyweight champion.
     Doctorow's novel Ragtime. Judith Rossner's Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
     Disco. Donna Summers. The Bee Gees.
     Now, although still soaked, he realized that he wasn't wearing the suit in which he had attended the funeral and which he had been wearing when he'd fled Henry Kadinska's law office. He was in boots and blue jeans. Hunter's-plaid flannel shirt. Blue-denim jacket with sheepskin lining.
     "I'm twenty years old," Joey whispered as reverentially as he