He didn’t see the headlights until the last half second. It was time enough to drop the phone with one hand and with the other save his life. He jerked the wheel to the right, clearing the yellow line just as the first of five great axles rattled past his ear.

He breathed and braked to half speed, listening like a guilty child for an irate horn behind him, tires screeching -- some response to his stupidity. For a moment, he had a bizarre feeling the phone might ring again. But the night merely whistled through his window, and when he checked his mirror the semitrailer had already vanished below the hill crest, as though it had never been.

When he didn’t see it climb the next rise, he began to worry it had gone into the brush. For the next half mile, his vision strayed between the ribbon of blacktop before him and its twin unwinding in the mirror.

But he never saw the truck again. Nor, eyes fixed to the mirror, did he see the next one cross the yellow line, sheer off his driver's-side door and take a month from his waking life.

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