REBEL WORLD Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Henry Matthews stopped to take a piss. He'd drank too much coffee in that little cafe down in New Albany and, just maybe, he'd hit the Jack Daniels a little too hard the last hundred miles or so. Highway fifteen was a lousy route for a trucker, one piss-ant little town after another. He was already over an hour behind schedule and that stupid asshole back at the truck scales had kept him waiting for more than fifteen minutes.
He tightened up to make the urine flow faster and was quickly rewarded with a loud squeaky fart. Climbing unsteadily back into the cab, he threw the truck into gear and shoved an Alabama tape into the cassette player. If he could make Paris, Tennessee, by six A.M. he'd make up for some lost time. He glanced at his wristwatch. The time was four-sixteen A.M.
Henry dug into his greasy shirt pocket and pulled out a can of snuff. Balancing the can in his left hand on the wheel, he reached up with his thumb and right index finger to scoop a lip full. An unexpected wave of nausea came over him and a sudden shifting of his eyesight made him drop the can of snuff.
"Shit! Dammit!" He yelled, as most of the snuff rained down into his crotch area. "A damn new can. Shit!" He raised himself to a squat trying to brush the snuff from the seat. Glancing haphazardly at the highway, he suddenly noticed that he was heading for a dark barrier of some kind. With the instinctive skill garnered from hundreds of hours of driving his rig, he brought the truck to a stop within ten feet of the barrier without jack-knifing the trailer. He sat awkwardly staring through the windshield. Trees! Huge friggin trees and the road just stopped dead.
"What in hell!" Henry blurted, reaching over and grabbing the bottle of Jack off the seat next to him. He unscrewed the cap and took a long healthy slug from the half empty bottle, screwing up his face in a grimace as the harsh liquor bit at his throat.
He quickly threw the rig into gear and, being careful not to back into the deep ditch, quickly turned around. He lost no time in returning to Walnut.