I was about to call it a day and find a cool doorway to sit in when someone finally pulled over for me. The trucker was redhaired this time. The stocky, dirty bitten fingernail variety redhead. His hat was dark green and white, and had the logo of some farm equipment company. He looked about 26 I guess, but you can't ever tell about someone's age. People live in all kinds of strange ways that usually either age them quickly or preserve some feature in a tricky way.
I used to take rides from anybody who'd pull over, but then my friend Marie got killed by some guy driving a rented Jaguar, so I only take rides from truckers now, and I always pretend to call my fiance Brett when I get in the truck and give him the license plate and the name of the road we're on. I stay on for ten minutes at a time, having fake conversations with him, fake fights. I sometimes even act like Brett wants to talk to the driver, saying "no honey, this driver has to keep his concentration on the road. OK. I'll tell him....my fiance says that if anything happens to me he'll kill you....He's VERY overprotective. He's a State Trooper. He's so mad at me for hitchhiking!!"
But I don't bother to do that anymore. By my appearance it is plain to see that there is no state trooper fiance worried about me. Not now.
The trucker was quiet and mean. I could tell he was mean the minute he opened the door for me. Even though sometimes people are seemingly doing nice things, they can still be mean. And sometimes, people can do very bad things, and still be nice people. This I learned a long time ago.