quick try

We waited for several hours, but there was no way anybody would stop for us.  It was an awful day and the rumors of the Highway Ripper were making everybody nervous anyway.  The green landscape of Washington highways is small beauty or pleasure when you have no wheels, and even when you do you have to worry about what you might run into.  I'm glad I have my poncho; Nero had it worse.  He was soaked through in no time.  It was a surprise when that pickup slowed down as it came down the road past us, and even more when pulled over on the shoulder and stopped.  The truck waited, making that chugging noise they do when they're idling, and we ran to see who our savior was.  He was the typical old dude who would drive a pickup out here.

"Can I give you kids a lift?"

"We'd sure appreciate it," and we clambered in.

Now we're rattling down the road without so much as the radio to distract us.  I'm in the middle, the driver on my left, Nero staring out the window on my right.  Finally the driver speaks, "Ain't so smart these days, hitchin'."

"It's something exciting."

"Sometimes that gets a body kilt."

"'A body kilt'?  Where're you from?  Or when?"

"Don't you mind my old timey talk, I always admired my grandpap.  Where you kids goin' anyway?  You never said when you got in."

I look away and kind of nod with the texture of the road under the wheels.  After a minute I say, "We go wherever the road takes us."

"Well, whatever," the driver grunts.

We go on in silence until it gets dark.  The driver's eyes are glued to the road at all times, but his voice seems to be aimed right at my eardrums.  "Suppose you heard about the Ripper."

"Of course."  Nero's still staring out the window.

"Don't it make you think twice about stunts like this?"

"Does it make you?"

Another moment of silence.

"I try to do favors for folks, pickin' 'em up off the road.  Sometimes they ain't so grateful, I guess."

Nero shifts restlessly in his seat.  "A lot of people aren't grateful for nothin'.  Me, I give credit where credit is due.  My boy Nero, too."  More shuffling around from my right.

"You never get in trouble?"

"There's two of us.  We're safe travelers.  You oughta think about that."

"I guess."

Nero sighs and leans his head against the window.  He's getting restless.  I hate that.  Now the driver keeps looking in his rearview mirror.  When I look at it I can see his eyes flitting up and back to the road in front of us.  I think the road is empty, though.  "You ever want to do something you shouldn't?" I ask with the feeling of a hand around my throat.  It's not a real hand, I know it isn't.  Not mine, not the driver's, not Nero's.  But it's there just the same.