The Man on the Loneliest Road
The Nevada sun had a way of making a person feel small.
It hung over Highway 50 like a white-hot coin, pouring heat onto the black asphalt until the road appeared to ripple and bend in the distance. There were no trees tall enough to offer shade, no buildings, no gas stations, and no comforting signs telling a traveler that civilization was close.
Only desert.
Only mountains.
Only miles and miles of empty road.
That was why Highway 50 had earned its famous nickname: the Loneliest Road in America.
Henry Mitchell had driven it many times.
At seventy-three, Henry had learned that loneliness was not always something to fear. Sometimes it was something a man needed.
Three years had passed since Margaret died.
Three years since Henry had walked through the front door of their little Carson City house and realized there would never again be another woman's voice calling from the kitchen.
Margaret had been the talker.
Henry had been the listener.
She could turn a ten-minute grocery trip into an hour-long adventure because she knew everyone in town. She remembered birthdays, anniversaries, grandchildren's names, doctors' appointments, and the names of dogs belonging to people she barely knew.
Henry remembered engines.
For forty-six years, he had been a diesel mechanic.
He could listen to a truck engine for thirty seconds and tell a driver what was wrong before opening the hood. He knew the sound of a failing bearing, a cracked belt, a clogged injector, a dying alternator.
Machines made sense.
People were harder.
After Margaret died, Henry began taking long drives.
Sometimes he had a destination.
Most of the time he didn't.
He simply climbed into his old 1988 Ford F-150, turned the key, and followed whatever road looked emptiest.
That morning, he had left Carson City before sunrise.
His truck was battered, faded, and beginning to rust around the wheel wells. Margaret had once called it "that stubborn old mule."
Henry had kept it because she had loved it.
Now, sometime after ten in the morning, he was traveling east on Highway 50 when he saw something ahead.
At first, it looked like a dark speck beside the road.
Then it became a motorcycle.
Then a man.
Henry slowed.
The motorcycle was enormous.
A custom-built Harley-Davidson chopper sat crookedly on the gravel shoulder. Its chrome glimmered under the brutal sun.
Beside it stood a man who looked as if he had been carved from stone.
He was easily six feet four inches tall, broad across the shoulders, with arms thick enough to make Henry's own arms look like sticks. He wore faded denim, heavy black boots, and a leather vest despite the hundred-degree heat.
A long gray beard covered most of his face.
Dark sunglasses concealed his eyes.
Tattoos climbed his neck.
But it wasn't his size that made Henry's stomach tighten.
It was the back of the leather vest.
Henry knew the symbol.
Almost everyone did.
A winged skull.
A red-and-white rocker.
HELLS ANGELS.
Henry's right foot moved toward the brake.
His first thought was simple.
Keep driving.
Don't get involved.
Every story he had ever heard about the Hells Angels seemed to flash through his mind at once.
Fights.
Crime.
Violence.
Men who lived by rules ordinary people didn't understand.
Henry glanced in the rearview mirror.
The biker hadn't moved.
He was simply standing there, staring at the approaching truck.
Henry drove another hundred yards.
Then another fifty.
Finally, he sighed.
"Damn it, Margaret."
He could almost hear her voice.
You know what you're supposed to do.