THE PICKUP

by Lance Knight

Hypnosis can and usually does come in so many ways. Most of us have at sometime in our lives been hypnotized and never even known about it. How often I sit in a truck cab or on a bus and wonder what the sounds of the flashing wheels flying across the black pavement are saying. Even now, as I listen, they seem to be saying, "Remember, Remember." How could I forget? It was one of those warm nights in the desert. The heat from the daylight hours had not yet left the ground and I took off my shirt as I walked along the highway. I breathed in great, bursting breaths of the wonderful clean air. I had almost forgotten how desperately in need of a ride I was. My car had broken down along a lonely stretch of road. The blackness of the ribbon that lead to nowhere stretched out before me; the only guides in the night were the stars as they played hide and seek with the clouds and kissed my bare skin. They winked down on the desolate scene and on the weary traveler.

I should have known better than to start out on the road alone, at night, and without any way of getting to a phone. I assumed that I wouldn't have any trouble, but "the best laid . . ." I had always been fairly able to take care of myself and I was sure that I could cope with any emergency which might arise. The night air was clear and crisp now; I felt better as I trudged the ribbon of speed. I whistled a tune to keep me company.

Suddenly, out of the blackness of the night, a pair of headlights stabbed into my thoughts, into the night which I had called my own and into the depths of the surrounding forest.

My only reaction was a chance of getting a ride and I turned to face the lights of the car as it plunged through the night toward me. I hoped that I could flag the motorist down and hitch a ride with him to the nearest town or to the nearest service station, where I could get the necessary parts for the car. I thought that he was going to stop, he was going so slow, but he didn't, he just laughed and sped on into the darkness. I was sure then, that I would have to walk the long miles to the nearest service station.

I knelt beside the roadway and checked the roadmap in the dim glow of a burning match. I roughly figured that I had about 25 miles to go to get to the nearest settlement and that was just a wide spot in the road. Most of the way was through a stretch of timber, too.

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