Abe concentrates on driving. Traffic is bad where the Garden Grove Freeway bleeds into the Orange and Santa Ana, in the giant multilevel concrete ramp pretzel, every ramp stopped up entirely, it’s offtrack time again, the song of the sirens howling up and down, power sensation as the truck leaps under his foot, the tracked cars on his right flying by in a blur of color, one long rainbow bar of neon metal flowing by, whoops there’s a car offtrack right in their path blocking it entirely, heavy brakes. “Shit! What’s that doing there!”

“Get back ontrack.”

“I’m trying, man, can’t just drive over these civilians you know.” Abe puts on flasher, blinkers, the truck is strobing light at a score of frequencies, should hypnotize the car drivers if nothing else. No break in the traffic appears.

“They think we a Christmas tree,” X says angrily, and leans far out of his window to wave futilely at the passing stream. “Just edge over into them, man.”

Abe takes a deep breath, eases in the clutch, steers right. Xavier shouts abuse at the cars in the fast lane, and finally says to Abe, “Go for it,” and blindly Abe floors it and steers over into the lane, expecting a crunch from the side any second. As soon as he gets past the stalled car on the shoulder he veers back onto the concrete shoulder and guns it, fishtailing almost into the rail. Xavier is waving thanks to the driver who gave them the gap. They’re up to speed again. “We got a dangerous job,” Xavier says heavily as he settles back into his seat. “Opportunities for impaction while attempting to reach our designated destination are numerous indeed.”

Abe sings the last line of their “Ode to Fred Spaulding”:

And he never, exceeded, the speed, limit—againnnn!

Xavier joins in and they cackle wildly as they trundle at eighty miles an hour up the freeway shoulder. Abe’s hands clamp the steering wheel, Xavier’s palm is white-person white on the mike.

X says, “Have you heard the latest Fred Spaulding joke? Fred sees the overpass pylon coming at them, he shouts back into the ambulance compartment, ‘Tell the victim we’ll have him there in a second!’”

Abe laughs. “That’s like the one where he asks the victim what’s the definition of bad luck.”

“Ha! Yeah. Or where he asks him to explain double-indemnity insurance.”

“Ha! ha! Or the one where he says, ‘Have you got insurance?’ and the victim says, ‘No!’ and Fred says, ‘Don’t worry about it!’”

Xavier is helpless at this, he puts his forehead on the dash and giggles away. When he’s done he says, “Wish I didn’t believe in insurance. You wouldn’t believe how much I pay every month.”

“It’s a good bet, remember that.”