It is warm inside the cab and the radio spins out music that Simon can’t identify as rock or country. The CB crackles and the truck lumbers through the gears. Simon sinks back into the red upholstered seat and lets the motion of the truck rock his head back and forth. The driver stretches his arm across the cab with a pack of cigarettes held between his callused fingers and shakes it expertly so one cigarette jumps out from the ranks of others. Simon takes it gingerly and lights it when the Zippo comes across. He inhales from the Pall Mall and sighs out the smoke.

“Pepsi?” asks the driver.

Simon can barely manage a nod.

“Out in the bush there’s nothin like a cold Pepsi,” he says, reaching into a red and white Igloo cooler behind his seat. He hands the can to Simon and coughs and pushes against the steering wheel to unkink his back and then leans his left elbow out the truck window. Simon takes a long drink, his eyes watering from the smoke and the cold soda.

“So what you doin up here? You from here?” asks the trucker.

“Just visiting.”

“You must got some rough relatives. Looks like you got hit with the wrong end of the ugly stick.”

“You could say that,” says Simon, tapping his ash toward the cracked window and watching it disappear as it is sucked out into the day.

“I don’t want to get in your business,” he shifts in his seat, “but is that a fuckin bird’s nest you got tied to your head?”

“Yeah,” says Simon.

“I thought so, but I didn’t want to say nothin. I mean, it could be some kinda Indian thing.”

“I lost my hat, that’s all.”

“Well, let me get straight with you. I got another hat around here somewhere. And, well, you should put it on cause I know a lot of people down these roads and it won’t do much for my image if I’m drivin someone around with a fuckin bird’s nest strapped to his dome.”

“No problem.”

He reaches out as the trucker fishes around behind the seat and produces a black baseball cap with CAT stitched on the front in yellow. Simon unties the strip of flannel holding the nest to his head and unrolls the window, tosses out the cigarette, then the damp and broken nest. It is sucked behind the truck and skitters down the tar.

Simon settles the hat, the plastic snap cool as metal on the back of his head. He leans back again and lets the truck rock him like a fifteen-ton cradle. The trucker lights another cigarette. Simon falls asleep.