It started with a slow drum then this really sad guy came on and sang like he would break your heart. You had to be in the mood or you couldn’t take it. Josh was in exactly the right mood. It was just what he wanted for the big event, the arrival of the sun after this nine-hour non-stop homeward haul from Tennessee. And it was going to work this time. It was going to be a peach. The track was lined up, the sun was maybe only seconds from view, and he was northbound in the right lane with nothing obstructing his view across the dew-soaked fields to the dark rolling back of the Appalachians.

That was important to the full enjoyment of the moment, the absence of anything man-made in between him and the sunrise. No buildings. No human junk. Nothing that would spoil his view with another reminder, particularly after his disappointment in the reluctant maiden he’d rescued, that sometimes people didn’t deserve another day graced by anything as beautiful and indiscriminately benevolent as the sun. He waited, his hand ready to press play, glancing every three or four seconds out of the passenger window to catch the first sight.

Up ahead, the highway stretched empty before him, an artery of stone that fed America its life-blood. Or was it a vein that circulated the disease of man and his junk around the once untouched and healthy body of this delicate continent?

Josh gazed out front, contemplating it for a second, knowing that whatever the answer, he was a part of it. The rare sight of clear road made him suddenly feel exposed, an alien object moving without permission upon an ancient and secretive landscape.

And in those few moments of inattention as Josh dreamily regarded the road ahead, the sun betrayed him and sneaked up over the rim of the hills. He whipped his head to the east as the first orange beam hit the side of his face, shifted in his seat and stabbed the play button on the stereo.

The tape hissed and then the song began.

How could he have known? Even with the benefit of the height that he enjoyed from the truck Josh couldn’t see the entire landscape ahead, couldn’t see the mark of man that was waiting for him, nestling smugly between mountains and highway. So at that religious and significant moment when the sun rose, it rose not over unsullied meadows and hills, but from behind a forest of four tall masts, one tipped by golden horns, another by the Cracker Barrel sign, the other two proclaiming Taco Bell and Burger King.

Josh blinked for a second, his mouth slightly open until an excited voice on the CB crackled over the gentle song playing on the tape and brought him back.

‘Man, oh man! Any of you northbounds see that?’