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Curtiss Ann Matlock loves to share her experience of Southern living, so she fills her stories with rich local color, basic values and Southern country wisdom. Her books have earned rave reviews, been optioned for film and received numerous awards, among them three nominations for the Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA Award and two Readers' Choice Awards, given by readers from all over the nation. She currently lives in Alabama. http://curtissannmatlock.com/

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Lost Highways

MIRA

I'll Know When I Get There

Afaded red car came up the entry ramp on her right. A little pissant economy job that looked as if it had been through the wringer. The driver door was primer gray. Giving out a puff of black smoke, it pulled right over in front of her.

Highly annoyed, Rainey thought that the driver obviously did not know the foremost rule of the road, which was that the biggest vehicle had the right of way. She would have moved over to make room for the little red car, but there was an eighteenwheeler coming up on her left that would, she was fairly certain, mow her down without compunction.

Her nerves went to twanging as she came up on the little car that seemed incapable of gaining speed. It had a fluffy pillow in the back window...no, it was a cat, and a tennis shoe. The cat's head came up, its eyes widened, and it fled.

She tapped her brakes, harder and harder, to keep from running over the car, and she imagined her mare, her mother's mare, back in the trailer, trying to suck her hooves on the floor in order to stay on her feet.

The eighteen-wheeler moved on ahead, leaving room for Rainey to pull into the left lane. Looking at the open road ahead with satisfaction, she began to press the accelerator.

The next instant, to her immense surprise and alarm, the little red pissant car pulled to the left, right in front of her again. The only reason she could come up with for this erratic move was that the driver felt the need to try out both lanes before settling on one.

Hands gripping the steering wheel, she again tapped the brake. She pictured running up on the little car's bumper and pushing. If her sister Charlene had been beside her, she would have been saying, "Now, Rainey...now, Rainey."

Charlene accused Rainey of being an aggressive driver. "Road rage. It's the epidemic of the modern age," Charlene said. "I saw all about it on CNN, and you've got it."

"I don't have rage.... Don't blow annoyance at inconsiderate drivers into rage. I am a considerate driver and expect others to be so. That's not too much to ask, if you ask me."

Maneuvering back to the right, she pressed the accelerator more forcefully this time and edged ahead while keeping a sharp eye on the faded red car for further signs of foolish behavior. She was ready to repel the little car if necessary.

Like a big ocean liner, her diesel truck took a bit to pick up speed, but once it got going, it really went down the road. She glanced in the side mirror and saw the little red car fighting the buffeting winds in the wake of her passing. She felt a little guilty. It might have been inconsiderate of her to pass so quickly that she blew him off the road.

Leaving the little car behind, she headed on down the interstate highway out of San Antonio, breezing along with the sedans and semis and Winnebagos in her mother's old dingywhite Ford one-ton pickup truck and the matching gooseneck horse trailer with the name Valentine painted in flowing turquoise across each side.

The truck and trailer were both twelve years old, and for the first years her mother had driven the dog out of them. The truck was on its second engine, and that had nearly a hundred thousand miles on it. The air conditioner worked when it took a notion, which it did not right then, so she had the windows down, allowing the warm, end-of-the-day wind to blow her hair and bat her silver feather earrings. The sun visor no longer stayed in any one place. When not in use, it had to be wedged up with a piece of wood, and when in use, it wobbled so that the sun's rays blinked at her. It was quite disconcerting. Driving into the western sun, as she was doing at that moment, she would sit up straight and dodge and bob, trying to keep the best position behind the visor, which kept rapidly changing, since she was going nearly seventy-five miles an hour down the highway.

She had been driving the rig for over a month, and it was her name on the title now, but she still considered it her mother's truck and trailer. Her mother's ragged brown sweater and faded lavender satin pillow were tucked behind the seat, and she still hadn't brought herself to clean out her mother's classic Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline cassette tapes from the console, nor had she removed the pocket New Testament and wad of napkins — the two things Mama always referred to as her "emergency kit" — from the glove box. They would pop out like a jack-in-the-box every time it was opened, as if to remind her of their presence. Here, save your soul and wipe your greasy hands at the same time, sort of like Mama was still watching over her.

Once she cut her finger, and the first thing she grabbed were napkins from that wad. After that she was careful to replenish the wad with two extra each time she stopped for a meal.

She had even returned to her maiden name of Rainey Valentine. It was easier than making the explanations that ended up sounding so tawdry.

Just then, despite her own top rate of speed, a pale pink Cadillac with Mary Kay in pink script on the side window came flying past. Drivers in Texas didn't waste time.

The cotton-candy-haired woman at the wheel of the Cadillac tooted and waved. She had obviously seen the Mary Kay bumper sticker on the back door of the horse trailer.

Rainey returned the wave happily in the camaraderie of the road and Mary Kay users.

How her mother had put so many miles on the truck was by traveling all over Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and a few points beyond, selling Mary Kay cosmetics and riding barrel races. That could be considered something of an unusual combination, but it didn't seem unusual next to the fact that Mama had raced barrels and sold Mary Kay until the age of seventy-five.

On the back of the horse trailer Mama had stuck a collection of bumper stickers. Along with the one touting Mary Kay, there was one for each state to which she had traveled to barrel race. There was one for the American quarter horse, another for barrel horses and another that said, Cowboy Up. One said Love from Valentine. Below that were the ones that said, Trust in the Lord, and Honk if You Love Jesus. Then there was the one that said, American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God.

Charlene thought the conglomeration of bumper stickers was tacky, and Rainey had to agree with her.

"Lots of people might start botherin' you for the Mary Kay, and you don't sell it," Charlene pointed out. "And that Southern saying is in poor taste. Somebody might pick a fight with you over it. I always worried about that with Mama, but you couldn't tell her anything. You ought to go ask Freddy to have the boys down in his body shop get them off," Charlene suggested.

Freddy was their older brother; he owned the only Ford dealership for fifty miles.

Rainey didn't care for the idea. "If they're taken off, there will be all these rectangle places all over. I'd need to get the trailer painted, and then the truck would look awful next to it."

She wasn't going to touch those bumper stickers. For one thing, Freddy most likely would make her pay for the job. Freddy was not noted for his generosity, and on top of that, he considered her the spoiled late child who had always been given too much.

Excerpted from Lost Highwaysby Curtiss Ann Matlock Copyright © 2005 by Curtiss Ann Matlock. Excerpted by...