And now he began to feel the faintest tick of irritation. He hadn’t had his breakfast, his groceries weren’t getting any fresher, he was tired and fed up and here he was chasing phantoms while Carey Bachman barked orders at him. “But I didn’t,” he said, and gave him a steady look. “Did I?”
They waited there at the side of the road till the pickup was in motion again, its blunt hood and massive grill nosing up to the street as a clutch of motor homes lumbered by, and then, without warning, the pickup was cutting across both lanes and heading back in the direction they’d come from and Carey, his voice rising, jerked up so violently in his seat the whole car rocked on its springs. “Cut a U-ey, quick, quick!” he shouted. “They’re turning left. Hit it, come on!”
The Prius was built for gas mileage, not the Indianapolis 500, but it had enough acceleration to get you through a tight spot if your reflexes served you and Sten’s did. He was able to pull out front of the first creeping motor home and slash a U-turn with a minimal squeal of the tires and a single admonitory blast of the startled driver’s horn, and he kept his foot on the accelerator until he was fifty feet from the tail of the pickup, which continued half a block south before making an abrupt left back up the street they’d just followed it down. All right. He slowed, hung back, watched the pickup continue straight on up the road, the sun just beginning to poke through in the distance to illuminate the world in a soft wash of color, and did his best to keep up without being too obvious about it.
Carey had gone rigid but for the bounce of one agitated knee. “They’re heading straight up into the hills,” he cried, his voice thin with excitement. “Didn’t I tell you? Huh?”
Sten wanted to say, What does that prove?, but he was feeling it now too, more certain by the minute that Carey was right, that they were onto something. A load of groceries like that? There wasn’t much up here, once you got out of town—a couple of ranches, deep woods, the Georgia Pacific property he or Carey or one of the others hiked twice a week to make sure nothing like this was going on, to report it, which was what they were going to do now, just as soon as they saw where the illegal operation was. He didn’t say anything, just focused on the white gleam of the pickup ahead of him, which wasn’t doing much more than forty-five or so. He eased up on the accelerator. Held tight to the wheel. A car appeared around the next corner, coming the opposite way, followed by a battered pickup, its bed stacked high with baled hay—horses out here, a smattering of cattle, chickens, turkeys (and weed too, that went without saying, but that was different because what people did on their own private property for their own consumption—citizens, American citizens—was nobody’s business but theirs). The Prius shook ever so slightly with the motion of their passing, and then the road was clear but for the white pickup with the shadowy figures inside and the man in back propped up against the cab and looking straight at them, his gold-and-green hat flashing in the light like a homing beacon.
Weed. The great lure of the North Coast, the Gold Coast, Pot Alley. They grew grapes in the Anderson Valley, but they grew pot in the hills. It had been going on as long as he could remember.
“They’re signaling,” Carey said, and his voice seemed to come out of nowhere, startling him. He saw that the pickup had its right blinker on and that it was slowing now to pull over on the shoulder in a tornado of dust and it took him by surprise. His first instinct was to hit the brakes, not knowing what else to do. “No, no, no, don’t stop,” Carey hissed, “whatever you do, don’t stop,” and here they were, right on top of them, giving him little choice but to continue on past, staring straight ahead as if the pickup on the shoulder was no more significant than the trees, the rocks and the litter along the roadside. He was going slowly, too slowly, and he could feel their eyes on him, arrogant eyes, angry, suspicious. “Goose it,” Carey said, and he was staring straight ahead too.
They drove on up the road, Sten snatching a look in the rearview while Carey slouched low in the seat so he could study the side mirror. The white pickup just sat there, the dust dissipating, and then they were around the next turn and it was gone. “What now?” Sten asked, and he wasn’t really asking, just thinking aloud.