My Destiny
by Hugh Lessig

We are stopped dead on Interstate 64 halfway between Richmond and Hampton Roads. Some truck flipped sideways and now three wreckers are doing a circle jerk in the road, trying to move it aside. No one is getting through.
We have left our cars, yawning and stretching and gabbing on our cell phones. Kids run back and forth across the highway, onto the shoulder. I have sales calls to make, and I’m trying to concentrate on that, trying to forget what just happened before traffic stopped. Jesus.
This man standing next to me has started talking the way people sometimes do.
"This is going to take some time. That truck might have hazardous waste or something. This could be a hazmat situation."
The man wears a seersucker suit and wrap-around sunglasses. He looks like a striped fly.
"It’s too bad a truck caused this," he says. "A little while ago, some guy in a BMW passed me, going way too fast for his own good. That should be him up there. But it’s not. People like that never get in accidents."
A little chill goes down my spine. "You saw him?"
"A silver BMW? Yes. Very reckless, wasn’t he?"
I haven’t talked up to this point. Now it all comes out.
"That guy, he nearly killed me not fifteen minutes ago. He comes up behind me in the passing lane, right? I’m doing 75. But that’s not good enough. So I pull into the slow lane. Then he decides he wants to pass me in the slow lane, so now I’m blocking him. So you know what he did? The fucker?"
The man takes half a step back. "Obviously not. I didn’t see it."
"He goes onto the shoulder of the road. Onto the goddamn shoulder. We’re window-to-window for a second, then he’s gone. I mean gone, passing me on the right, from the shoulder."
I want to tell him the rest, but something stops me right there. How do you describe almost killing a man? The truth is, I almost ran the BMW into the guardrail. I had both hands on the wheel, shoulders set, ready to ram him. One minute, I’m thinking about sales calls and the next minute I’m almost killing someone. Almost liking it. It was so good, I saw spots.
"People like that never get in accidents," the man says. "They only cause them. Well, he got his."
"What do you mean, ‘he got his?’"
Before the man can answer, a woman walks over to join us. She has neon red hair and an earring in her nose. She wears platform sandals with a toe ring, and lack of sleep has left her face puffy and unattractive. She says: "I couldn’t help overhearing. You guys talking about the maniac in the beamer? He almost killed me."
"You too," the man says, like he already knows this.
"He passed me a few minutes ago," the girl says. "He got right up on my bumper. Then he got pulled over, because we passed him. A state cop got him."
The man turns to me. "That’s what I was going to tell you. Didn’t you see him along the road? The cop pulled him over. You probably saw him. We were all driving more or less together. He passed me, got pulled over, then I passed him. You probably passed him."
"Now that you mention it, I did."
But I didn’t. Maybe I passed him, but I didn’t notice anything. What happened at the guardrail — the rage, whatever it was — didn’t wash through me. It left a trail. After the BMW passed me, I spent the next few minutes trying to control my hands, trying to see straight, trying to sort through the wreckage in the pit of my stomach, finding my hate, nurturing it.
The girl shades her eyes and squints into the noonday sun. "Now think about this. He passed us, right? Then the cop stopped him. Then we passed him. That means he’s somewhere behind us, somewhere back in the pack."
All three of us look back, as if on cue. It is a sea of shiny metal. Reds, silvers, blacks. People moving through waves of heat. Someone is throwing a Frisbee. The stoppage must be miles long. It is amazing how far traffic backs up when things are stopped dead.
"It’s best to let it go," the man says.
"Like hell," the girl says. "Check this out."
The BMW is moving toward us. The driver has steered onto the wide shoulder, trying to get ahead of everyone. He waits for kids to get out of the way, then jumps ahead. Every time he lurches forward, something moves in the pit of my stomach.
"He won’t get through up there," the man says. "He might get past us, but he won’t get through. I’ve seen it. This could be a hazmat situation."
The girl gives him a look. "A what?"
"I used to work in security, missy. That overturned truck could have hazardous waste. We don’t know. That’s why we’re all stopped. They won’t let him through. They got three wreckers up there trying to clear it away."
"I don’t think that guy cares."
"He will care," the man says. "Rules are rules."
As the BMW moves closer, a child comes running up to the girl. The child might be eight years old, and she leaps into the girl’s arms. The girl tries to catch the child, but she can’t. The girl moves slowly, painfully, like she has a bad back. Then she laughs and lets the child grab onto her leg.
"Yours?" I say.
"My youngest," the girl says. "I got one in the third grade, too."
I look at the girl through new eyes. A mother of two? I pegged her for high school. Next to me, the man shakes his head and smiles in a humorless Rotary Club sort of way.
"If you don’t mind me asking," I say, "how old are you?"
"Twenty-four. Not that old."
She smiles and I see her bad teeth, the absence of a wedding ring, where the line of makeup stops at the base of her neck. Looking down at her beautiful child, it almost makes me cry.
The silver BMW is less than 50 yards away now. The driver has found a clear spot along the shoulder, so he guns the engine. The three of watch the car, and we don’t see the child break away from us. The next thing I know, the child is standing at the side of the road, watching a Frisbee float in the air. She leans into the path of the BMW. As it passes, we hear the tiny click of the sideview mirror making contact with the child’s head. The car keeps moving.
The child puts one hand on her forehead, as if she has eaten ice cream too quickly.
She stands there a moment before she starts to cry.
It’s funny how some moments seem frozen in time. We all sit there and watch the little girl, holding our breath. Then we start running for her — or at least I do. The BMW continues on its merry way. I want to find a rock and throw it, but there is nothing around me. My insides are a mess.
The child has a small red spot on her perfect forehead, but she seems more scared than hurt. Someone brings out a first-aid kit and another person has a water bottle. The child swallows some aspirin, and there are relieved sighs and sympathetic noises all around. I look around for the girl — the girl who is the mother — but she hasn’t moved. She has dropped onto the hot asphalt and sits cross-legged, crying into her hands.
I lead the child back. The mother mumbles something about how sorry she is, how she can’t move fast enough, how she wishes she had more strength. The child rubs her mother’s head.
"Don’t touch my hair, honey."
The man with the sunglasses shakes his head again. He did not move a finger when the girl got hit.
"Don’t get upset," I say. "It’s hard to keep track of kids in a situation like that." I want to say something about the driver, something hateful and comforting, but I can’t even talk. My arms are tight from elbow to fist and I dearly want to hit something again.
The man points to his left. "Look. He’s talking to the cops now."
The BMW has gone to the front of giant parking lot, and it has stopped in front of some orange cones. The driver stands on the shoulder, leaning against the door, talking with a young state trooper. Sunlight glints off various parts of his body — his copper tan, the buckle of his belt, the metal frame of his sunglasses, even his teeth. Maybe not his teeth, but I see it anyway. He is fiftyish, in good shape, insured, socially secure. A ticket means nothing.
"Maybe they’ll let him through," the man says to me.
"I thought you said rules are rules."
"Yes, I did say that. How astute of you. But if you can bend the rules to your advantage, well . . ." He lets the sentence trail off and shrugs his shoulders. I have to turn away. What if rage never washes over you? What if it leaves something behind? Like once you’ve tasted it, you keep tasting it.
The child tugs on my pant leg. "Mister, my mommy’s not feeling well."
I brush the child’s hair, and it moves like water in a brook.
The driver of the BMW shakes hands with the cop and walks back along the shoulder, towards us, hands in pockets. Maybe he’ll check on the girl, and I’m thinking what I’ll do if he comes within reach. Then he turns off the road and into the tall grass. The grass gives way to woods, and pretty soon he is gone.
"He must’ve had to go," the man says.
The child frowns. "Now I have to go. Mommy?"
The mother looks up for the first time since she started crying. Her eyes, rimmed red with tears, give me the once over. "Can I trust you to watch after Destiny for a minute? I want to see if it’s safe in there."
"Absolutely," I say.
The mother gets her purse from her mini-van. She walks through the tall grass and disappears into the woods some distance from where the BMW guy went in. The child leans against my leg as if it is the most natural thing in the world. She smells of baby powder and cleanliness, and I allow my hand to rest on her head, to feel the warmth of her small body.
A few minutes pass. Birds bolt from a tree. Finally, the mother comes out of the woods and walks straight for us. It takes me a few seconds to process what I am seeing, but there is no mistaking it.
The woman is completely bald.
"What the hell," the man says.
She walks up to me with no particular expression. She pulls her hand from the purse and I see a small automatic fitted with a silencer.
"Once in the chest," she says. "Once behind the ear."
She bends down to receive her child. The child rubs her mother’s bald pate and says: "Mommy, what happened to your hair?"
"It got knocked off, honey. It’ll be fine."
"Can I go to the bathroom now?"
"No, honey. You shouldn’t go in there."
"Pleeeeese?"
"I said no and I mean no."
The man backs off and stands against his car. Sweat pours from behind his sunglasses. His mouth is a thin, firm line. No one else seems to care that the young woman has lost her flaming red hair. No one apparently saw the gun except me and the man. It is gone now, back in her purse.
I look at the little girl and smile like a clown. "Gosh honey! Now I’m the one who has to go! Excuse me!"
I step into the tall grass, past broken beer bottles and pieces of retread tire. Then I hit the trees. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the shade, and then I am upon him. He is on his stomach, both arms at his sides, palms turned upward, feet tangled like a dead deer. Blood has leaked out from the back of his head, darkening the soft collar of his polo shirt. Small black flies gather at the wound. I kick him the ribs once, to see if he is alive. Then I wind up and kick him with all my might. He rolls halfway up and resettles himself. The flies resettle themselves. I scoop up armfuls of dead leaves and sprinkle them over the body, and I pray that will stop what is churning inside me. Somehow, I find the red wig. It is shot through with pine needles and twigs, but I take it back anyway.
The mother smiles when she sees it. I take out my wallet and put fifty bucks in her hand.
"Go buy a new one. Make it neon green or something. You young kids and your hair."
The man approaches us, then stops and says: "I am not part of this."
"Part of what?" I ask.
"Part of — this. I’m making that extremely clear. I don’t know what is happening and I don’t want to know." He takes off his sunglasses. His gray eyes are wide with fear. "Frankly, I’m not believing this is happening."
He walks off, talking to himself and shaking his head. I follow him with my eyes, then the girl senses my unspoken questions and begins to talk.
"I bought the gun when I first got diagnosed with the cancer. It was already too late. I thought when the pain gets too bad, I’ll just end it. I don’t want Destiny to remember me when I’m 70 pounds and hooked up with tubes. So I went to classes and learned how to shoot. I got the silencer because I didn’t want to scare her."
I’m thinking very hard of something to say, but the only thing that comes to mind is where she got the silencer.
The girl catches a sob. "He hits my child. With his car. Could have killed her. So what the hell? What can they do? Put me away for life? Now I just do things. I do them because I want to do them."
Suddenly, people scatter all around us, and I’m thinking the cops have found the dead man. But that’s not it at all. VDOT has cleared the truck from the road and both lanes of the interstate are open. People who had been stretching and yawning are dashing for their cars. I look at the mother and her child and something passes between the three of us.
"We have to go," the mother says.
"Sure. Goodbye, Destiny."
"Goodbye, mister."
The man who stood next to me has started his car. He looks at me sideways. I walk around and tap on his window. He pretends to ignore me. I make a fist with my class ring and hit the window as hard as I can. It makes a tiny starburst crack, and the man excitedly rolls down the window.
"What the blazes is wrong with you!"
"You didn’t see anything," I say.
"I saw what I saw and I heard what I heard," he says. "My God, man. She had a gun. What happened in there?"
He tries to defy me, but his voice cannot stop shaking. I reach out as if to pat his shoulder and grab his collar at the base of his neck. His soft skin bunches up in my hand. It almost squeezes through my fingers like Jell-O.
"You didn’t see anything."
The man turns an unnatural shade of red. When his eyes start to roll back in his head, I let him go and he falls against the seat, breathing hard.
"You can’t intimidate me. You punk."
When traffic starts moving again, Destiny and her mom roll off in the white minivan, but I get in my car and stay behind the man with the sunglasses. He drives a Buick, and I memorize the license plate. He keeps looking in his rearview mirror.
Then he smiles at me.
I step on the gas and hit his bumper. There is the tinkle of broken glass, the short, satisfying crunch of plastic on plastic. The man looks in the mirror, eyes wide.
We head down the road, just him and me. 

Hugh Lessig is a career newspaper reporter who lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife, Ann Marie. "My Destiny" marks his fourth appearance in PWG. His work has also appeared in Thrilling Detective and Handheld Crime. He is currently working on a novel.