Amid the industrial grinding, blurting, spasming–where there might have been horns–Sam could hear method; each emission was in its own time, but they met every few seconds on the beat of a plastic drum machine. And then a beeping sound, like a truck backing up, out of place, just another gear for no reason. Finally, a horn blast, an actual horn, or a sample of an actual horn, signaling, drawing the whole mess together for another round. And again. Marvin looked over at Sam and shouted, “Right?”“Yeah!”“You’ll hear it, just wait for it.” Marvin’s eyes were wide as he beat his chest in time with an open hand. “Okay!” he said. “It’s…yeah, here it is!”And there it was: Pachelbel’s Canon, right out of a box, laid over the top of the mayhem like cellophane.“Right?”“Yeah!”It went on for longer than Sam would have expected and moved directly into the next track, even faster, featuring the unmistakable sound of an air wrench and a pounding beat that made every surface of the car tremble,

“Yeah?”Meditation, good. Not uncommonly, obvious remedies for what plagued a driver were contained within their confessions. And often enough for Sam, allaying their concerns was as simple as reminding them that they had been wearing ruby slippers all along.“What I realized was, I wasn’t scared of dying or getting hurt. I was scared I was going to lose my soul over there. I’d get cut loose from God and become a monster. So I had this idea, and it seemed crazy, but I knew it wasn’t. So when Mattie was out, picking up the kids, I went to the pet store, bought a cat, brought it home, and I squeezed it to death in the kitchen.”“Oh fuck!”“Yeah.”“Oh fuck. Sorry, I’m just—”“Nah, nah, it’s cool,” Marvin said. “I understand. I know what I did was awful. But I had to. I had to do something evil so I would know what it felt like—or if it wouldn’t feel like anything at all.”“Jesus.”“I did it slowly, skinny orange cat, looking right in its eyes the wh

This is confirmation, Sam. You were meant to be at the truck stop. I was meant to give you a ride.”“Right! Confirmation?”“So last week, I was driving and turning the dial on the radio and just…boom, right there, on NPR, this amazing sound, like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was right at the start of the second part. You know what I’m talking about?”“Yeah—with…the strings.”“Exactly! Suddenly I didn’t even remember where I’m going or what I was doing. It didn’t matter, I just had to hear this. So I pulled over by the side of the road and listened. It was everything I’d been thinking and feeling. Everything. It was the Army, Mattie, my kids, my shoulder, all of it, right there.”“Right, okay, right.”“Listening to it, somehow I knew, something’s going to happen. I don’t know what, I don’t know anything, just something in the music. Got me so excited, chills down my back, even though I didn’t know what I was waiting for.” Sam didn’t either. It had been ye