Dad's light-blue eyes take in the westbound drivers beyond the median strip, squinting, pulling their visors down against the sun. Frazzled, flipping their headlights on as the sun sinks lower. Dad drives all day long with his lights on. Safer that way, says he. "Always let 'em see ya comin'" is one of his rules. "Never make any sudden moves" is another. Dad's frazzled too. His rules are to stop every two hours, and to do no more than five hundred miles in any one day. But today he's been pushing it, trying to get home, trying to keep it down to one or two more nights on the road. So he's been driving for five hours now without stopping. The kids are cranky, and Mom--well, Mom hasn't said a word now for the past seventy miles. The Michigan map lies in her lap, but her eyes are on the utility poles flicking by.

The car's a mess. The floor is littered with sandwich wrappers and drink containers from fast-food joints, and with maps of previous states. The ashtray is stuffed with toll and fast-food receipts. A voice on the radio speaks of traffic jams in a city they skirted an hour ago. The kids stare out the windows, not knowing where they are.

Dad pulls out into the passing lane alongside a Greyhound bus just in time to get a clear view of an overpass going by. Someone has spray-painted "Lulu I love you" in blue on one span of the bridge. Also, there's "Gonzaga rules," in red, and, just below and to the right of that, the words "Cruelty without beauty" in thick, black, clumsy letters.

There's more, but Dad's green Olds sedan and the Greyhound have already passed neck and neck beneath the bridge. A girl leaning on her bike handles looks down at them, watching them pass. Dad pulls back over to the right when he's finished passing the bus. In his rearview mirror he sees the word "Detroit," backwards, on the front of the bus, above the windows.

"Cruelty without beauty," Dad thinks. In his mind he says the words over and over until they almost make sense. "Cruelty without beauty." He says the words half aloud--aloud enough that Mom says, "What? What did you say?"

"Nothing," Dad says. "Have we passed Jackson yet?"

"I don't think so. Let me look."

She fools around with the map in her lap, but Dad says, "No. Don't bother. We'll just take the next exit that's got signs for lodging, and the old knife and fork. What do you say, kids? Ready to eat? Ready to stop for the night?"

The kids, who are ready, chorus their enthusiasm. Mom folds the map and tucks it away in the glove compartment among the other maps and tourist brochures, the ones for states yet to come. Dad thinks about cruelty without beauty, about the words--their sound and their meaning. Mom's on the run. She's running down a long hotel corridor, just like Shelley Duvall in The Shining. Like her, she raises her hand to her mouth in fear as she stops, turns, looks back. Dad's coming after her. His breathing is loud on the soundtrack of the dream. The hallway is suddenly a short one, the upstairs hall of the house they both live in in Lowell, Massachusetts, with their two pre-teen children. Dad is almost upon her when Mom flings her arms upwards and throws her full body length into a wall, which shatters and dissolves. Dad watches her tumbling into darkness. His breathing has reached a crescendo. She whirls around and around and smashes into the metal railing of the small balcony just outside the window of their second-floor motel room in Illinois. Mom stares at him as she slips over the railing, her round, gray-green eyes full of terror. She lands on the trunk of their car and slides crumpled to the pavement.

Dad's not a cruel man. He loves Mom and the kids, and the violence and cruelty of these dreams always startle him. As does the vividness with which he imagines, say, turning around and smacking one of the cranky kids in the back seat, and seeing, with what can only be called pleasure, the trickle of bright blood starting up at the corner of the mouth. Dad has never struck anyone, let alone taken pleasure in doing so.

Finding the right motel is sometimes a problem. HBO is a must. Kids should be free, or at most half-price. The price must be right, and a triple-A discount must be available. Also, a promising truck stop should be nearby. Tonight they find three motels near a cloverleaf--easy-off, easy-on--but only the third will take the kids free and provide free coffee and rolls in the morning.

The motel room, which at one time in Dad's life might have seemed like a peaceful refuge from the stresses and strains of the road, now seemed more like one of those wire-mesh containers into which police bomb squads placed suspect objects or parcels, expecting them to explode at any moment.

The boy has already hit the power button on the TV and scrunched down in front of the monitor to watch a Chuck Norris saga of exploding hand grenades, evil-looking Orientals, and whirling, vaulting, martial-artsy bodies. The tow-headed girl sits in a sulk, tugging on her braid on the innermost bed, the one she will share with Mom. Dad is still bringing in suitcases and plastic bags full of souvenirs and dirty clothes from the car, and Mom is busily setting out toothbrushes and toothpaste in the bathroom.

Dad feels his hands around the boy's neck, his thumbs exerting pressure at the base of his windpipe until the blue tongue comes out and stares at him. The blue eyes are boggled, almost coming out of their sockets. When the lad falls away, Dad turns to the sulky girl and gives her two tremendous blows that propel her off the bed and onto the floor, whimpering, bleeding from her nose and mouth. Mom starts to say something, but Dad says, "Not a word. Not a word."

---

Dad puts his foot through the glass front of the case and hollers to the boy, "Okay, son, let's do it!" He tosses the boy a machine pistol and clip of ammo. Mom takes a shotgun for herself and stuffs her pockets and purse with shells.

---

At Granny Nannie's truck stop they all sit around their table, quiet but content, glad to be at rest after a day of constant motion. The truck-stop booths and tables have the usual telephones, and nearby truckers are busy calling home or back to the office for further instructions.

Adjacent to their table is a giant fish tank with several brightly colored tropical fish in it. One brilliant yellow one lies on the bottom, seeming to stare at them. The girl thinks maybe it's dead.

"Don't they float on the top when they're dead?" asks the boy.

Farther down the line of tables, a chocolate cake revolves in a glass case. Mom thinks, Maybe I'll have a piece of that for dessert. At the next table two truck drivers are discussing an accident they'd seen somewhere: "Jackknifed across three lanes of traffic . . . took out four cars and a van . . . saw the smoke from a mile away . . . fire shooting twenty, thirty feet into the air."

"Let's eat," says Dad, beaming at the kids and rubbing the palms of his hands together.

"What looks good?" says a smiling Mom, scanning the menu.

"Hamburger," says the boy.

"Pork chops," says the girl.

"Steak," says Dad.

The three of them begin a giggling, whispering chorus of "Let's eat meat. Let's eat meat. Let's eat meat."

"Oh, all right," Mom says, before they all get out of hand. "Maybe I'll have some veal."

The waitress, when she comes, is a young one named Sophie, according to the nameplate pinned to her blouse. Big-busted and wide-hipped, she wears enough mascara to sink a fleet. The boy lifts up her skirt and looks underneath. Dad grabs her blouse above the highest button and tears away both the blouse and her bra in a single motion, exposing her breasts and stomach. The girl jabs the waitress's belly with her fork, leaving four tiny, red indentations. Mom looks at her in contempt.

"You really shouldn't wear so much make-up," Mom says.

Dad grins and says, "Yes, I think we're ready to order now."

When the steaming food comes, they all dig in with relish. From little plastic packets, ketchup spurts out onto their meat and fried potatoes. Knives and forks make the meat fall apart into small pieces they put in their mouths and chew. Tinier pieces get wedged into crevices between their teeth, later to be rooted out with toothpicks. Various liquids--Coke and coffee, milk and water--pour in, swish around and are swallowed.

The waitress Sophie comes by and asks if they'd like some dessert. Mom points to the chocolate cake revolving on a plate in the glass case, and says, "I'll have a big piece of that." The boy orders chocolate chunk ice cream, and Dad orders pecan pie. The girl says, "Rice pudding, please." Which everyone thinks is strange because she's never liked rice pudding before. She's at a funny age, think Mom and Dad.

Dad pays the bill and gives the delighted waitress a good, healthy tip. They explore the store adjacent to the restaurant. Here, all the various needs of truckers are supplied. Stimulants to keep them awake long hours on the road are for sale. So are flares and Roman candles in case of accidents or breakdowns. There are shelves of aspirins and unguents and shaving creams. There are racks of porn and westerns and detective novels in paperback editions. In the aisles beyond these there are batteries, tire irons, and hubcaps, and against the wall in a low glass case Dad finds a virtual arsenal of weapons: shotguns and shells, hunting knives, pistols, even automatic and semiautomatic weapons.

Dad puts his foot through the glass front of the case and hollers to the boy, "Okay, son, let's do it!"

He tosses the boy a machine pistol and clip of ammo. Mom takes a shotgun for herself and stuffs her pockets and purse with shells. The girl takes a delicate Derringer and a handful of bullets. Dad finds for himself a Kalashnikov that has a good feel to it, and takes a couple of grenades to boot.

"Let's move!" Dad orders.

He and Mom storm the cashier's desk, while the boy heads back into the restaurant. The girl? She watches for trouble at the door. Mom clutches the cashier by her hennaed hair and snarls, "Open that till, bitch." The hair comes out in her hands, but the cash drawer is quickly opened. Mom scoops out all the bills and shoves them in her purse, while Dad is holding the security man at bay.

The boy sprays the restaurant with fire. Plate-glass windows shatter. Truckers and waitresses explode into blood and flesh and bits of bone. The fish tank ruptures and cataracts of water gush out onto the floor, fish flippyflopping everywhere. The chocolate cake blows up into bite-sized chunks and blobs of goopy chocolate-icing goo which mix with blood and water on the floor. Then he backs out toward the cashier's desk, where Mom and Dad are waiting.

"Okay, let's get out of here," shouts Dad, and they pick up the girl at the door and head for the car.

Dad lays down rubber as they speed out of the truck stop's parking lot and onto the highway toward Jackson.

"Good work, you guys. That could have been sticky," Dad says.

In Jackson, they take out three or four 7-Elevens, Mom stuffing more and more bills into her purse, and then start going for automatic teller machines. Dad knew those grenades would come in handy. By eleven they have enough money to keep them comfortable for several years, and start back toward their motel. One police car takes out after them, but a single blast from Mom's shotgun ends the threat in an orange fireball, the heat of which singes her eyebrows.

When they pull into the motel courtyard, Dad has turned his lights out, just in case there might be an ambush. Dad slips the car into its parking place, and wishes now their room was not on the second floor. But there are no cops in sight, and the family members cover each other as they make their way up the stairs to their room. Dad fumbles the keys at the door, drops them, picks them up, and then at last gets the door unlocked and open. They slip in one by one without turning the lights on.

When they're all inside, Dad peeks out around the edge of the heavy draw-curtain at the window. No sign of anything out there. He heaves a sigh of relief, and Mom turns the lights on.

"I'm first in the shower," the girl says.

"What's on TV?" asks the boy.

"Not much," says Dad. "Let's get to sleep early. Long way to go tomorrow."

Mom starts to laugh and they all join in.