But now there was nothing but him and the road: no May to tell him about rapists and serial killers. All there was was the road, and the dirt in the air. When he looked down that road leading west he felt as if he could look to the ends of the earth and see the trees before the cliff that dropped off into the abyss of an ocean. He felt as if the road were a river, carrying him somewhere he wasn’t sure he wanted to go, somewhere he didn’t know if he could walk back from. It seemed that any place you couldn’t walk to and back from on foot was too far. And he was once again plagued by those doubts that had always held him back before. What desperation had driven him to the road? He wasn’t sure. He half blamed Kerouac and all the beat-poetry he had filled his head with; and he hated to admit that the road was just as romantic as they had made it out to be. He could hear the heartbeat of the highway, the thudding and the throbbing of the engines and the skidding tyres—