The red running lights strung across the roof of its cab jumped into my peripheral vision and sliced through the scattered pink palisades of dawn and shadow. In that terrible second of realization Juan smiled up at me. The inside of my cab filled with the rushing bright glow of the truck’s dual headlamps as the distance between us rapidly closed.

Assuming the driver saw us in front of him it was still too late to avoid a collision by swerving around us into the southbound lane. One touch of his brakes would send his trailer sideways making it and his tractor into a twenty-ton, hundred-foot-wide snowplow sweeping away everything in its path.

My fear-pounding impulse was to accelerate. I wanted to push the pedal to the floor. It would have only made the inevitable worse. I couldn’t speed up without spinning my drive wheels. Doing that would only slow us down and make the odds even better that he’d hit us dead square on the passenger side. Annabelle’s side. Juan’s side. There was only one thing either of us could do—come ahead and try to reduce the point of impact to just the rear of my trailer. I white-knuckled the few seconds as we crept ahead and the semi bore down on us.

One second. Two seconds.

Our cab filled with blinding white light. The impact was deafening. Shudders of stressed aluminum screamed the length of my rig as the trailer lurched sideways and tipped upward. For a few seconds we hung in the air, balanced on one side of tires. The tractor and trailer righted itself with a jarring bounce. We were rubber-side-down and still moving slowly ahead onto Highway 117, though at an odd angle. Our headlights pointed not at the road but north, into the swirling snow and silence of the jagged darkness of the desert shoulder of 117. I slipped the transmission into neutral and let the tractor ease itself to a complete stop.

I relaxed and let my body slump forward, resting my forehead against the steering wheel. All the breath I had been holding escaped at once. From beneath my right arm I cast a one-eyed glance at the boy. Juan was rigid in his seat with a wide, snaggletoothed grin that suggested anything but joy or amusement, like a silent scream sucked inward and held. The dog was sitting up looking at the boy. I am no authority on dogs, or children. My guess was that the dog was expressing concern—a concern for the boy alone.

I straightened up in my seat and forced what I hoped was a reassuring laugh. In the dim light of the cab I checked Belle. She was still secure in her car cradle, awake and quiet and appearing vaguely entertained, as if she had experienced nothing more than a gentle rocking.

“How about we all check our diapers?” I said. The expressions on the faces of the dog and the boy did not change. Opening my door, I added, “Okay, then, you’ll excuse me while I check mine.” Almost as an afterthought I set the brakes and flipped on the emergency flashers before stepping down onto the running board.

The sun had finally made up its mind to rise in earnest.