5
Even though it happened long before she was born, Sherry Littlefield knew all about the “Big Wreck,” as it came to be called, on the Loop. Every kid in town knew about it from the time they were old enough to appreciate the horror of it. Some of Sherry’s friends’ parents went to high school with some of the victims, and from the time she was fourteen and nearing the age when she could legally drive, Sherry heard regularly about the Big Wreck. She also knew that it had been only the first of a long series of accidents that began to happen out on the Loop. But few people mentioned one particular fatal crash to her. They had that much sensitivity to Sherry’s feelings, at least.
Now, as she stood out on the deserted highway in the darkness, smoking another cigarette and staring from time to time into the morning’s emptiness, she wondered if there was a further connection between what she expected to happen at any moment and that first tragedy. Maybe, she thought, that had started the whole thing. She shuddered.
A Rock ’n’ Roll invitation to meet at “The Hop” wailed from the radio behind her. Walker hadn’t said anything about such a connection, though. And Walker, more than anyone else alive, knew about tragedy on the Loop. Walker, Sherry thought, knew everything.