Olin noticed the sound first. He had been sitting quietly in his living room. At least, outside of his head had been quiet. Inside his head was a jumble of words. Not quite coherent thoughts, but lots of words, as he tried to cope with the paralyzing fear he had felt for the past 29 hours. He had thought several times to grab his clubs out of his closet — in the time loop, his clubs had reappeared in his closet, magically transported from the 18th hole at Hillcrest — and drive out to the golf course. But whenever he imagined himself winding back for a tee shot, an image that usually calmed him profoundly, he began to shake uncontrollably.
For the past 29 hours he had alternated between that unfairly fear inducing image and an image of a life in which he could never play golf again, for fear of finding himself suddenly hurtling down the 10 at 70 miles per hour.
He had moments of respite, moments of relative relief from the images in his head.
And it was in one of those moments of respite, one of those moments of relative calm, that Olin Montgomery found himself again in his Mercedes, hurtling southward on the 10 at 70 miles per hour.
The white pickup truck in front of him, swerved and went up on two wheels. A bucket of rakes tumbled ofer the side, bounced on the asphalt, and flipped in mid-air. As the bucket flew past Olin’s SUV, the rakes were all miraculously still in it.
The pickup then smacked back down onto all four wheels. It continued to swerve, but did not, as it had last time, go into an uncontrolled spin.
One of the white pickup truck’s taillights lit up. Olin jammed his foot on the brake pedal. He wanted to look in the rear view mirror to see whether anyone was bearing down on him, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off of the chaos in front of him.
Everywhere in front of the white truck and beside it taillights were lighting up. There were, Olin noticed with a kind of shock, no collisions. Or, at least, none that he could see.
Traffic in front of him slowed, rapidly but orderly. Olin peeked in his mirror. Traffic behind was slowing, too.
He was going to get out of this one unscathed.
And, he realized to his horror, there was probably going to be a next time, and a next.
But he had managed this time, as had other people. He was learning, and they were learning.
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