I've been hauling freight for the better part of 15 years, enough time to get familiar with just about every empty highway across the southwest.

Names Rick Harmon, based out of Colorado Springs. Tonight I was hauling diesel generators down from Grand Junction, bound for a construction site

out near Escalante. It was a long, lonely stretch through Utah's high desert, cutting south

along State Route 24. I crossed into Utah around quarter to 11, fueled up quick and green

river, and set off southward. Anyone who's driven that stretch can tell you

how isolated it is. Miles of rocky emptiness, moonlit mesas, and sandstone cliffs casting weird

shadows across the road. No cell reception, no traffic, just me, my rig, and whatever kept

skittering off into the brush at the edge of the headlights.

A half hour in, about 30 miles south of the turnoff, I crossed a cattle guard. That's when I saw him.

Standing just off the shoulder, clear as anything. A man. At first glance, I pegged him for a hitchhiker,

common enough on these empty roads,

but he didn't signal me. He just stood motionless, arms straight down, watching the truck pass.

In that quick flash of headlights, I saw jeans, a white undershirt, and worn out boots. Nothing else.

No backpack, no jacket. Just a silent figure,

completely out of place in the middle of nowhere. I muttered to myself, gripping the wheel a little tighter. Hitchhikers didn't usually make me uneasy, but something about his stillness, his isolation,

just felt off. My trailer hummed behind me, wheels rolling steady over asphalt, and I shook it off. Maybe a local drunk.

Maybe somebody broke down. But I didn't stop. I never stopped out here if I didn't have to.

25 minutes and 20-some miles later, near a dried-up ravine that cut close to the road, I saw him again. I swear it was the

same guy. Same stance, same clothes, same unsettling stillness. My headlights brushed over him again,

standing perfectly straight, unmoving. No sign he'd even acknowledged my truck roaring past. I scanned the side mirrors

looking for a parked car, a motorcycle, hell even a bicycle, but saw nothing, just dark desert

stretching endlessly on both sides.

...